Sam Gill's classes in 1843 predate primary school by government of South Australia in 1877 for Coromandel Valley

An early class in the original stone building for Coromandel Valley Primary School in the Adelaide Hills from 1877, with the building still part of its 21st Century campus alongside the Sturt River.

Coromandel Valley Primary School from 1877 was one of the South Australia’s oldest government schools but it had a predecessor in that area of the Adelaide Hills.

Samuel Gill, a Baptist minister (and father of South Australia’s famous watercolour illustrator S.T. Gill), started teaching his day and night classes in Coromandel Valley in 1843. Gill and his family had arrived in Adelaide aboard the Caroline in December 1839.  In England, Gill had been headmaster of a school in Plymouth where his son S.T. Gill was first educated.

Gill settled in the Adelaide Hills at Coromandel Valley where he bought land and became the postmaster. He conducted classes in his home from 1843 before his Classical and Mathematical Preparatory School for boys under 12 gained a more formal school room in 1850 with a chapel built on land donated by Thomas Matthews of Hurds Hill.

Gill died two years later and the valley settlers were unable to get a school in the area until they decided at a public meeting in 1874 to apply for one to be provided by the South Australian government.  The following year, the South Australian parliament passed the Education Act, setting up a public school system.  Gill’s school building was eventually demolished and the stone government school, the first in the Blackwood and Belair districts, opened in 1877. The original stone building stayed in use at Coromandel Valley school. 

In the picturesque Mitcham Hills,14 kilometres south of Adelaide city centre, the school was settled in bushland with the Sturt River flanking its southern boundary. In the early 21st Century, the school had around 470 students also including short- and long-term international students.