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To cope with the delay, Arnold Street once again resorted to dispersed education. In October 1959, Headmaster Bill Johnston requested permission to investigate leasing suitable available premises in the neighbourhood. These included church halls, the Carlton Cricket Ground Pavilion, and the Exhibition Bui1dingBuilding.19 By 1963, his students A occupied five different locations. Arnold Street catered for the majority of the students. Classes were conducted in the old building, in portables in the schoolyard and in 51 Arnold Street, the old house in the south-east corner of the yard, where the tenant had been ousted to make way for small senior classes. Senior classes were also taken in the school’s she1tershelter-shed, hallways of the main building and the staff room‘. The school also reoccupied C Block, a dilapidated shoe factory on the junction of the lanes behind Arnold and Richardson Streets, previously used as the Sloyd and Cookery centre.
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Form 1L was housed in that old standby, St Michael’s Hall, leased for £700 per annum. Eight classrooms were leased for £40 per week from Peretz, the Jewish school in Drummond Street, to accommodate 200 form 3 students. In 1962, Pigdon Street returned the hospitality of 1959-60, and accepted two portables on its grounds.20 To appease grumbling teachers, the Schoo1’s School’s 30 Advisory Council agreed to reimburse staff members 9d. per mile petrol money for using their cars to travel between annexes. The Education Department refused to contribute. When news came in 1960 that a new building would be provided, members of the newly formed Advisory Council began to dream of a ‘Canberra’ model school with a gymnasium, assembly hall and other coveted facilities. No such dreams materialised. Not only were the assembly hall and gymnasium refused, but there was no sign of work commencing on the building. On 15 November 1960, a delegation called on Sir John Bloomfield, the Minister of Education, to press the urgency for a new building. The delegation Headmaster Johnston and John Polglaze, the chairman of the Advisory Council - received no satisfaction. The Minister would not commit himself to a date for the calling of tenders, and the Department would not even accept the Advisory Council’s offer of £5000 over ten years to pay for an assembly hall and canteen on a £1 for £1 basis.21 The Minister did, however, agree to buy land. One plan mooted was to buy houses in Garton Street behind the school to provide a corridor for students to Princes Park. By March 1962, tenders had still not been called. The building originally planned for completion by early 1962, was now unlikely to be occupied before the beginning of 1964.22
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