Classrooms
Warm timber rooms built for genuine, hands-on lessons.
Prep – Year 2
Starting small
Prep to Year 2 is where children find their feet — early literacy and numeracy, plenty of outdoor time, and the tradition every Hartley Grove student begins with: in their first spring, each child plants a tree in the orchard.
Years 3 – 6
Finding their stride
By the junior years, children take on specialist subjects — science, music, languages and sport — and start reading each week with an older student through Sapling to Summit.
From our Principal, Ruth Calder
From our Principal, Ruth Calder
“I’ve watched this cohort grow from the front step to the far row — and I still know which tree is theirs.”
Families choose Hartley Grove once and stay, because the school they enrol a five-year-old into is the same one that hands their eighteen-year-old a graduation stole. The people don’t change out from under you; the thread holds.
Day to day that means a senior who reads with a Prep each week, a teacher who taught an older sibling, an orchard row a child returns to for thirteen springs. Continuity isn’t a promise we make — it’s the shape of the place.
Ruth Calder, Principal — 19 years at Hartley Grove
The two ends of the school, together
Every senior is paired with a Prep buddy. They read together each week — 320 pairs this year.
Meet the pairsYears 7 – 12
Full season
The senior years bring real choice — sciences and technology, music and performing arts, sport and senior pathways — with the results and support to back them.
The far end of the walk
Thirteen years on, this cohort picks from the trees they planted in Prep.
You’ve just watched one child grow from their first tree to their last — thirteen springs, one campus, the whole way through.
Now begin your own.
Enrolments are open across every year level, Prep to Year 12.
Since 1961
A school grown from an orchard
Hartley Grove began on a working family orchard in Kellerton — and never stopped being one. Our story isn’t a founding date on a crest; it’s the same rows, worked by the same hands, growing different children every decade.
Continuity, not prestige
In 1961 the Hartley family gave over part of their orchard to start a small school for the district’s children. The brief was modest: teach them well, and keep the trees. Sixty-five years on, several original rows still stand along Bellman’s Walk, worked each season by our orchardist Sal Petrakis, who has tended them for thirty years.
We measure ourselves by return rather than reputation. Families enrol a five-year-old and stay until a graduation stole; teachers arrive and build careers; former students come back as parents, and sometimes as staff. The orchard makes that continuity visible — a slow, working proof that this is one place with one long memory.
Where the Long Row began
The Long Row tradition started almost by accident: a Prep teacher had her class plant a tree each in their first spring, and marked the row with the year. Thirteen years later, that first cohort came back to pick from their trees at graduation. It has happened every year since. Each graduating year has its own row in the Long Orchard, and walking the rows is walking the decades.
Prep to Year 12
Learning across the years
One campus, one continuous program — early literacy through senior pathways, with specialist teaching folded in at the age it belongs. A family who wants the academic detail finds a complete school here, one step from the timeline.
Prep – Year 2
Early Years
The first years are about finding their feet: early literacy and numeracy, structured play and plenty of outdoor time. Every Prep child plants a tree in their first spring — the start of the Long Row. Specialist music and PE begin here.
Years 3 – 6
Junior Years
Children take on specialist subjects — science, music, languages and sport — and begin reading each week with an older buddy through Sapling to Summit. Curiosity is the currency: measuring, making, asking.
Years 7 – 9
Middle Years
The middle years broaden the world: full science and technology, the arts, languages and a wide co-curricular program, with the pastoral care to steady a big transition. Students start to shape their own path.
Years 10 – 12
Senior Years
Real choice, with the results and support to back it: sciences and technology, music and performing arts, sport and senior pathways into university, training and work. The far end of the walk.
The whole school
Specialist spaces
Same campus, same light, same warmth as the orchard — a real school whose orchard happens to be its heart, not its only room.
Science
Real practical work at proper benches, from Year 3 up.
Technology
A bright workshop for robotics, making and design.
Music
Ensembles and lessons in the Petrakis Music Room.
Performing Arts
Drama and dance on a working school stage.
Sport
Team sport and athletics on grounds ringed by trees.
Library & specialist rooms
Quiet, timber-lined spaces to read and focus.
Cross-age mentoring
Sapling to Summit
Every senior is paired with a Prep or Year 1 “sapling.” They read together each week under the trees — the far end of the school looking after the near end.
320
pairs this year
Weekly
reading sessions
Yr 11–12
paired with Prep & Year 1
How the pairing works
At the start of the year every Year 11 and 12 student is matched with a Prep or Year 1 buddy. Each week they meet at the orchard benches along Bellman’s Walk and read together — the senior listening, prompting, and quietly modelling what an older student looks like.
For the little ones it’s a friendly face at the big end of the school. For the seniors it’s real responsibility, and often the moment they realise how far they’ve come. Coordinator Aroha Wells oversees the programme and keeps the same pairs together across the year.
The Long Row tradition
The Long Orchard
The surviving 1961 rows are still worked, organised by graduating year — so walking the orchard is walking the decades. Each Prep cohort plants a tree in its first spring and returns thirteen years later to pick from it at graduation.
Across the seasons
Seasonal gallery
Select any frame to view it larger.
One place, many generations
Community
Multi-generational families, long-serving staff, and a whole-school life that gathers under the same trees each season. When the two ends of the school stand in one frame, the promise looks after itself.
Then → now
Alumni threads
Former students who never really left — traced from their first year to today.
Begin the Story — enrolment
Enrolments open · every year level
Begin the story
Choose Hartley Grove once, and we’ll hold the thread for the next thirteen years. Book a visit, walk Bellman’s Walk, and meet the school your child could finish.
How enrolment works
Three steps
1
Enquire
Send the form below and we’ll be in touch within two school days.
2
Visit
Walk the campus with us and meet staff from your child’s year level.
3
Enrol
Complete the application; we confirm a place and a start date.
Enrolment enquiry
News & events
The Noticeboard
What’s happening along Bellman’s Walk and across the school.
Latest posts
Category
Article title
We keep people
Our people
Long tenure is our quiet boast — teachers and staff who stay, and often taught the parents of the children they teach now.
Thirty years on the same rows
Sal Petrakis, Orchardist
Sal has worked the Long Orchard for three decades — pruning, grafting, and teaching each Prep cohort how to plant their tree. He is the human thread beneath the metaphor: the same hands on the same trees, season after season, while the children change.
Our staff
Visit & enquire
Contact us
Come and walk Bellman’s Walk. We’d love to show you around.
- Address
- 14 Bellman’s Walk, Kellerton VIC 3799
- Phone
- (03) 5550 1961
- enquiries@hartleygrove.vic.edu.au
- Office hours
- Monday to Friday, 8:00am – 4:30pm
Privacy
Hartley Grove College collects personal information only to run the school and respond to your enquiries — enrolment details, contact information, and the messages you send us through this site.
What we collect and why
Information submitted through our enquiry and enrolment forms is used to contact you, process an application, and keep you informed. We do not sell personal information, and we share it only where required to deliver education services or by law.
Your choices
You may ask to see, correct, or delete the information we hold about you at any time. Contact the school office on (03) 5550 1961 or at privacy@hartleygrove.vic.edu.au.
This is a concept site; the statement above is illustrative placeholder content.
Accessibility
We want every family to be able to use this site. It is built to meet WCAG 2.1 AA, and tested with a keyboard and screen reader as well as by eye.
Built-in controls
In the bar at the top of every page you can adjust the site to suit you:
- Text size — three steps, scaling the whole page.
- High contrast — a higher-contrast colour scheme.
- Still images — freezes the moving hero to a single still image.
Keyboard & motion
Every menu, form, and control is fully keyboard-operable with a clear, visible focus outline. The site respects your device’s “reduce motion” setting, and animation is never required to read or use any content.
Get in touch
If anything here is hard to use, please tell us on (03) 5550 1961 or at enquiries@hartleygrove.vic.edu.au.
404
This row hasn’t been planted yet
The page you were looking for isn’t here — but the orchard is full of other rows to walk.