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school milk


In Hobart in the 60s and early 70s the State Government provided each child with free milk, 1/2 a pint in a bottle each day. It was invariably stored in the sun and tasted awful plain and even worse flavoured lime, chocolate, strawberry etc. Before my time it was all plain, but with flavoured straws. Most women of my ilk will NOT drink milk, so badly were we affected. My dad eventually wrote a note and I was safe. In winter it was heated up and had a skin on it: No I won't drink the school milk, they've left it in the sun again!!!

Contributor's comments: It was 1/3 pint in Victoria. As a teacher I overcame the dislike factor by ensuring that we brought it in as soon as it arrived in summer, and children drank it ice-cold. There were fewer refusals that way.

Contributor's comments: I too dreaded the school milk (though we didn't actually call it "school milk" as far as I remember). It was always served tepid, but, by far the worse thing was that we were supplied with feeble paper straws that immediately became entirely sodden and collpased in on themselves into a milk-and-paper stick of glop, thus necessitating the scoffing of the last 3/4 of the bottle. Errrgh! Those were the days, not!

Contributor's comments: We had the 1/3 pint of milk at school. I was a Milk Monitor which entailed carrying the crates of milk from the loading bay to be left out side each class room. Then collecting the crates after morning Playtime and returning them to the loading bay. This was how I was talent spotted for my first job. The Milko employed me on Saturday mornings to go out on the horse drawn milk cart and deliver milk and collect bottles. The other thing about the school milk was that by carefully easing off the milk tops you could use them as flying saucers by flicking them between your first and second fingers. In my school there was also a milk top monitor who would collect the aluminium tops from each classroom for recyling.

Contributor's comments: School milk (1/3rd pint) was also provided in the UK. When criticised for this extravagance in 1943, Churchill said "There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies." Needless to say it rarely suffered from the heat in the UK. Indeed is was often frozen solid in winter. By the early 1960s straws containing flavoured blocks could be bought so that they flavoured the milk between the bottle and the mouth.

Contributor's comments: Blue Mts, 1960s. After throwing up after my first two attempts at downing the 1/3 pint of milk, I and two others were made Milk Monitors, presumably because we could be trusted not to drink it while fetching it for the school, there being just enough bottles for the pupils. Little did the teachers know that, when collecting the empties, we would pool the dregs into a few bottles, smooth out the foil tops and re-cap them, to be sold on the black market at lunch time in the playground.

Contributor's comments: Northwest Tasmanian primary school during 1970s served schoolmilk. Lifetime dislike of drinking milk, especially flavoured milk ensued. We drank our milk directly outside the toilet block (seated lunch area) and I have never managed to disassociate the two.