Toorak College is an independent, inter-denominational, boarding and day school for girls in grades 5 - 12 and for boys and girls from pre-school through grade four. The school is located on the Mornington Peninsula, above Port Phillip Bay in Mount Eliza, a town approximately forty kilometres south of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. In 2005, the college was serving the needs of approximately 925 students from Kindergarten through the 12th grade, including 70 boarders for grades 7 through 12. Toorak's co-educational ELC and junior school (years K-6) is an IB World School, and offers the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP). Toorak College is affiliated with the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA), the Junior School Heads Association of Australia (JSHAA), the Alliance of Girls' Schools Australasia (AGSA), the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria (AISV), the Australian Boarding Schools Association (ABSA), and is a founding member of Girls Sport Victoria (GSV). History Toorak College takes its name from the township of Toorak, where it opened as a boys' school on Wednesday, 21 January 1874. At first, classes were held in the brick hall of St John's Presbyterian Church on Jackson Street, Toorak, but the school soon moved into specially erected buildings on nearby Douglas Street. The founding principal in 1854 was John Stevens Miller, a Scot who had been involved in several schools since his arrival in Victoria. His successor, John Thomas Craig, was also a Scot and consequently the school maintained a nominal association with the Presbyterian church for some years. During his years at Toorak College (1877–1895), Craig built the school into one of the largest privately owned schools in Melbourne. After the prosperity of the 1880s, the economic difficulties of the next decade reduced enrolments dramatically. Craig, whose health had never been strong, leased his school to Margaret Oliver Tripp. Tripp had many educational interests and considerable teaching experience. Assisted by two of her sisters, she took over Toorak College on 4 February 1895. In 1897, she changed Toorak College from a boys' school to a school for girls. Toorak College was a very small school when its next principal, Ellen Blundell Pye, arrived late in 1899. She encouraged the playing of a range of sports such as tennis, basketball, athletics, cricket and rowing. Slowly, the number of pupils increased and a school spirit developed, expressed in the "Games Song" written during this period. The