Buninyong and Eumungerie public schools suffered significant damage because of fires, the former last year and the latter early this year.

Six months after a fire tore through Eumungerie Public School students have new Tonka trucks and basketball hoops and the inconvenience of getting shoes muddy in the playground is in the past.

Eumungerie Public School captain John Ciappara said; “when the fire happened there weren’t much resources and we couldn’t get back to school” but these days everything was “really good”.

“We’ve got heaps of new games and a new storage shed,” John said.

“We’ve got Lego, dress-ups, big Tonka trucks, drafts and chess.

“We did have some (games before the fire) but we’ve got a

bit more now and it’s all brand new.”

The January fire, which police said was being treated as suspicious, destroyed two classrooms, the canteen, library, computer room, an outdoor learning area and paths throughout the grounds.

John said the absence of paths was one of the more inconvenient outcomes of the fire.

“It was just muddy all over the place and we had to take our shoes off before going into the classroom,” he said.

Eumungerie Public School principal Heather Thompson said new paths had been constructed and children no longer had to “trudge in the mud”.

“The kids are happily settled back in and are enjoying their

new resources and furniture,” she said.

They had “new, state-of-the-art” literacy material and a building the school received a week before the fire as part of the Federal Government’s Building the Education Revolution, which was undamaged by the fire, had been converted into a library and computer room.

“It’s absolutely beautiful although ... we’re still in demountables,” Mrs Thompson said.

But John said the demountables were “really good” for the meantime and Mrs Thompson said she understood “the plans are in for the final approval of the building that’s to be replaced”.