The Scots School was once the home of John Lee (1824 - 1909). Karralee was built in the late 1860s and the early 1870s and was one of the finest homes in Kelso. John Lee was a breeder of some of the finest cattle and thoroughbred horses in the State. His pure bred shorthorn cattle were some of the finest in the world. He was a superb horseman and the originator of the yearling sales in Sydney and his horse Bylong, won the first Metropolitan Stakes run in Randwick. Towards the end of his life John Lee was thrown from his horse when the stable boy jumped off the railing of the yard.
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Karralee passed out of the hands of the Lee family in the early 1930s when it was bought by William Arnott of Arnott's Biscuits, for his daughter.
The Scots College, Bellevue Hill Sydney, leased the property in 1942 to evacuate its primary students after the Japanese submarines came into Sydney Harbour. The Scots College Branch School remained until the end of 1945 when it returned to Sydney. However, by this time there were a number of boys from regional and rural New South Wales who had enrolled at the school because of its location in the Central West. The parents of these boys successfully asked the Trustees of the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales to allow the school to continue and so The Scots School Bathurst was born when the Trustees finally purchased the property from William Arnott in 1946.
The school had originally accommodated Preparatory-age boys but this had fallen into decline during the 1960s. The Preparatory School was reopened in 1997 and has grown steadily since that time. During 1997 the Board of the school decided to make the change from an all-boys school to a co-educational one and the first girls were first admitted to the school in Term 4, 1997. In 1998 girls were admitted to the Prep School and to Year 11. The demand from parents for full co-education was such that girls were admitted to all years, kindergarten to Year 12, in 1999. Since that time, coeducation has become firmly established with boys and girls taking roles in all aspects of school life, academic, sporting, co-curricular and leadership.
Featured in The Scots School video are Oliver Williams and Baxter Williams with Millie Inwood, Prue Inwood, Joshua Inwood. Listen as Oliver and Millie describe what they love about living in Bathurst: