Top Banner
824 South Preston State School Memories of the Early 1950s Compiled for Darebin Heritage by Brian Membrey
22

824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

Mar 29, 2018

Download

Documents

doannguyet
Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Page 1: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

824 South Preston State School Memories of the Early 1950s

Compiled for Darebin Heritage by Brian Membrey

Page 2: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have
Page 3: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

The image of the front cover is taken from a Valentine's post

card of 1919, but as the message on back suggests, the school was rebuilt in 1922 ...

"Dear Cousin

This where our 3 girls go to school. This school is pulled

down & a new one ??? get bilt I try get cards of new one.

From Edith"

Given the spelling and grammar, let's hope Edith wasn't educated at South Preston!

Page 4: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s ii

Contents : Introduction

Memories of the Early 1950s ...................................................................................................................3 Memories : Day One ............................................................................................................................3 Memories : Grades and Teachers ...........................................................................................................2 Memories : Lunchtime ..........................................................................................................................3 Memories : Preston Tip ........................................................................................................................4 Memories : The Grounds, 1955 .............................................................................................................5 Memories : Of Slate,Pencil and Ink ...................................................................................................... 10 Memories : Corporal Punishment ......................................................................................................... 11 Memories : Reading and the School Library .......................................................................................... 11 Memories : Where To Next ................................................................................................................. 13 Memories : 1964, the Centenary ......................................................................................................... 14 Memories : Sports (official)................................................................................................................. 15 Memories : Sports (local) ................................................................................................................... 16

Version 1.1, 8 July, 2015.

The original has been updated following Feedback from Wendy Frye Collier, a classmate (as Frye) of the time. Principal changes to the original are the shifting of the shelter sheds in front of the

toilets in my 1955 recollection of the school grounds, confirmation that corporal punishment was administered by the headmaster, and a change in ownership of the fish and chip shop

("Lunchtime") in Plenty Road.

Subsequent to our discussions, the posting on a Facebook site of a class IVB photograph shows the year as 1955 - I wasn't in this class, but in the same year, hence I must have started as a six

year-old in 1952 and completed the sixth year in 1957, one year later than originally thought.

Page 5: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s iii

Memories of the Early 1950s

Memories : Day One

There does not appear to be a surviving image of the newer South Preston schoolpost-1920s (small sections of the front perhaps show in class photos), but from what the author remembers of the building of the early 1950s, the section to the right extended forward to the protruding centre frontage in the postcard and this was the main entrance with the staff room in the newer section and the Honour Board on the left-hand wall of the corridor.

The discovery of a school class photo after compiling the original was a surprise and revealed that it must have 1952 when I just turned six when I started - without ever spending a great deal of time

pondering the question, I thought it was a year earlier, but based on a "known" that I was 19 when I

finished my Diploma, this - with the help of fingers and toes - works out to be correct.

I thought five years was the minimum starting age - the 1952 year started on Tuesday, 5 February and there are references to 5 year-olds starting, but as a result of the post-war "baby boom", South Preston like most others in Melbourne was so overcrowded at the time thatonly those children of something like six-and-a-half were accepted at the Hotham Street precinct.

A couple of warnings by Teacher's Unions the previous year had suggested that with something like 14,500 chilren starting in 1952, there would be many situations where children would be turned away; there were an estimated 250,000 children in the school system at the time. At the time of the opening of the school year, there were predictions that while a class of 40 was "normal", sizes of 60 or 70 would not be uncommon.

The younger five year-olds - I was 6 and two months on Febraury 5 - were sent instead to a wooden hall behind the Yann Street South Preston Methodist Church (now Greek Orthodox); both the building and the date palm which I clearly remember were still there around circa 2010 ago and clearly visible behind the church. During my time, a number of horse stalls extended inside the property down Seymour Street and part-way along the western border and I remember a grassy area to the west of the church, either a vacant block or an unbuilt section of the church property.

There were around 25 of us, a bit less than the size of each of the two classes in Grade One, and although referred to as "the bubs", it was a teaching environment (perhaps officially, a Preparatory class) and I can remember the basic arithmetic tables - "once two is two, "two twos are five" - and learning the alphabet. 1

I recall being transferred up to Hotham Street in the middle of the year to enjoy the atmosphere of the open garbage tip which later became Cochrane Reserve. I think I was the only one "promoted" at that time, but there was at least one other kid, Leigh Sinclair, who I remember being in my grade both in prep. and at the main school, so I'm guessing he may have got the nod a little later.

The net effect is that throughout my entire schooling, I was around six months younger than all of my classmates - a big disadvantage at five years of age when six months or 10 percent of your life can mean a big physical advance, but it did have some benefits later on when sports teams were based on

age and I could usually compete against kids that were in the Grade below me.

I'm not sure how long the "preparatory" class continued - there were no structural additions to the buildings in Hotham Street during my time other than a small library along the southern boundary just after I left at the end of 1956, so I'm guessing that it continued for at least a couple of years until the "baby boom" and the resultant number of new pupils decreased.2

1 Probably like many before and since, the lower-case b and d confused me - the big letters B and D went the same way, but the little letters were always different until I worked out one day that b faced the hand that I wrote with. Right? Fortunately, unlike some others, I didn't have a problem with which way the squiggle of an s went. Perhaps a healthy dose of my elder brother's Superman comics didn’t do me any harm after all!

2 I thought when commencing these memories that the "Prep" class was only organised because of the accommodation shortage, but I now note on Facebook many other later Preparatory classes, so obviously they were, and perhaps still are part and parcel of the system.

Page 6: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 2

Memories : Grades and Teachers

During the years I attended, there were around 400 pupils at the school.

Grades 1 to 4 - then nominally 6 to 9 year olds - were split to two classes, A and B. There was no implication that the kids in A were smarter than B and just how children were allocated to each class is unknown. From family names I can recall, there was no pattern of an alphabetic allocation - perhaps the names were simply drawn out of a hat. The photo mentioned of one of the fourth grade classes has 43 pupils - roughly equal boys and girls - and this is probably about what I remember for those years. .

Grades 5 and 6 - 10 to perhaps 12 years - where the learning expectations were somewhat higher, were split to three classes with perhaps 25 - 28 in each.

At the State School level at that time, teachers inherited a class in the first week of February until the week prior to Christmas and were responsible for all subjects - Readin', 'Ritin' and 'Rithmetic, with some geography and history (mostly Australian) also included. Specialised teachers including music and arts, but certainly not drama and some other perhaps commo today only came into being at the first year of secondary education.

I remember a few teacher's names including two unmarried sisters namedEsmore who had control of my first and second grades; grade three was Ron McKenzie, then a modest V.F.L. footballer, four games with Collingwood in 1952 and one at Melbourne in 1953 (my year under him).

The Grade 1 and 2 classrooms were at the eastern end of the southern side, while Grade three was the eastern end on the eastern end of the northern side, with later grades progressively extending

westward, then along Hotham Street (interspersed by the headmaster's office and the staff room, then back down the southern side of what was effectively a U-shape building. [See the schematic, page 7]

The southern wing - that existing prior to the extensions of the early 1920s, had class rooms either side of a corridor; the Hotham Street frontage ditto, with an "opportunity" classes for around eight to ten deemed requirespecialist tutoring, sometimes for one year, others for longer on the eastern side.

The newer northern wing had rooms on the outer side and a glass-windowed corridor on the on the inside of the U.

Fourth grade I cannot clearly bring to mind - it may have been a Mr Tulloch, but confusing the brain is that I had a science teacher at Preston Tech about five years later of that name and two Tullochs sounds a bit too much of a coincidence. I recall the class room was on the north-western corner with the windows along Hotham Street.

Fifth grade was Mr.Northey, probably my favourite (an of Weny Frye Collier's), and I remember many of us in his class being pleased that he was promoted over the summer months and most of us finished up in his sixth grade class as well.

Classes were co-educational, but boys sat with boys and girls sat with girls at the dual desks - I'm not sure whether that was school policy or just the fact that anything else would have seen he-and-she mercilessly teased by class mates.

Although the oldest, South Preston had even by then been far outstripped in terms of student population by the two-storey schools at Tyler Street, Bell Primary (Scotia Street) and West Preston.

Headmaster for much of my time was Allan Hird, the grandfather of Essendon footballer and coach, James Hird. Hirdsenior played 102 games with Essendon as well as (earlier) 14 with Hawthorn and subsequently 38 with St. Kilda as captain-coach.

He was later captain-coach of Essendon Seconds, and served on the Essendon committee for several years before becoming President in 1969, a

position which he held until 1975. The Allan T. Hird Stand at "Windy Hill" is named in his honour.Professionally, he rose to the position of State Director of Education before he passed away in 2007 at the age of 88 years.

Page 7: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 3

Memories : Lunchtime

South Preston did not have a school canteen or "tuck shop" during my time and I think for a decade or more either side, the main outlet for those that either didn't bring lunch from home or just wanted a sugar fix from a threepenny bag of mixed lollies was the "school shop" immediately opposite, the shop façade still retained but not operating for many, many years.

During my years, it was run by a rather short and rotund couple, Mr and Mrs Peck and sometimes helpetheir daughter Carol who in the same Grade as us, but maybe remembered as a bit older given she helped out in the shop.

There was a small sandwich-cum milk bar opposite the door and a lolly stand on the left -probably no more than 7 by 5 metres and added to the front of an original timber cottage. Given its Sphinx-like status to those of us at South Preston, it was always a mystery to me that cousins who attended Bell and West Preston respectively never had any idea what I was going on about when I spoke of the

"school shop". Cretins, one and all! 3

The alternative in my early days was a fish and chip shop on the western side of Plenty Road midway between Seymour and Yann Streets where the lunch-time ritual of several dozen kids all yelling for "six 'o cakes" (potato) at a penny a time terrorised the proprietor.

Of course, if there was a penny left over after devouring the scalding-hot mixture of starch and fat, there was a grocers next door where one could cleanse or clogthe palate with either "fizzy" (fruit saline) or hundreds-and-thousands - either way in a wax-paper flute filled from a bulk tin.

Circa 1955, a new fish and chip opened on the eastern side about six doors south of Bell Street. I thought it was operated by the Kambouris family perhaps because one of their daughters "Chrissie" -

later confirmed as Chysantheum - enrolled at South Preston, but a correspondent, Wendy Frye Collier (just Frye when we attended) suggests that the Kambouris family were in High Street next to the Yee family's fruit shop 4 and the Plenty Road version was run by a family called Ristovich - either way this seemed to become the favourite of the fish-and-chip brigade.

For the majority that brought Mum's cut lunch from home, it was almost invariably sandwiches - perhaps in some cases a bread roll - wrapped in wax paper with a piece of fruit and parcelled up in a brown paper bag. It wasn't exactly eBay, but there was something of a lunchtime swap market as kids sought out their favourites.

During the last couple of years of my time, plastic bags became available and they kept everything fresher than the paper variety. I'm not sure whether they were expensive or just hard to get hold of, but certainly our family led the way in recycling in the Preston area at least.

Dad, my brother and I always religiously took the plastic bags back home, Mum would rinse them out and every Saturday morning there would be a dozen or more pegged out on the Hills Rotary Hoist and flapping in the breeze. There was also a kitchen drawer devoted almost entirely to bags, both plastic and paper,just below the shelf where the Vegemite jars that doubled as glasses were kept 5

Perhaps all this sounds like an old man's recollection of the halcyon days of childhood - but to even things out, there was also the Curse Of The Free Milk.

At some point and certainly with the best of intentions given there were many families struggling to

provide adequate nutrition for their children combined with a glut of low-price milk, the Education Department decided that it would provide daily free milk to all Victorian State School children.

The scheme had been proposed early in 1951, but had been held up through a shortage of storage cases and insufficient pasteurising plants - it was eventually introduced in September with a half-pint bottle distributed to all state school children up to the age of nine between then and December. The scheme was expanded over the summer to extend the age to 13 (some 160,000 Victorian State School

3 Not sure when it ceased to function as a shop - it retained the façade up until perhaps 2000, but has in recent years has been re-modelled with a weatherboard extension to the footpath.

4 Yee's was 307 High Street, the "chippery" at 305, just south of Bruce Street. Robert Yee was one of my best friends in Grades 5 and 6, but we lost contact after he went to Northcote High and I to Preston Tech. He apparently later became a doctor in Geelong, but has since passed away following a heart attack. Their shop was five or six doors up from Mussett's toy shop and hairdressers where you could buy real lead toy soldiers (and chew them to your falling heart's content)!

5Vegemite was one of the staples for the sandwiches - either on its own, or sometimes with cheese or egg. Other basic options were tomato and lettuce - a leaf on either side of the tomato so the bread didn't go soggy - or "Fritz", aka German sausage or today, strasbourg. Ham was too expensive, chicken in those days even more so, to the point that it was rarely seen in our house other than at Christmas; peanut butter was an American innovation still some years away from being available. Another alternative was a canned "manufactured" meat calle Camp Pie - I think a down-market Australian version of the American "Spam", popular with troops uring the SeconWorl War and before the word was re-invented - or perhaps not - to mean in Web terms something unsolicited and eventually worthless.

Page 8: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 4

children to suffer accordingly), but with the volume to be reduced to a third of a pint as soon as bottles could be produced, the original half-pint considered too much for younger children.

Others may extol the virtues of the scheme, but I'll tell it as I remember it!

The milk came in bottles with a foil lid and was delivered by a local dairy around 6.30 or 7.00 a.m. and left outside in the sun to curdle until around 10.30 when each class was marched out to face their punishment.

I can't remember much of grades one to three - perhaps the scheme didn't operate or I was more resilient, but from grade four on, the warm milk made me so queasy, Mum's cut lunch either disappeared into the bin or down the throat of someone whose appetite was bigger that their own brown-paper lunch bag.

It took about three months before Mum twigged that lunch was no longer on my menu. 6

I ultimately 'fessed to the milk making me feel sick and she got me taken off the free program. Heaven forbid, if there is ever a time when my ultimate survival depends on a choice of steaming camel urine

or milk, then I hope there are plenty of camels around!

(I should add that I'm not alone here - around 2010, a group of six or eight of regularly organised a monthly Sunday roast at the Preston Football Club Social Club. One Sunday, someone declared he was going to have a couple of extra beers during the afternoon and decided to test the urban myth that drinking milk put a lining on the stomach which restricted the absorption of alcohol. He emerged from the 'fridge with the milk carton and usual white moustache before three of us told him to perform such obscene acts in private - it subsequently emerged that the other two had the same turn-off as I had - being force to drink semi-curdled free milk some 50 years earlier)!

And Wendy Frye Collier agrees - her recollection is pretending to need the toilet whilst sneaking across to the school shop to buy flavouring to alleviate the taste of the milk! Smart move, didn't think of that at the time!

Memories : Preston Tip

Perhaps the juxtaposition of lunchtime and a rubbish tip is unfortunate, but it was a fact of life at South Preston State School.

The area now known as T. A. Cochrane Reserve behind the southern section of the school was the Preston Tip in Collier Street, certainly during my time and for at least a decade either side of that.

One of the earliest industrial enterprises in Preston, the site as early as the 1860s was the quarry for Arndt's Brickworks near the corner of Raglan and Hotham Streets, later operated by Fitzroy Steam Brick, Pipe, Tile and Pottery Works until the economic depression of the 1890s forced its closure.

The 4.2 acres of land was bought by the Council in 1944 for £4,332. It is believed that prior to the acquisition of this site, the earlier tip comprised three smaller clay holes just south of Raglan Street between Hotham and High streets.

As well as the clay hole, there were apparently four brick kilns which I have no recollection of in the

1950s. These were probably on the section on the corner of Raglan and Hotham, the current single-story terraces along both streets are of almost uniform design with the cream brick exteriors strongly reminiscent of the late 1940s.

The clay hole itself was set back about twenty yards from the borders with the school and I seem to remember an access road between the rickety old school fence and the tip itself.

When the Council commenced filling the quarrywith garbage is uncertain7, but the site was converted to recreational use in the early 1960s and as Cochrane Reserve became the home of a soccer club - probably Preston, but by then, many national names were also being appended.

6 By the cunning expediency of asking one night how I'd enjoyed the day's sandwiches - I thought my answer of "OK" would do the trick, but she asked what they were - I hesitantly replied "tomato and lettuce", they were cheese and Vegemite and I'd left them on the kitchen table when I left for school!

7 I think the earlier tip was a series of clay holes just south of Raglan Street between Hotham Street and Plenty Roa, now the Florence Adams Playground. After Collier Street was closed, the site of the Ray Bramham Gardens and Darebin Arts and Function Centre extending along St. George's Road south of Bell Street was used - formerly the clay holes for the Clifton Brick Company which I think operated until the late 1950s. Another example of how much Preston and to a lesser extent Northcote owe to former quarry sites for much of their current parklands and recreational areas. 14 acres which became Northcote Park in Westgarth Street was the only land ever provided by the Colonial Governments of the mid-nineteenth century for recreation in either municipality.

Page 9: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 5

From memory, the club didn't stay long, perhaps because of problems with noise and car parking in the middle of what was, except for the school, a residential area. It's probably ten years since I walked past, but it was being used then for hockey and with a number of tennis courts along the northern side.

During the 1950s, there were regular infestations of cockroaches into the school yard, especially on the girl's side closest to the tip, but I don't recollect many problems within the building itself. Likewise, there were probably rats, but again I don't think many were sighted except rarely in the school grounds.

Prevailing winds from the north and north-east generally kept the smell to a minimum, but there were a few days, especially in summer months where the rubbish caught fire, and then it was definitely time for clothes pegs on the nose. The worst days were when the fire took hold underground and it took the local Brigade up to two hours to fully extinguish.

Memories : The Grounds, 1955

My memory of how the school was laid out is overleaf - I've mentally re-visited the memory bank several times and this is as close as it gets failing offers from the BBC for the free loan of Doctor Who's Tardus time machine.

After reviewing my attempt to reproduce something approximating the scale, perhaps the one image I have in the back of my mind from all those years ago is that the quadrangle between the two wings was somewhat wider, perhaps by 15 percent.

This implies that I might have either missed a classroom along Hotham Street or the front section is a little out of scale.I suspect the latter - an additional room implies Grade 3 had three classes, and

although much water has flowed under the bridge, that is not the way I remember it.

Most of the schematic corresponds with the associated M.M.B.W. map of 1928, although there was obviously one or two significant expansions after that time, especially the addition of the northern wing and the interconnection of the front and rear sections.

Much of Hotham Street has changed little - the terraces to the north were in pretty awful condition at the time, the single-story cream brickbuildings to the south unchanged, as is the western side of the street, other than the "school shop" long having cease training and one or two of the older houses replaced with substantial modern residences.

The Tip, or course, has also long since gone and one wonders if in today's Health and Safety environment whether a garbage dump would even be remotely considered near a school.

(Just before what was then called the Gowerville State School was built in 1878 in Hotham Street to replace the original on the corner of Raglan and Albert streets, there was something of a battle over which of the two sites was preferable.

One of the new members of the local Board of Advice, a citizen's group which oversaw local schools, Cr. Thomas

Mitchell - freehold owner and sometimes licensee of the Gowerville Hotel - raised concerns over the new proposed site's proximity to brickworks and large clay holes which tended to regularly be flooded with water. Little woul he have guessed the same clay holes would some 80 years later be the local rubbish dump)!

Although not directly related to the school, the other significant change close by was that while wending home from the Prep. school fairly early in 1951 and sneaking via a short cut along a lane at the back of the houses on the northern side of Young Street, a couple of

us realised that the cows and horses had disappeared from Bransgrove's farm on the corner of Hotham and Bell Streets and a high wire fence was there instead, along with signs with big words like "Trespassers Prosecuted".

I was a regular smarty-pants - Mum whilst on a shopping trip down to Mr. Fysh's grocery 8 on the corner of Bell Street and Plenty Road had already explained that they meant "keep out or the

8 A lovely old store, originally dating back to the Marshall brothers in the 1880s. My favourite memory was that Kornies breakfast cereal boxes came with a couple of football cards which were visible through the wax paper covering - Mr. Fysh didn't seem that enamoured with young children scattering the boxes all over the place trying to find their favourite team's players. I think you could send off to Mr. Kornies and swap two cards for one by request. Collingwood and Fitzroy were obviously the local favourites (two cards per club each season?),

P.A.N.C.H. nearing completion in 1957.

Although not clear in the reduced image, the graffiti on the fence between the two cars is

the popular catch-cry of the time "Atom Tests Mean" with a tombstone appended.

Page 10: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 6

police'llget you", but the other kids guessed at things like "look out or the bull will get you" - perhaps a bit illogical given the animals had disappeared, but what's logic to a six year-old?

This was, of course, the proposed development of the Preston and Northcote Community Hospital, but other than the house (facing Hotham Street) and a few out-buildings being demolished, nothing else happened for three or four years because of funding problems.

(I think the fence may have later been removed, because the local communal Guy Fawkes Night bonfire was always at the eastern end of Bransgrove's land, roughly now where the Rydges-On-Bell guest's swimming pool is. I remember a couple of these when I would have been seven or eight years old).

The Bransgrove family in residence at the time were, of course, the direct descendants of the George Bransgrove responsible for the original school in East Preston being relocated to Hotham Street in the early

1870s.

but there was also V.F.A. players which meant Preston were represented. Opposite was Allchins drapery, always smelt beautiful, single-story, but with a cellar section accessed by stairs immediately behin the door in Plenty Road.

Preston legend, Ted Henrys,

Kornies card circa 1952. Later a City of Preston Councillor for many years and a well-known

commentator when Channel ATV-0 took up telecasts of Sunday

football.

Ted died in March, 2014 at 89 years of age - he had been living in Ballarat and was still attending North Ballarat games circa 2010

when he did an interview with the ABC team.

Born 1942 as HENRY under which he served with the RAAF during the Second World War, he later

change it by deed poll to HENRYS which was the version he had

always used.

Allchin's drapery, 1940 - south-western corner of Bell Street and Plenty Road. Opposite Fysh's grocery - the

memory lingers ... - immediately inside the Plenty Road entrance was a set of stairs leading down into an

underground section. Always had a lovely smell with camphor and pot pourri used to ward off moths and

the like which might have damaged the materials.

Page 11: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 7

(modified 6 July, 2015. A corresponent, Wendy Frye Collier who I shared grades with (she as Wendy Frye) remembers the shelter sheds as being in front of the toilet block, not behind as I had in the original)

Page 12: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 8

Abbreviations :

1A etc. Classrooms: 1 to 6 obviously the grades, there were two or three for each, arbitrarily labelled A,

B, C. but this does not suggest any difference in academic achievement. Those underlined were the rooms I remember; other than 6C, the suffixes are irrelevant. I cannot recollect where my bum graced Grades 1 or 2.

Op This was the "Opportunity" classroom for those deemed requiring specialised tuition, generally

about eight to ten pupils, hence a smaller room than others

HM Head Master's office - during my six years, always Allan Hird

Legend :

A These were the gate and main entrance for staff and the public- woe betide any pupil caught

using them!

B World War One Honour Board

C World War Two Honour Board

D This entrance was only used for assemblies, from recollection, about 10.30 Wednesday mornings.

There was drummer stationed outside the Opportunity classroom who did his thing as we all

marched back to one of the main entrances. The drums disappeared through the entrance into the storeroom.

E The dividing line between the girls and boys playing areas was a concrete gutter that ran slightly

downhill into a drain just outside the toilet block. It wasn't a capital offence to cross the line - it was just that the perception at the time that kids of that age didn't want to play togetheranyway. From memory, the asphalted section of the boy's area didn't get much use and the bordering gravel section was sacrosanct for use for marble mazes.

F The library didn't exist when I finished Grade 6 in 1956, but was there for a Dux-of-school

ceremony early the next year. The horizontal aspect is accurate, but I'm not 100 percent certain of how far it extended back.

G Thiswas the designated fifteen feet or so for "Wall Ball" and about as far as pupils were allowed

on the Hotham street side.

H was the "base camp" for British Bulldog. The boy's toilet had the cubicles against the school-

side wall; I'm not admitting to knowledge of the girls, but I'm pretty sure that externally, they were rectangular and probably cubicles front and back.

I Both sets of shelter sheds were completely open on the western side, hardly a clever design most

of the weather came from the north-west.

J Thiswas the Young Street entrance. Along Young Street to the laneway was an open-mesh wire

Cyclone fence about seven feet high; can't recall whether it was topped with barbed wire.

K The school bell, house in a wooden frame and standing about five feet above the ground. The

trees on either side of the school ground were English elm, almost certainly those shown to the right in the cover photograph. No idea when they were removed, but some earlier research into the history of Preston oval (which has similar trees), suggests an average age of about eighty

years, so regardless of changes to the school layout as a result of extensions, fires or otherwise, they may have been removed for safety reasons. There were bushes across the Hotham Street boundary, but no trees.

L While everything else is pretty much in my mind (or the remnants thereof), I'm hazy on where

the fence line between the houses in Young Street and the Tip was. My initial thought in considering the diagram is that the housing blocks may not have been of that depth and there

was a road into the tip an a stretch of vacant land in-between(i.e. where the tennis courts now are).

M Flagpole which we all salutedMonay mornings before we sang the National Anthem. Then "God

Save The Queen" - an Australian anthem was then unheard of.

N Complete guesswork! There must have been internal toilets for staff and probably a small

kitchenette with stove for making tea, workbench, storage and small refrigerator. I have zero recall of any toilets within the main building and assume that were only accessible from the staff room itself. Having staff facilities that could be accessed by pupils would have been a first-class recipe for mischief unless they were kept locked!

O designates a pigeon loft behind one of the Builders Terraces. The houses in those days were

pretty run-down and may have been lucky to survive, even although they are probably the oldest

still standing in Preston.

e the hubble-bubble toil and trouble area of The Curse Of The Free Milk.

Page 13: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 9

Compare this schematic to an M.M.B.W.

plan of 1928.

This suggests the Staff Room of the 1950s was at some stage extended

south.

The 1928 plan appears to include HM (then a classroom), 5A, 4C, 5B, the store

room and opportunity rooms in the

front section, 1A to 2B in the detached section, although I think 1A and B also

were later been extended south.

The entire northern wing 3A to 4B was a

later addition - this was obvious at the time - the Hotham Street facade was

designed to fit in with the existing style, but the rear section was obviously

newer (in fact, the northern side was the only place for "wall ball".

The southern side obviously had two extra classrooms built to connect the

two sections.

That they were not part of the older building is confirmed by my memory of

6C which had the blackboard of the

southern wall and no windows - obviously designed to be lit by electricity

which was first laid on in Preston in 1916.

The toilet block corresponds; the function of the two small outbuildings

behind the main structure is unknown, one possibly one a storage shed, and

what appears to be a pipe line extending to the rear of the terraces suggests the

other may have been an early staff toilet.

What is startling is that was the school after the extensions of 1920, but an Education Department publication

immediately post-war classifies South

Preston as a school with over 400 pupils; class sizes must have been in

the 60s or 70s!

A report into conditions at the nearby

Tyler Street school commissioned by the Council from the Health Office, Dr

Denton Fethers in July, 1919 suggested 62 children in Grade V were crammed

into a room 16 feet by 25 feet, with gangways between desks of 12 inches

instead of the recommended 36.

The combined Grades III and IV fared little better, 82 in a room of 30 by 20

feet, and Denton Fethers noted an average of 10 pupils from this class

alone were absent with colds, etc. every day.

Check out

http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/127780

for the full map which extends from the Bell and Hotham street corner south-

east to just north of Raglan Street

between Hotham and Newcastle Streets.

Page 14: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 10

Memories : Of Slate,Pencil and Ink

This was, of course, some 40 or more years before computers took over much of the learning process.

My recollections are that in Grades 1 and 2, slate boards and erasable slate pencils were provided by the school for arithmetic and other exercises where the results were of a transitory nature, but handwriting and basic English spelling - "Run, Betty, run" or "the cat sat on the mat"- was done in parent-provided exercise books with a soft lead pencil.

Grade 3 was all pencil and paper, but there is a chance that this represented the general retirement of the antiquated slate across the board rather than just a natural progression through South Preston.

Grade 4 by comparison saw the introduction of every mother's worst nightmare - ink!

That is, ink, to be spread at random across hands, faces, shoes and clothing.

The dual desks from this grade on had metal inkwells inserted in the front. The old wooden pen and steel nib must have been in use for decades, but I seem to remember that during my fourth year, a rather fat plastic pen came into use, not quite like the more expensive fountain pen, but with some sort of device, probably a lever, that cause a quantity of ink to be sucked up into a reservoir within the shaft, thus eliminating the need for constant re-dipping into the inkwell. 9

But even this required ink and thus the "volunteering" of services to be an ink monitor to make sure that all the desk inkwells were filled prior to class. Similarly, there were also chalk monitors to clean blackboards before the teacher arrived.

The two were easy to tell apart - ink monitors had blue hands that would stay that way for weeks, while chalk monitors had white hair, white faces and dusty white clothing, most of which could be

removed with a good scrub and a stiff clothes brush overnight.

For drawing and other artwork, the crème e la crème was a full set of English "Lakeland" pencils, the ultimate of which, drooled over by many small children with their noses pressed up against W. E. Green's newsagency Bell Street window, being a wooden box of three rows of carefully graded colours, 24 to a row, neatly priced at 72 shillings which represented probably a third of the average weekly wage around Preston at the time.1011

There were occasional appearances of Lakelands at South Preston which inspired rank jealousy - they also came in boxes of 12 or 24 and just sometimes a doting grandmother or auntie would come to the party on John or Betty's birthday.

For most though, it was Embassy coloured pencils from Coles, but the ultimate drawing weapon was the Black Magic - anoctagonal pencil with a thick black-as-midnight lead ideal for shading or tracing maps or other outlines - also around a shilling each, but with the massive advantage of being available from Green's individually. 12

The rather more messy alternatives were Indian ink for black or VANA13coloured inks in blue, green or red with drawing sets available with various nib shapes and sizes. Blotting paper, as it was in the pen-and-ink classes, was a mandatory accessory.

The jury remains out on ballpoint pens - again they had been available for several years, but their price tended to limit them to white-collar workers until the French Bic company revolutionised the market with a new type of ink and introduced a simplified version, I think in the mid-50s

Initially only available at either Coles or maybe Woolworths in High Street (one of the pair had a monopoly until competitors caught up), they were 1/6d and came in any barrel colour you wantedprovided it was yellow, and in any ink colour you fancied (provided it was blue).

9I have a vague recollection that they were promoted as only requiring re-filling something like every 100 words.

10 Not sure whether they are still produced today, but around 2000 on a whim I bought a full set, then downgraded to a tin and costing from memory around $40. Whether it was the ravages of time or a different manufacturing process I don't know, but they didn't seem anything like the original quality. Green's was on the south-eastern corner of Bell and High, opposite the State Savings Bank. Pens, etc. were in the Bell Street window, from memory High Street was books and magazines.

11 Subsequent to the original compilatition, I note that the basic wage in 1952 was £10/9/- . Lakelands at £3/12

12 The octagonal barrel had another advantage - with eight sides, they were perfect in pairs for desktop cricket (see pagexxvii).

13 VANA : Victorian Authorised Newsagent's Association. A co-operative that supplied many of the stationery needs of school pupils through their retail network. Still going strong and I think membership may be mandatory for licensed news agents, although they do not appear to produce their own stationery brand

Page 15: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 11

Memories : Corporal Punishment

I'm not sure what the Education Department's policy was at the time, but I can't recall any corporal punishment being inflicted by teachers, although I the headmaster had the right in extreme cases. 14

Most punishment in classes was either of the type that tended to embarrass pupils in front of their peers, typically to be made to stand and face a corner for ten minutes, 100 lines of "I must not ... (make up your own mortal sin here) ... in class again", or possibly being kept-in after school; this was probably less used on the basis that a teacher also had to stay behind.

The other "crime" which I cannot remember bringing any actual punishment except perhaps a negative comment on the annual report card was copping regular entries in the "Late Book". There was a school bell behind the northern wing which was rung at five minutes to nine as a warning to get a rattle on and again at nine to indicate "too late".

It wasn't original, but one of the favourite ditties of the day was from Walt Disney's Fantasia :

"Hi ho, Hi ho! "It's off to school we go, "We hear the bell and run like hell,

"Hi ho, Hi ho! "It's off to school we go"

The memory is a bit hazy here, but I think virtually everybody walked to school, although there were probably a few from the eastern sections that caught the Bell Street bus. There was a marked crossing over Hotham Street, no "lolly-pop" men or ladies as in later years, just warning flags on posts either side which were probably put out and taken in by a teacher.

Certainly there was no concept of Mum or Dad driving or even escorting children to school as there is today, and where the memory is lacking is that I can't recall anywhere for the storage of bicycles for those lucky enough to have one.Some families, of course, still did not have cars anyway.15

Constant delinquency was a problem with a handful of pupils and I guess somewhere along the way parents would have involved in a mediation process, but the reality was that a few just didn't care as long as the kids weren't under their feet all day - remembering, of course, that this was an era when very, very few mothers worked full-time.

Again, I don't think corporal punishment was involved, but often those involved would slip behind in their schoolwork and be forced to repeat a year - hardly the ideal solution to a child not wanting to go to school in the first place!

Memories : Reading and the School Library

Up until my final year of 1957, there wasn't a library as such - I presume there was a small area set aside in one of the rooms for reference works such as atlases, dictionaries and perhaps even an encyclopaedia, but certainly not a reading room as such given the demands on classroom

space.

There may have been others on a year-by-year basis, but the only set text books I can remember were a set of "Victorian Readers" and perhaps an atlas - I can only Readers for each of the six grades, but a facsimile edition issued in the late 1980s had eight books with two additional pre-school volumes featuring the antics of John and Betty, Scotty the dog and Fluff the cat.

14 This contrasts strongly with the junior Preston Technical School where strappings for misbehaviour were regular and two or three teachers sadistically prided themselves on devising ways on increasing pain levels - two common ways to soak the end in vinegar to make it especially hard or to slice the end into strips to give a "cat 'o nine tails" effect.

15Again compare to Preston Tech. where there was caged-in section along the southern perimeter which housed bikes numbering in the hundreds - monitored by prefects and locked five minutes after classes commenced, not for security reasons as much as ensuring kids didn't disappear to places and mischief unknown at lunch time. It was an offence to leave the school grounds (in contrast to 824 where shops in Plenty Road were regular lunchtime haunts - and to cross over the imaginary line across Zwar Park which marked the boundaries of the girl's Tech. in Cramer Street. Prefects used to be assigned to patrol High Street to look out for anyone in school uniform.

Page 16: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 12

(I had this set, but for the life of me cannot recall what happened to it - maybe Scotty ate it).

The early series used constant repetition of certain phrases : one that certainly comes to mind was "Run, Betty, Run" almost invariably followed by "Run, Scotty, Run".

The library situation changed in 1956, my last year, when a three or four-room library and amenities block of steel and glass and almost certainly prefabricated was built along the line of the southern boundary - I can't recall any construction works, so I suspect it must have been erected over the summer break and it probably involved the removal of three or four of the old elm trees that lined the sides of the main building.

My only recollection of it is from the dux-of-school presentation

early the following year and I'm pretty sure that this was the first time the building was usedand that there was an official opening ceremony on the same evening. It was certainly the only time I was in it.

Also floating back into focus is a School Projects book - more of a soft-covered magazine really, published perhaps by the Education Department or maybe privately containing heaps of companies and government departments to which you could write and with the inclusion of a few stamps receive materials suitable for the annual school project which was a mandatory part of later years.

The books were free – delivered to schools and I remember also spare copies available at the School Shop – most of the material was available by completin a coupon in the magazine itself, but our Six Grade teacher Mr. Northey encouraged us to write to the companies or Government departments as part of an exercise in learning how to construct proper business letters.

Again Green's newsagency came into play, supplying what I would now guess to be A2 size cardboard sheets suitable for pasting cut-outs or creating one's own drawings for projects - the latter tended to attract more marks given they involved more personal effort.

I think there was a range of subjects suggested in the magazine - Australian Aborigines and our perception of their life style at the time a popular choice.

(Not sure whether it was South Preston or at little later, but I remember trying something different - a side-view of the Snowy Mountains hydro-electricity project with a cut-away of the mountain in plasticine or modelling clay with the tunnel system created using tubular spaghetti - all in a shoe-box

lid, but it fell to pieces before it got to school and looked like an avalanche had wiped the whole Snowy

scheme off the face of the earth)!

Two other sources of reading emanated from Green's and probably other newsagent around Preston.

Given that around the time I attended SPSS the Second World War had ended nine o ten years beforehand and – good or bad – was still in the minds of most of our parents, A small publication called War Novls were populars amongst the boys of the time – in reality, they were cheap trash featuring the "good guys" smashing the baby-murdering Japs or Germans, but containing absolutely nothing that would stand any logical scrutiny (but fascinating reading for the simple minds of ab eight or ten year-old.

Another that came from Green's was a rather more serious attempt at improved literacy was a popular series called Classics Illustrated which as the name suggested was a cartoon-style presentation of many old novels and works that were in some cases probably a little incomprensible to a primary school pupil.

Shakespeare has always been a litte beyond my ken but many of the versions of simpler novels led to reading of the "real" versions in later years.

John and Betty were the central characters in the Victorian Reader for the early grades (with their friends

Scottie the dog and Fluff the cat). Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of schoolchildren learnt to read from this series which was used from the 1930s

through to the 1970s.

"John and Betty" were loosely based on earlier overseas characters "Janet and John (England)" and

"Dick and Jane"(U.S.A). See more at: http://prov.vic.gov.au/blog-only/fun-with-dick-and-

jane-readers#sthash.urtZ84eT.dpuf

Page 17: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 13

Memories : Where To Next?

So we've just finished our six pleasurable years at South Preston, but where do we go next?

With one or two exceptions, the minimum school leaving age was 14, although the Victorian Government two or three times had expressed a desire to lift the age to 15 or even 16, but werethwarted in so doing by a shortage of suitable teachers and classroom accommodation.

For most in my age group who started perhaps at an average six years, that meant a minimum of another two years schooling.

The options for boys were Preston Technical School or Northcote High, for girls Preston Girls High in Cooma Street or the recently-opened Preston Girl's Technical School in Cramer Street.

Students completing year six had to nominate their preferences accordingly, but depending on their academic results, there was no guarantee of being admitted to either school and a small number went instead to Helen Street in Northcote, known as an Advanced Primary School which continued general education to Grades 7 and 8, after which they could move to a secondary school (most having reached 14 years went into the work force instead).

Due to the typical overcrowding of the time, the first form for Preston Tech was held at a new school designed for primary education in Bell Street between Victoria Road and Albert Street (now the site of Harvey Norman).

From memory there were five classes, probably of about 25 students who took it in turns to spend one day per week on technical subjects at the campus proper in St. George's Road.

There was one exception to the rule of a minimum age of 14 and that was if the boy (predominantly) or girl had secured a registered apprenticeship - which had mandatory further general education as well as that in the relevant trade - with an employer. The first roll call I remember in Bell Street produced a predictable series of responses of "Here, Sir" until the name of "Lock" was read out and after a few uncomfortable moments of silence, somebody mumbled "Um, he's got a job, sir". 16

The standard ritual on the first day of attendance at the St. George's Road school was that one had one's head shoved down a toilet bowl by other boys while they pulled the chain. Apart from a wetting of the head, there was also a fifty-fifty chance that the maroon school cap which was nominally part of the new school uniform would finish up on the roof of the single story trades block.

Memories : School Uniforms

Perhaps a liitle out of sequence, but seeing Preston Tech's school uniform got a mention, perhaps it is relevant to mention that there wasn't one at South Preston as any of the class photos that bob up

from time to time on social media sites will attest.

The Tech. colours were maroon with blue and gold stripes on the V-neck and cuffs of the jumper and blazer, the latter with a PTS monogram on the breast pocket. The colours were almost certainly

16 The school was at one time later was known as Gowerville Tech before it resorted to acting as a primary school - this may have been while it functioned as an adjunct to Preston Tech as there were certainly no workshops for technical work. I think it acted in this role for a four or five years before a number of temporary classrooms were erected at the rear of the technical section of the St. George's Road campus. Before they wrecked it with a school, it was mostly swamp land and a great place for collecting tadpoles! "Lock" did not attend South Preston.

Page 18: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 14

derived from the Fitzroy Football Club guernsey - the Preston Football Club wore a maroon top with navy blue "knicks" during its first stint in the Victorian Football Association from 1903 to 1911 before adopting red-and-white when it returned to junior ranks. 17 I think Northcote High's were green with gold trimming, matching the official City of Northcote colours and that of the football club.

The question of uniforms appears to have been left to individual schools - it was matter of some debate at the time across Victoria on the merits of standard uniforms for State schools - one argument being that they eliminated "class" differences, the other obviously the cost to parents.

Just before the 1952 school year started, The Argus ran an article highlighting the costs where uniforms were mandatory - remembering a basic wage of £10/9/-, the average for girls, (blazer, tunic, frock,hat,three blouses, four pairs of socks, pullover, tie and shoes) was £16/5/- for state schools and a whopping £27/8/- for non-state; boys (blazer, shorts, three shirts, four pairs of socks, pullover, cap,

tie and shoes) was considerably less at £7/11/- and £24/8/- respectively.

South Preston obviously a "come-as-you-are"policy, but I think that on the couple of days each year when Education Department inspectors visited the school, some pressure might have been applied by staff for "Sunday Best".

Given the school had a football team; I guess there must have been associated colours, but no recollection thereof. Mum's hand-knitted League footy jumpers were howeber part-and-parcel of the mix at the usual school assembly!

Memories : 1964 - the Centenary

Although I can't recall the month and thus whether it corresponded accurately to the precise opening in August, 1864, South Preston No. 824 had a centenary celebration in 1964. 18

I would have been 16 and probably in the second year of my Diploma at Preston Technical College and remember looking forward immensely to the celebration as a reunion of former classmates who had lost contact with each other.

As it turned out, it was a major disappointment - I seem to remember that the turnout overall was not particularly large, and only two classmates fronted up.

One of these was Shirley Spry, who was no surprise as she lived within a few yards of the school on the corner of Young and Collier streets and who I often saw in the streets anyway given we lived around 100 yards apart. The other was a real surprise in Les Wawn.

Les was two or three years older than me because he had been kept back to repeat a couple of years, primarily because of a propensity to "wag" school on a regular basis and to create a certain amount of mischief on the days he did attend. We spent probably an hour together before he suggested we adjourn to the more welcoming climes of the public bar at the Gowerville Hotel where he bought me my first (but not last) two beers.

I realise now the other disappointing aspect of the day is that the event would have been covered at some length by the-then Preston Post, quite possibly with additional historical background, but whether a copy survives is unlikely in the extreme.

The original Northcote and Preston Leader newspapers started in 1888 and although they were identical except for the masthead, both were supplied to the State Library of Victoria up until late 1939 and were subsequently microfilmed (the 1914-18 editions are part of the Trove collection, but again are identical).

From the start of 1940 the-then proprietors decided that with the massive population growth in the two cities, separate editions would be printed concentrating on local issues - initially the Northcote Leader-Budget and the Preston Post.

17 Although the football club wore red and white of various designs for over a hundred years, the official colours of the Shire and later City of Preston were actually blue and yellow. This was worn by the club before they entered the V.F.A., but the colours clashed with Williamstowm forcing a change to the maroon and blue.

18 It was mooted at the time as the second-oldest continually functioning State School in Victoria, the oldest in Kangaroo Ground which closed a few years later. "Continually may be the operative wor here - while research the separate history of the school, I note just over an acre of land at the corner of Cape and Darebin streets in Heidelberg set aside for a school in 1850, the site of today's Heidelberg State School, but no knowledge of whether it has "continually" functione since that time.

Page 19: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 15

The Leader-Budget continued to be supplied to the SLV and is available on microfiche, but the Preston Post was either not distributed, or if it was, just stacked away in a dusty archive somewhere and hence much of the "small" history of the Preston area between 1940 up until the early 1970s appears to have irretrievably lost.

Memories : Sports (official)

With a drop-off in interest in Association football in the early 1950s, Preston Park's biggest crowds usually came on a Wednesday in late October or early November .. ahhh ... memories!

These were the days set aside for the Preston and Northcote Annual State School "sports" - mostly standard running, skipping and jumping athletics events for various age groups, but with a few interesting team sports thrown in. The age groups extended up to under-15 as some state schools at that time extended to year eight, although the minimum leaving age was 14.

One report surviving from the Northcote Leader in 1951 set the attendance at a total at around 7,000, of which "more than 5,000 came from ten surrounding schools who lent a gala atmosphere to the ideal

sports ground as they clapped, screamed or yelled interjectory remarks at opposing athletes".

This was a year fairly typical of the times.

Some 60 events were conducted; the most successful Preston State School in Tyler Street, their pupils winning eleven events (this was pretty much standard - it was the largest in terms of students and were still dominant five or six years later when the author competed).

The team events included relays (run face-to-face, not in the more complicated circular fashion), the boy's football exchange, which was similar to a relay, but instead of passing a baton, a football had to be hand-balled from a distance of three or four metres, a "cross chase" for girls (from memory, two groups of five facing each other and passing a basketball in criss-cross fashion from one end to the other and back), tunnel ball for boys, and skip ball for girls - a similar principal to tunnel ball, except that rather than adopting the rather unladylike practice of tunnelling the ball between their legs, the girls had to turn and throw the ball to the next in line.

There were also a couple of marching events, usually to give kids without a lot of athletic ability a chance to participate in the sports (marching was a standard weekly drill at all schools in the early 1950s, perhaps a carry-over from the cadet schemes of the Second World War - I seem to remember the drums being kept in a storeroom and taken into the quadrangle via doors that I don't think were ever used at any other time.

For the record, the competing schools in 1951 were : Bell, Helen Street, Miller Street, Pender's Grove, Reservoir, South Preston, Tyler Street, Wales Street, East Preston and West Preston - it was suggested in the article that every school participated in all 60 events on the day.

South Preston by this time was one of the smaller schools competing : the double-storey schools, Preston Primary (always known locally just as Tyler street), Bell and West Preston had by then far outstripped 824 by weight of numbers - Tyler Street invariably winning both the sports and the inter-school football competition.

The Annuals Sports Day appears to have inaugurated around 1917 with both Northcote and Preston

schools noted as competing at Northcote Park, but this may have been a one-off carnival as that particular event it was held to raise money for the war-time Patriotic Fund. Sports for the Preston schools appear to have commenced in 1921, the competing schools along with South Preston just Tyler Street and West Preston.

They may have remained in some form, but the earlier sports appear to have had a few more individual events - throwing the cricket ball, a long-kick competition, etc.Although the date is not certain, the concept appears to have been expanded after the Second World War to combine both Preston and Northcote schools.

There were also swimming sports, again Preston and Northcote.

Page 20: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 16

Given the more restricted accommodation at swimming pool, I think these were held at both Northcote Baths (then in Frederick Street) 19and at the Preston Baths in St. George's Road, the placegetters at each site then meeting in a final - the winners later representing the school districtin Victorian championships.

There was also amakeshift football competition played only between the six or seven Preston schools. South Preston playedusing portable goalposts on Bell Park (now the G. H. Mott Reserve, corner of Bell and Patterson streets) which had been set aside for many years as exclusively for women's sports.

Strangely, I cannot remember a cricket competition - there was also certainly a pitch at Bell Park, used by the Preston Ladies

Cricket Club as early as 1922 when it was noted it was formed

largely on the basis of equipment donated by the Preston Cricket Club and South Preston State School.

There were trials held at South Preston in preparation for the school athletic sports, but no other intra-school competitions such as the "house" matches in later years at Preston Tech or Northcote High.

The "houses" at Preston Tech. were Boronia, Kurrajong, Waratah and Wattle. I have no recollection as to how kids were assigned - I was in Wattle and there are references as early as

1938, just a year or so after the Tech. opened, to the same four names.

Preston so dominated the technical school competitions during the 1950s and 60s that it fielded two teams, "A" and "Z", and unlike the houses, allocation was based on a simple, but ultimately flawed system.

"A" comprised those with surnames A to M, i.e. the first half of the alphabet; "Z" the rest. The flaw was that in those days of almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon names, the true median point alphabetically was the letter K - there are few names commencing with O, Q or Y, virtually none with X or Z.

As a result, "A" finished up with about 60% of the students and almost invariably played off of in most of the finals, as often as not against the outnumbered "Z"who probably had no idea as to why they were always playing second-fiddle.

Maybe somewhere out there is someone who attended Northcote High that can supply some feedback on the sporting life in St. George's Road. Both venues were probably

somewhat blessed by having a ready-made sports ground next door.

Memories : Sports (local)

Many of the sports we know today originate from the English public school system of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, particularly those of Rugby and to a lesser extent, various forms of football that developed into the "British Association" game, now known world-wide as soccer.

There may have been an occasional game of something akin to soccer played with a "new Chum's" head (just joking), and none of the local South Preston sports ever made it to the best of our knowledge into Hoyle's Book of Games, 20but they were an integral part of the recreational life at 824.

19 The site was bought by Northcote Council in 1917, then in Bank Street, renamed as Frederick Street before the baths actually opened on 15 December, 1923. The Baths served the Northcote community until 1969 when the facility closed and a new pool was opened in McDonnell Park in Victoria Road.

20"Hoyle's Book of Games" was first published by Englishman Edmond Hoyle in 1672. A tutor, writer and lawyer by trade, Hoyle was best known as an expert on the rules and strategies behind card games and board games including chess and backgammon, hence the common phrase "According to Hoyle". It is still published today with rules of many of the popular computer games included, along with a number

I had three or four at the time, but lost

long ago. The Preston Football Club always

made children's admission tickets to home

games available to schools free of charge.

Given they were only home matches, they

were half the size of the normal ticket

above and made of medium weight

cardboard.

Most welcome in our household as from around 1922 when my grandfather moved

to West Preston from Port Melbourne, he

always followed the locals rather than a

League team (Fitzroy and Collingwood

almost the only options).

Both Dad and I went along the same path -

he took me to maybe four Collingwood

matches over the years, usually when he

had to work in Fitzroy on the Saturday

morning, but otherwise it was always Cramer Street and the Bullants or perhaps

an away game, then only on Saturdays.

Saturdays were interesting - I had to walk

down David Street past the Seventh Day

Adventist Church still functioning today and

got totally confused when members of the

congregation hauled me to one side with a

lecture on the immorality of attending

football on the Sabbath.

My parents later explained that the Church

worshipped on the Saturday rather than

Sunday, but by that time I'd discovered the

simple expediency of walking own the

opposite side of the street with my red-

and-white beanie tucked away in my back

pocket

Page 21: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Memories of the Early 1950s 17

Within the school-ground itself - and this is something a sexist view - the games other than football or cricket were the usual hide-and-seek (the Tip was out-of-bounds); "chasey", aka "tag"; "hoppo-bumpo", where partners would piggy-back and try to knock the "jockey" off their rivals, sometimes with eight or ten partners going at each other; a form of British Bulldog where one team would try and defend a base against another team, plus one which I'm sure was purely a local invention, "wall ball" or perhaps ass others have remember it, "ledges".

The northern wall of the school, the newest section, had a row of bevelled bricks about two feet above ground level. Two teams of about five or six played, the objective for the "bowling" team to toss a tennis ball at the angled edge so it would fly in the air. If one of their team caught it, they scored a point, but if one of the "fielding" team took the catch, then they earned the right to bowl.

The game was usually played against the wall of 3C - games were not allowed closer to Hotham Street, so there was just enough room to have two matches going at once, some of which lasted for several lunchtimes until one team reached an agreed number of points.

I think something similar was played using the sides of the concrete drain that ran down the centre of

the playing area - smaller teams, the objective was to hit the side of the rain so the ball bounced back on your side and away from your opponents.

Various versions of marbles were played - two I remember was firstly where one marble was placed in a circle, the objective of one team to fire from outside the circumference to try and hit the centre "aggot" out of the ring, the other to keep nudging it back towards the centre so it stayed in play.

A second game was effectively a version of lawn bowls where a large marble (aka a "tombola") was placed ten or twelve feet away and whoever landed his marble "nearest to the pin" was the winner. Extreme versions of this were played where "winner takes all", meaning one with either luck. talent or an unknown method of cheating could walk away with a treasure-trove of others kids precious marbles - provided he didn't meet the losers on the way home!

The asphalt section of the boys playground was about a foot above the gravel section and the slight incline was ideal for a third form : a series of winding grooves about half-an-inch deep was scratched into the dirt, the idea to shoot your "alley" as far as possible along the track, but if it didn't stay within the groove, your shot didn't count. Although it was somewhat considered to be "dirty pool", it was legitimate to knock an opponent's marble off the track, meaning he would have to start all over again. Along the length of the incline, there were probably half-a-dozen tracks of various complexity, the only problem being that heavy rain could easily wash away all of the dedicated earlier construction work.

We mentioned earlier that the eight-sided Black Magic pencils were perfect for desktop cricket, a staple on rainy days.

This was hardly original - it was in fact a simplified variation of a popular John Sands and Co. board game, Test Match.

A section of paint on each side of two pencils was scraped away - one was the batting pencil, the eight blank spaces marked something like 0,0,1,2,3,4,6 and? designating the number of runs, or in the latter case, an appeal for

a dismissal.

Landing on the ? meant rolling the bowling pencil; it was labelled akin to NO (2 by Not Out), C (2, caught), B(owled), S(tumped), RO (run out) and LBW. I doubt many of the "players" went on to wear the baggy green cap of the Australian Eleven, but again lots of fun and usually extended over the full four innings of the Test matches of the day.

Scorecards were kept in the back of exercise books, each "player" taking it in turn to either bat and bowl each, and if it contributed nothing else to the academic world of the time, it probably helped develop skills in 'Rithmetic and perhaps later to a youngster's ability keep a scorebook at a live match (believe me, a much more complex task than it may appear and requiring a considerable level of concentration).

Perhaps not a sport as such, but much fun was had from the peppercorn trees along the back of the playgroun and basketball/netball courts.

of games produced by the current-day company - sadly, however, the producers have yet to update their editions to include South Preston State School's immortal wall-ball.

Page 22: 824 South Preston State School - OzSportsHistory Preston SS - Memories.pdf · 824 South Preston State School ... but there was at least one other kid, ... South Preston did not have

www.ozsportshistory.com South Preston State School : Memories of the

Early 1950s

South Preston State School | Wrap-Up 18

The peppercorns themselves made perfect ammunition for the pea-shooters of the time, but the other advantage was that they attracted moths and butterflies who laid their eggs there, and Mother Nature being what she is, the eggs ultimately turned into caterpillars (or more correcect "caddypills").

Apart from the side benefit of terrifying some of the girls when you absent-mindely dropped one in their lap and if brave enough down the back of the dress, they made a Nature study class all of their own with small branches of the peppercorn and the caddypillars stored away in either a shoe box or a paper-sealed glass jar with air holes punched into the top,

I think a few made have made it to the cocoon stage, but I can't remember anything ever revvin' for take-off, moth, butterfly or wedge-taile eagle.

(A bit like the tapoles we collected from the swampy area alongside Haxby Park at the bottom of Bell Street - the smelly, brown water meant that they were banished to the back shed, and while a few made it to the stage of forming embryonic legs, there was never a Kermit (or better still Freddo) to be

seen).

Also not exactly a sport, but the other annual event, and compulsory for fifth and sixth graders was a ball at Collingwood Town Hall, perhaps best remembered by yours truly as having drawn at random the same partner, Eileen Coates in both years. Why Collingwood? Not sure, I can only assume the Preston City Hall in Gower Street wasn't big enough.

"Rounders", similar to softball but I think played with something akin to a large tennis ball and an elongated flat-surfaced bat was the main girl's sporting activity as I remember, the home base between the fence and the rear of 1B with the diamond extending diagonally to the north-east.

The other logical recreation would have been netball/basketball - a clouded memory thinks there may have been posts at either end between the girl's shelter shed and the Tip fence, but other than that, nothing. There would undoubtedly have been equivalents of the passive pastimes such as marbles and desktop cricket, but like the 1950s and today, girl's and boy's activities were worlds apart.

Most of these recollections probably seem somewhat passé in today's electronic and Internet age, but they were fun and realistically, probably a great deal more beneficial to the physical development of the kids of the time than sitting behind a games console or an X-Box!

Except perhaps for The Curse of the Free Milk!

Wrap-Up

Call it the ramblings of a fast-deteriorating mind, but I think somewhere and sometime it should be manatory for those of us that have reached "a certain age" - and if you can vaguely remember

Saturday afternoon matinees and Batman and Robin or Superman serials at the Melody, St. James or Regent theatres, then you automatically qualify as of "a certain age" - to write down their memories of their early days.

No-one else is going to do it for you!

The-then City of Preston sponsored a project back around 1990 (if of "a certain age", then this seems

like just a couple of years ago - it's actually 25) which involved a number of oral interviews with residents of many years standing around the Preston district.

I'm not certain as to whether hard-copies are still available via Darebin Libraries, but certainly the Darebin Heritage site has an online PDF which is almost mandatory reading for anyone with an interest in our local history, not necessarily of the "official" variety listing Councillors, Mayors etc., but more of a day-to-day background as to what living in Preston from the 1920s and 30s through to the time of publication was really like.

Maybe it is time for a repeat - the 1990 book contained a small section on West Preston State School and the movement down Murray Road of army vehicles, but rather strangely, nothing more on the local schools.

Hence these pages address one of the shortcomings - that of what life at South Preston State School was like in the early 1950s according to how a snotty-nose in short pants remembers it ... or thinks he remembers it!