At Northcote High School I managed to become dux in humanities and went on to University High School to do Leaving Honours. At the time this was the best school in Victoria and, even today, it takes only top students and top teachers. I pretended to study deeply English, British History, European History, Ancient History and Latin. I also played in the school orchestra under the elegant baton of Stuart Wilkie, who was, in my estimation, one of the progenitors of Melbourne's musical life. His influence on instrumental music in Victoria gave the State a head start over the rest of Australia. He founded music in Victorian high schools.
Sport and Teaching
From the sublime to the Australian mania, sport. I was the fast bowler in the school's first eleven, bowled at and bowled out by Bluey Truscott, Melbourne High School's hero [and later an R.A.A.F. fighter ace]. I played in the first-grade football team and nearly won the interschool half-mile footrace. I only dabbled in schoolwork. This was the time of the Great Depression and I don't know how my father kept me at school. It was I who insisted. I was there, at University High School, when the German cruiser, Koln, visited Melbourne. We entertained the sailors at the school. To us they were heroes, examples of humanity, and they told us about their wonderful leader, who gave them a clean, wonderful fatherland full of athletes, health, hiking in forests, parks, gardens, buildings and superhuman beings. We all became Nazis overnight.
At that time the senior girls wore long skirts down to their ankles. I found that curiously sexy. This fashion lasted no longer than our newfound political philosophy. In the holidays I looked for work, standing in long queues outside rubber factories and other places. Sometimes these queues were a hundred yards long. Every time I got to the place where the employment officer sat I heard the sad words, "Job's filled". So I went back to school at U.H.S. I thought I would be a prefect and have another year of Sport, History and Literature. This luxury lasted only a few days.
The Salvation Army and a newspaper advertisement suddenly sealed my life and fate. Mentone Grammar School wanted a junior master. My father couldn't get to the phone quickly enough. The employer made an appointment and I subsequently met a gentleman named C.C. Thorold, M.A. (Oxon.). There is no other way to describe him. Always a curious man, this dignified scholar organised a walk through the empty streets of Melbourne the next Saturday afternoon. After about an hour chatting in the deserted echoing chasms of Melbourne city, I found that I'd been appointed senior housemaster and junior teacher at Mentone Grammar School. Mentone is a Melbourne bayside suburb, more famous then for racing stables than anything else.
That I got the job had little to do with my qualifications or my good looks - it was simply because my father was a Salvationist. Now I had another debt to the Army. Thorold told me that he once had an excellent gardener at the Hutchins School in Tasmania, who happened to play the euphonium in the Salvation Army. This Salvationist was honest and worked well. It was obvious that from me the headmaster expected morality, not ability. Mr Thorold had been Headmaster of Barker College in N.S.W. and of the Hutchins School. Now he was the sole owner of Mentone Grammar School. There were forty-five boys in the senior school and twelve in the junior. The senior school was a wooden hall with an annex. Within these humble walls, Mr Thorold brought academic distinction and the highest forms of English gentlemen's behaviour to the sons of racing trainers and jockeys.
My first day's teaching at Mentone Grammar was hilarious. In fact, the whole two years of my teaching there can have been of little value to any of my poor students. I hadn't the slightest idea how to teach three-year-old cherubs, six-year-old pants-wetters, nor a slow-learning ten-year-old, who sat there smiling all day at anything and everything. The twelve-year-old son of a racehorse trainer was much too sharp for me so, from the very first day, I left the important business of education to a part-time buxom Irish girl named Lois Murphy and a red-headed sportsman named Jim. Academic excellence was of little importance at Mentone Grammar in those days, except to the charming Headmaster, who did his best to imbue the forty-five scholars with wonderful grace, charm and good manners. The Junior School was one side of a flywire shed. The other side was the boarding house. There was a small corner behind a screen where I slept. Everyone had a cold shower every morning and there was no other kind available.
Mrs Thorold, a straight homely lady with manners to match those of her husband, occupied with utmost graciousness the position of cook and housekeeper. There was a dear old teacher named Mr Tanswell, who had somehow lost his way and strayed into the area - I think he was the senior housemaster. I am sure he was Dickensian. Major Holt, a ramrod, taught drill and I helped famous ex-Collingwood football star, Bruce Andrew, to train the football team. The boarders consisted of Smith Minor, Thompson Major and a lost Russian child named Rovkin. Smith could not be managed at all; Thompson could only be controlled by knocking him senseless and nobody worried about Rovkin - we pretended he wasn't there. The true story, of course, is that the three boys were absolutely delightful characters.
Breakfast was always kedgeree; lunch was better than a ninepenny lunch one could get in a cafe and dinner (or high tea as it was known) was white bread and jam. The Thorolds must have found it very difficult to make ends meet but they still insisted on bread being broken and butter put on only small pieces. This was expensive: Smith Minor, one evening alone, consumed twenty-six slices. We said Latin grace and all had impeccable manners.
It was difficult to teach five classes at once even with a complement of only twelve boys. It was made more difficult because some of the infants were brilliant and only with us for a few months until they could be fitted in to "bigger and better" schools. Some of the seniors, the more delightful ones, were slow learners. The curriculum was topsy-turvey. I never knew whether I was a child-minder, a wet-nurse or a sporting hero. At all important public events, like speech night or garden parties, I had to play trumpet solos. Miss Dorothy Ross, principal of the Associated Teachers' Training Institute at which I was obliged to study, accused me of always using the same tainted fish in nature-study demonstration lessons. I assured her that the fish always appeared in the kedgeree next morning for breakfast. Mentone Grammar School has now become an enormous establishment, having new buildings and hundreds of students. In all my teaching career I have never been so happy as I was in Mentone. There were the sea, the playing fields and the charming company of C.C. Thorold, M.A. (Oxon.).
I have been asked to throw some light on the strange story of this distinguished scholar and headmaster who purchased a little private school among the racing fraternity of Mentone. I don't know, he didn't tell me. When he died, his son took over. I think the son sold it to the Church of England. Once that happened its future was assured. I have seen many headmasters in many schools, many deans and many professors. The best of them all was C. C. Thorold, a gentleman of the highest breeding and scholarship. He was my friend. But for him I probably would have spent the depression in unemployment queues and the rest of my story would never have eventuated. Thorold was the therapy, someone I admired - no, more than that, loved. He encouraged me and in this physically healthy atmosphere, I reached my top as an athlete and won several championships. From the first day to the last of my two years at Mentone, I was always secure in my position and even revered because of my sporting prowess. Not many in Australia could beat me in an 880-yard race or the pole vault.
During this period the first of a series of first-class coaches migrated to Australia. He was Charlie Berger, coach of the Swiss Olympic team. Charlie became coach of the Melbourne Harriers. His method of teaching was effective and now universal. He taught a method of running, not a method of conditioning. Those were the days when running was for health and enjoyment as well as for winning, not like today where it is big business; where training until the joints and muscles collapse is the sine qua non of success. The year Charlie took over, we won both the A and F grade Victorian championships at Olympic Park.
All athletic events, particularly running, sprinting