The Whitefriars College that awaited us in February 1978 had changed little since its inception in 1961. Portable classrooms had been added in 1976, thus forming a quadrangle. Encased in washed-out brown brick, a Biology Lab had been constructed nearby. A new (and larger) oval had also been added between the School and Monastery. These were minor additions. The Library – such as it was – was located above the stairway that led to the canteen. Teachers parked their cars in an area that was shortly to be consumed by the new administration centre / library (and that was the only major addition in our time). As always, Whitefriars’ strongest asset was its location, sitting on the side of a ridge that overlooks a valley which leads into the heart of Park Orchards. Even the enormous power-lines that are strung from one horizon to another do not look out of place with so many majestic gums about. Whitefriars possessed about five acres of virgin bush at the time.
Whitefriars did not exist in a vacuum. It exemplified the late Seventies and early Eighties – and that meant daggyness in spades. If teachers or student wore glasses, their magnification was akin to the Hubble Space Telescope. Brown - the most godless of colours - dominated fashion and architecture equally. Moustaches and beards were commonplace. What with the profusion of hair, few ears can be seen in the school photos of that time. There were no food allergies. Little or no consideration was given to our impact on the planet. There were a few Italians in our midst and that was about it in the way of multi-culturalism. The syllabus too, exemplified a ‘meat and potatoes’ cosmology.
And there were teachers aplenty.
Father Noel Kierce O.Carm was our headmaster throughout our stay. To my mind, he struck a exemplary balance between being chummy and upholding the dignity of his position. I always enjoyed his company. There was a dignity to his actions and thoughts. Others think differently and attribute the shortcomings of the College – such as bullying - to the administration and we all know where the buck stops. Many a student was culled at the end of Year 11, presumably with the aim of boosting the pass-rate in HSC; it is hard not to attribute this ‘Night of the Long Knives’ to the Principal. In 1983, Noel taught religion to some of us and intelligently so - he certainly knew how to engage a class and he welcomed a range of opinions. Indeed, it's a pity that he did not teach us more often. For the most part, he kept his distance though the red Corolla that was parked outside the Administration was a reminder of his presence, much like a sanctuary lamp in a church. He presided over many a school assembly in the quadrangle (more on that later).
John Wilson, who was the deputy principal during our time, was a superlative teacher. Our first hour at Whitefriars was spent in the ‘Religion Centre;’ where he magisterially welcomed us to the College. He taught up ‘Languages’ in Year 7 and Latin in Year 9. In my experience, he always marked harder in the first part of the year, and if one responded accordingly, higher grades were possible. He was a gentleman. His nickname was ‘Chunkles’ – an avuncular reference, no doubt. He accompanied us to the Year 7 camp to Harrietville and his parsimony ensured that whatever pocket-money we had brought along remained unspent. On the camp’s last day, with time to kill, he allowed the ninety of us to dam the local alpine creek with nearby stones. Oh, what fun that was – and it was an isotope of fun that only a twelve year old boy can experience; one can only hope that its outline is still in situ as it was an engineering marvel - our Hoover Dam. Chunkles was best known for being the ‘top button and tie’ interceptor at the top of the hill, with blazers being added to the imperatives in all but the onset and end of summer. Few of us escaped his censure. He likewise led the charge against underage smoking: anyone so caught in the act had to contribute a hefty five dollars to the Anti-Cancer Council. Bite supplemented his bark, as Cam Fraser found out when he was busted for operating a TAB phone-account from the pay-phone. More serious transgressions fell to his domain. Here is a typical example:
I certainly remember many skirmishes and the likes on the Shoppingtown bus. We Eltham boys had to carpool to and from Shoppingtown. The most regular disruption was always started by the McClelland brothers and began with them standing up holding both rails and rocking side to side "left, right, left right" and before long with almost every student participating, the bus would be rocking with such gusto it felt like it could tip over. Although that never happened the bus could never proceed until the rocking stopped which was sometimes 15 minutes. The other daily occurrence was the mad scramble to get off the bus at our destination until the cry went out "Woody's coming" at which time Mark Woodward? (the big one not the redheaded guy) would rush forward and dive on top of the pile crushing all beneath his wake often causing real damage, at least one broken arm. The other bus incident I remember was known as the spitting incident when Brad Woodward launched a phlegm-laden missile out the window of our bus and through the window of a passing bus(an amazing shot personally witnessed) and it splattered the driver's neck. Both buses were immediately pulled over and a Spanish Inquisition was conducted to uncover the culprit. Alas nobody came forward and after a lengthy delay and verbal tongue lashing the journey continued. Chunckles later took up the pursuit to discover the phantom spitter, I think he eventually forced a confession.
John disappeared from view towards the end of our sojourn at Whitefriars to battle cancer. He lost. At his funeral, attendees were dressed to his specifications – and befittingly so. He was a good man.
Mal Parris – whatever his formal title actually was - had been at the school long before our arrival and left decades after our departure. He was not one to inspire warmth. He was no doubt an important administrator – and in this capacity he contributed to the organisational development of the College. Even so, any direct contact he had with the student mass was awkward and perfunctory. For instance:
“I can also remember Yr 11 religion classes with Mal Parris. He could only attend about one class in ten due to other duties with class timetabling etc. As a stop-gap, he provided a set of booklets covering all sorts of adolescent subjects which he asked us to discuss in small groups while he worked back in his office. Discussion revolved around us randomly choosing chapters and doing a complete piss-take on the concepts that the booklet was really trying to espouse. It did occur to me privately at the time that there was one chapter - on masturbation - that for some unspoken reason was considered taboo and despite the hilarious discussion that ensued on the all other chapters, it was almost as though this chapter didn't exist.”
Parris and Chunkles teamed up at lunchtime in an attempt to apprehend any student who was bush-bashing or having a fag down near the sewage-ponds (the Bush, from time immemorial, was the forbidden zone). To that end, a squad of Year 8 students were often conscripted and formed into a V-shaped cordon, the aim being to flush out knaves. Sometime this tactic worked; other times, the bush-bashers would deftly avoid the cordon. If so, it was not uncommon for taunts to be directed at the posse from the safety of the bushes (“Come and get me Pawwis!” was a common enough refrain). Not a few hid under the Head Road bridge in order to evade capture. The ‘Bush’ has always exerted a mystical, if not magnetic influence on every pupil that has attended Whitefriars over the years; Chunkles and Parris resembled King Canute in their endeavours.
Claire Healy, the Year 7 Co-ordinator (and teacher of English) was a worthy, worldly-wise teacher. Most of us ‘titch-bombs’, not a little anxious at being at the bottom of the food-chain, were grateful for her maternal care, even if it never extended to the school-yard. Not a few of us tried to pad out our reading lists with perfunctory surveys of the Three Investigators: she ended this practice summarily. Mrs Healy had one addiction: tobacco. It killed her. In many a class, she would disappear into her office for a quick puff. Towards the end of Year 7, we undertook an excursion to Hanging Rock and her son, football commentator Shane Healy, had just started his career in the media. On that day, I was sitting up near the front of the bus with her; she asked the driver to turn on the radio as she wanted to hear Shane give the sports-report. With a twinkle in her eye, she turned to me and said, “Isn’t it so exciting to hear Shane on the radio.” Ever so dumbly, I replied to the effect that “Mrs Healy, I don’t give a stuff.” She fulminated in response. She and John Wilson were Whitefriars institutions; chronologically, they died close to one another. It's fitting that the Arts and Performance Centre is named after them.
Ray Keane, a Vietnam veteran, and Gary Wilson, a star-rover with Fitzroy, headed up PE in our time. Gary resonates less strongly in the collective memory: most prominently, he drove a red Datsun 240z that we all coveted. He was agreeable. Ray must have been a drill sergeant in the army. His catch-cry still echoes down to this day: “if you don’t do XXXX, I will rip your bloody arms off!” Ray was as tough as nails. I remember one jog we undertook in the rain (it was a lousy way to celebrate my birthday). For whatever reason, Ray had us for two hours and we spent 119 minutes running up and down the back-roads behind the school. There must be a ‘Donvale Pumping Station’; we ran past it in the rain and I remember the signage to that effect, even if its location has remained undiscoverable, much like El Dorado, to this day. Come assemblies, Ray would stand beside Father Kierce and scan the group for dissent – in essence, he was the College’s Doberman: feared and fearsome in equal measure. Even with the passage of decades, many of us can still recall him bellowing leonine-like: “Stewwwwwwwwward – see me after assembly!”
But come THE Moment, Ray Keane failed to spot ‘the face of death’. This cataclysmic failure will count against him on Judgement Day.
At some point or other, Peter ‘Nanny’ Nanscawen purchased a tape-recorder from a classmate (it could have been Steff!). Nanny had every reason to believe that his purchase was legitimate. He was wrong: the item was hotter than a pancake (Steff's emporium, as we will call it, had a range of goods on offer, and it was best not to ask questions). Not long afterwards, Father Kierce called an assembly. As Ray Keane scrutinised the faces of the ‘usual suspects’, Noel announced that someone had flogged Father Shane’s tape-recorder. As the item in question had been given to him by his (late?) mother, angst was apparent. Father Kierce appealed for its return; no amnesty, however, was on offer. As witnessed, Nanny’s face drained of blood. He had inadvertently been implicated in a ‘hanging offence’. Perhaps Ray’s gaze lingered overly long on the riff-raff in the year above us: he failed to detect the seismic change in Nanny’s pallor. Or maybe the sun was in his eyes at the key moment. In any event, the crisis was surmounted. Well short of fifty, Father Shane died in 1997 of a brain tumour. No doubt he was wrestling with questions as he befell the common end, not least, what happened to that damned relic. It too has gone the way of all things: dust. Even so, for the terror it generated in our ranks, it has cause to be remembered.
Wozza - whatever his full name might be, should also be commemorated. He was the tennis coach in 1980 and flamboyantly so. He was despised and rejected. When playing doubles with him, the other three players would act in concert to set up a smash at the net, where the ball’s trajectory would invariably be Wozza’s nether region.
Most of us approached maths with dread and those who taught the subject at Whitefriars did little to quell our fears. One has to admit, however, such a profession is intrinsically dry at best. Firstly there was Mister McLean, who was older than the Ancient Mariner and no more empathetic. One day when he was standing in for Miss Miles – our Year 7 Maths teacher - he beat up Greg Santamaria to the disgust of the class; this infamy aside, there is little to recall. The opposite is true of Kevin Tyrell, whom we encountered in Years 8 and 9. He personified everything that we feared about mathematics. In our eyes, he was cold, aloof and sneeringly arrogant; in his defence - perhaps - there was a wider story to be told. He drove a white Mercedes limousine and loftily wore driving gloves. He was very hairy – prompting one wag to coin the phrase ‘the hairy hands that ate Kevin Tyrell.” He must have given grief to Pat Cash (from what I understand, Pat was anxious to leave behind his academic obligations in order to focus on his vocation – Tyrell blocked his exodus). On the tennis champ’s last day at school - magnanimous as ever – Pat filled up a rubbish-bin with water and barged into KT’s class. Accompanied by obscenities, he threw its contents at the teacher (and not small portion of the water landed on the computers). Tyrell must have been mortified by the intrusion. Nevertheless, he was not the last person in the world to experience the maestro’s gentlemanly ways.
And then there was Mister Nicholls. A man in his late twenties, he was a VFL boundary umpire on weekends. Thirty or forty teachers must have crossed our paths during those six years. For me at least, Mister Nicholls was the most fearsome of the tribe. He taught us in Year 9. Collectively, he made our blood run glacial. The tension was exacerbated by his skin-tight body-shirts and slacks. Even in the heat of February, his top button was done up, accompanied by a tie that would have choked a normal man. Mister Nichols (even today, I cannot bring myself to refer to him solely by his surname) was a man of few words, and they were usually cryptic if not caustic. He projected menace. If laughter is anarchy, it was unthinkable to play up in his class. We were there to work away unsmilingly at maths and that's exactly what we did. To quote a source from the Class of 79:
"(Yes, Mister Nicholls was) a pretty scary dude. Do you remember how he would sit at his desk during tests, eyes roaming the room for cheats, slowly running his fingers down his pen, before flipping it and doing it again? Over and over and over. A menacing cat who would make an excellent bad cop in an interrogation room."
And here is another story:
"(I remember) a hot day in Mr Nichols' maths class when we were whinging about the heat and we wanted to take off our shirts. Mr Nichols said that anybody with hairs on their chest could take off their shirt. Cam Fraser took his shirt off and Mr Nichols replied “ No just one hair on your chest, Fraser!”
In a way, I find this story surprising as it implies a sense of humour that was not evident to me!
Thankfully we parted company with Mr Nichols at the end of 1980. In our latter years, we were taught by the likes of Greg Miller and Sam McLeod – both of whom were more empathetic teachers in this pythogorean art – and not a little cool.
Much has been made of the late Bernadette Duncan – a temp teacher during our time – in the Official History. Perhaps she lightened up in her later years; few of our vintage remember her warmly. She would stride in, ‘machine-gun’ teach, shoot any dissenters and then leave when the permanent teacher returned to work. Ho hum.
Ray Delaney, our science teacher, left Whitefriars at the end of term 1, 1979. His replacement was Shirley Fung. I was sick at the time of the transition. Upon my return I was assured by a range of sources that “the new science teacher is cool.” Shirley taught most of us down the years until that tear-filled day in 1983 when she told us, mid-HSC, that she was leaving Whitefriars to accept a lucrative offer from Mount Scopus. This was a loss to the College as Shirley was known Victoria-wide for her expertise in biology (penning a few books to that effect). On our part, we were maddened by her decision to abandon us, as we so saw it, and all the more so when her replacement, Steven Keys showed up nonchalantly in his brown-slacks: he was not in her league. Her departure was far from ideal but we had many good times with Shirley: dissecting dead-rats; approaching ‘the birds and the bees’ from a biological perspective (the textbook we were using at the time had a fully naked woman that threw fuel onto the fire, hormone-wise) and various scientific experiments. She taught most of us for three years. As an aside, here is an anecdote:
I remember a trip home to Mitcham station one afternoon. Someone had borrowed one of the rats that had been previously dissected six hours earlier in Biology with the intention of flicking it out the window at the Mitcham High lollipop lady [a tyrant in her own way]. Possibly due to lack of wind factor in the calculations, it made it halfway across the road before plonking down on some poor sods windscreen who was driving the other way..."
"Midda Ong” taught up Science in Year 9. His haunt was the Junior Science Room at the end of the West Wing. He had a reputation of being a tyrant – indeed, Shirley Fung towards the end of Year 8 went out of her way to assure us that our fears were misconceived. Much to our surprise, we found him to be an approachable, competent teacher. He is best known for his portable cassette-tape player; on its chassis he had stuck the message “Sex is Best at Night.” Bravo Seng! Some might argue for the traditional slot on Saturday morning but you were not wrong in your proclamation.
Bernadette Speziani (sic), attempted to teach us Religion in Year 8. Sad to say, we fire-stormed her like Dresden. Year 8 boys can a handful in the extreme and she was congenitally unable to impose discipline. Furthermore, she had a massive bosom that did little to refocus our attention; the boobs were more interesting. In her last appearance, she cried her heart out and appealed for mercy. It was not granted. Moreover, those with sharper eyes than mine noticed she was menstruating (the white dress did not help her cause) – this added to the conflagration. Rumour has it that she subsequently ran away off with an ex-student. Given the trauma she sustained, I find it hard to believe she would want anything to do with Whitefriars per se. May peace be with her.
Father Maurice Barry taught up Latin in Year 8. He was renowned for undertaking marathon-length runs on the weekend. He was a Carmelite priest who had been dispatched to the Antipodes from his native Ireland. I always found him to be intelligent, decorous and dignified – mind you, the subject was congenial. When his name is mentioned nowadays, not a few of us can still rattle of “sum es est summus estis sunt” in an Irish-inflected drone. He also uttered the immortal line: "Cameron Fraser you are the worst student in the Southern Hemisphere". Father Barry knew how to control a class with minimal effort and he was a dedicated teacher. Digital watches had just been released globally. Being the advocates of Chinese water–torture that we were, the watches were systematically programmed to beep at regular intervals during the class – one to the left, the next down the back, the following one in the middle. Often, they were stuffed into pencil cases to mask their location. One beep sufficed. To this day, I can still see Father Barry pause, turn around and glare in the general direction of the offender. Beep – beep – beep.
But there were three teachers who deserve a chapter of their own.
