The Cluthan - 2015

The Cluthan OCTOBER 2015

Clyde Old Girls’ Association Inc Registered Number: A0028536K

THE PRESIDENT AND COMMITTEE OF THE CLYDE OLD GIRLS’ ASSOCIATION INC (COGA) INVITE YOU TO THE COGA ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING AND OLD GIRLS’ DAY LUNCH

SUNDAY 11th OCTOBER 2015 at the South Melbourne Community Centre corner Park Street and Ferrars Place, South Melbourne PROGRAM 10.30am 11.00am 11.45am 12.20-2.30pm

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Arrival and morning tea Annual General Meeting Guest speaker: Carol (Cas) Bennetto Old Girls’ Day lunch Cost: $25 per person

(Please RSVP by 4th October using the yellow form inside the Cluthan) ************************** GUEST SPEAKER: Carol (Cas) Bennetto – Clyde 1970-1974 Cas is the CEO of the Kimberley Foundation Australia, a not-for-profit organisation that researches, preserves and promotes the rock art of the Kimberley (WA). Cas says the role involves everything she’s ever learned and a bit of every job she’s ever had: waitress, secretary, press officer, freelance writer, radio producer, translator, event entrepreneur, PR manager, fundraiser, consultant and marketing and communications executive. But a person isn’t only defined by the job they do! Clyde played a significant role ...

GUEST SPEAKER 2015 — CAS BENNETTO

AT THE JUMBLE SALE

Below: COGA Committee 2015 Front L-R: Fern Henderson (Welsh) Vice-President Margie Gillett (Cordner) President Back L-R: Lesley Griffin (Vincent), Trish Young Secretary, Katrina Carr (Moore) Clyde House Liaison, Elizabeth Landy (Manifold), Peta Gillespie Treasurer Absent: Sally Powe (Douglas); Di Whittakers (Moore)

Above: Jewellery Stall coordinators: Lou Robinson (McMillan) and Susie Strachan (Skene)

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Clyde Old Girls’ Association Inc ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING AGENDA 2015 1.

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Apologies Minutes Business Arising President’s Report

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Treasurer’s Report Other Business Election of 2015/2016 Committee

2014 – 2015 COMMITTEE MEMBERS Margie Gillett (Cordner) President Light Blue Coordinator 03 9525 3698 gillett22@bigpond.com

Fern Henderson (Welsh) Vice President 03 5989 2664 davhendo3@bigpond.com

Peta Gillespie Treasurer 03 5333 4324 pmg252@gmail.com

Trish Young Secretary 0414 235 316 tyoung@smsmt.com

Katrina Carr (Moore) Clyde House Liaison 07 3374 0196 jankcarr@bigpond.net.au

Elizabeth Landy (Manifold) 03 5663 2220 elizabethlandy@bigpond.com

Sally Powe (Douglas) 0412 223 266 sallylmacgpowe@gmail.com

Di Whittakers (Moore) 03 5882 1143 burnimadeni@bigpond.com

Lesley Griffin (Vincent) 0412 479 860 griffin.lesley@gmail.com

EDITORIAL NEWS AND INFORMATION THE CLUTHAN

I was inspired by Liz Smart (Goode)’s diary (read it in ‘From the Archives’) to get out my own. It’s such a good way of remembering the past although I’m glad the teenage angst is over! If anyone else would like to get out their own diaries and share their reminiscences, we would love to read them in the Cluthan. You can send them or any other Cluthan contributions to me direct: Julia Ponder, 15/89A Bay Terrace, Wynnum 4178, (T) 07 3348 6644 (E) julia@comart.com.au or (E) coganews@gmail.com. The closing date for next year’s news and reports is the 30th June 2016. If you would like a copy of your submission so you can proof read it I can send you the page(s) as they will appear in the Cluthan – corrections are due back by the end of July.

Thank you to those who have contributed stories, reports and news in this Cluthan as these are greatly appreciated by our readers. Thank you to Margie Gillett (Cordner) for her help in collating/writing/editing and to Sue Schudmak (Sproat) for proof reading/editing/despatch and distribution of the final copy.

Thank you to the Old Geelong Grammarians who are generously funding the printing, to Geelong Grammar School for the postage for the Cluthan and to the Clyde Old Girls who kindly help each year with getting the Cluthan ready for mailing.

LIGHT BLUE

Light Blue (the Geelong Grammar School magazine) is another source for COGs to receive and share information. Light Blue comes out three times a year and has a page of COGA and HOGA information. If you would like to receive it (or cancel it), contact Katie Rafferty, Alumni Manager, (T) 03 5273 9338 (E) katier@ggs.vic.edu.au. Send contributions for the page to Margie Gillett (Cordner), 22 Evelyn Street, East St Kilda 3183 (T) 03 9525 3698 (E) gillett22@bigpond.com COGA ADDRESS LIST AND DATABASE

Please contact Sue Schudmak (Sproat) for changes to names, addresses, phone numbers, new email addresses (we now include those in our database and address booklet) and notification of COG deaths.

5 Fawkner Street, South Yarra 3141 (T) 03 9867 2663 (M) 0418 560 563 (E) schudmak@bigpond.net.au or Dougal Morrison, GGS Community Relations Office (T) 03 5273 9200 (E) dmorrison@ggs.vic.edu.au 3

THE MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE CLYDE OLD GIRLS’ ASSOCIATION Held at Caulfield Park Pavilion, Community Room 280 Balaclava Road, North Caulfield on Sunday 19 October 2014 Meeting opened 11:30 am

Minutes of the Previous AGM:

Present (as signed in Attendance Book):

Having been printed in the Cluthan, these were taken as read. Moved they be accepted: Margie Gillett. Seconded by Jane Nevile.

Tim Gillespie Jenny Blencowe Jackie Mackinnon Dallas Kinnear Pam Sinclair Felicity Dalgleish Rosie Dros Jill Meredith-Smith Clem Hawker Hilary Blakiston Meg Hornabrook Annabelle Pobjoy Elizabeth Smart Louise Robinson Sue Schudmak Annie Hamilton Judy Emerson Margie Temple Smith Mary Hildebrandt Jill Wilkinson Katrina Carr Fern Henderson Annette Webb

Pru Hunter Susie Allen Janet Clark Peta Gillespie Lynne Moore Kathleen Cust Rosie Marshall Janet Gordon Jane Nevile Rosemary Weatherly Georgina Barraclough Margie Gillett Lesley Griffin Sarah Bullen Felicity Motteram Billy Philp Amanda Elliott Sally Salter Trish Young Ann Willcock Elizabeth Landy Susan Duncan

Business Arising from the Minutes of the Last AGM No business President’s Report Margie Gillett read the President’s Report.

Margie Gillett moved it be accepted. Seconded by Jackie Mackinnon.

Treasurer’s Report Having been printed in the Cluthan, this was taken as read. Peta Gillespie read the report and moved it be accepted. Seconded by Amanda Elliott.

Other Business: A motion of thanks was proposed by Sue Schudmak to thank Margie Gillett for all her effort and extraordinary work for COGA in 2014. Seconded by Peta Gillespie.

Election of Officer Bearers Dallas Kinnear took the podium to declare all positions vacant and read out the nominations for the 2014/2015 COGA committee:

Apologies: Ros Allen Priscilla Donald Jan Fowles Dee Gowan Sally Hudson Joan Mackenzie Georgie Molesworth Gay Morton Rosemary Parker Sally Powe Judith Reindl Anne Stoney Madame Ten Brink Diana Whittakers Mary de Crespigny Joan Montgomery Virginia Stevenson Deb West Caroline Adams Rosalind Bromell Heather Cameron

Fiona Caro Sandra Findlay Barbara Gilder Flo Grimwade Jane Loughnan Susie Martin Sue Monger Suzanne Officer Prue Plowman Roo Rawlins Alison Smith Roberta Taylor Anna Tucker Shirley Willis Anna Affleck Julia Ponder Deb Skues Sue Piper Cecily Hardy Kate Robinson Rosie Grant

President: Margie Gillett (Cordner) Vice President: Fern Henderson (Welsh) Treasurer: Peta Gillespie Secretary: Trish Young Committee Members: Sally Powe (Douglas), Katrina Carr (Moore), Elizabeth Landy (Manifold), Di Whittakers (Moore) and Lesley Griffin (Vincent).

All positions were approved by those present.

Meeting closed at 12:00 noon.

COGA PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2014 Welcome everyone to the COGA AGM for 2014. This is the first time we have used the Caulfield Pavilion for our AGM and Old Girls’ Day gathering. The rooms are spacious and we like the nice view over open parkland, with an option to step outside onto a balcony. However, if we overstay our welcome, we’ll trigger the alarm and be locked in until Wednesday.

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After the special resolution passed at last year’s AGM on 13 October 2013, the Department of Justice, Consumer Affairs Victoria approved COGA’s application to alter our rules in compliance with the new Associations Incorporation Reform Act 2012, effective from 4 June 2014. Thank you to Philip and Sue Schudmak for their excellent work in redrafting the relevant parts of our constitution to comply with the new Act and for providing the copies which were tabled at last year’s AGM. Thank you also to Trish Young and Peta Gillespie for helping in the tricky business of negotiating with staff at Consumer Affairs head office in Exhibition Street. They seemed to need proof that COGA was not a secret organisation of corrupt terrorists!

at Isabel Henderson Kindergarten. The unsold goods support the work of the Prahran Mission, which provides retraining and employment for people who experience chronic unemployment through mental health issues. Thank you to Michael and Jane Loughnan for their great work in coordinating the sale.

The COGA garden tour in October 2013 was a great success, planned and coordinated by Fern Henderson and Dizzy Carlyon. About fifty Clyde Old Girls and friends explored a wide range of gardens in the Mornington Peninsula, representing different designs and plant choices. The questionnaires handed out in the bus provided plenty of challenges for the grey matter and revealed who could google and who could not! (and who could cheat …) The Lindenderry hotel management probably expected genteel mature ladies to sit quietly through dinner, but the years rolled back and it was great fun. True to the tradition of Clyde garden tours, profits were shared among local charities and a generous donation made to the GGS Clyde Scholarship fund. Thank you to Fern and Dizzy for their fantastic effort and to the generous garden owners who welcomed us into their private domains.

The new wording of the constitution rules has not altered COGA’s stated purpose, which is firstly to provide a means of keeping Old Girls in touch with each other, secondly to assist specific educational aims approved by COGA and thirdly to help maintain the spirit and traditions of Clyde School at Clyde House, GGS. COGA qualifies for tax exempt status as a voluntary not-for-profit community organisation, although not as a registered charity. The Australian Taxation office defines a non-profit organisation as an incorporated association formed for a ‘community service’ purpose, whose rules of constitution expressly do not allow distribution of profits or funds for the benefit of its own members. Profits and funds must be used only for the stated purposes of the organisation and, when dissolving the organisation, all remaining funds can only be distributed to another registered organisation with similar purposes. The scholarship funds at GGS are suitably qualified within this category.

1914 was a big year. GGS settled into its new campus at Corio. Boys who had just left school went to war.

Girls who studied nursing joined them as medical aides and support staff. Clyde girls in St Kilda were writing the first Cluthan magazine. It was also the first year Clydesdales were exhibited at the Royal Melbourne Show. They were described as loyal and hard-working, large and strong with attractive heads and feathered legs. Maybe it was the first time we were called Clydesdales. A huge thank you to the Cluthan editor Julia Ponder in Queensland who coordinated our centenary magazine issue so efficiently.

This year some remarkable life stories emerged, particularly in the obituaries. Many Clyde girls have lived through an era of scant recognition for the achievements of women. Thanks to the internet and improved research facilities, it is now possible to highlight achievements which might never have been acknowledged. Our thanks also to Sue Schudmak who organised the distribution of the Cluthan. COGA is grateful also for the assistance provided by the Old Geelong Grammarians (OGG) committee and GGS in covering the costs of printing and postage. This is an enormous help, coordinated by Katie Rafferty, Alumni Relations Manager at GGS.

Non-profit organisations like COGA, which are not charities, can self-assess their entitlement to tax exemption, by carrying out a yearly review of their activities and purposes. As we have made no changes to COGA’s structure or activities, we do not need to apply for confirmation of our continuing tax exempt status. The committee always strives to ensure that COGA’s distribution of funds and profits is consistent with our stated aims and purposes.

COGA has continued its tradition of community service throughout 2014. The jumble sale organised by Jane Loughnan was again a credit to the team work of Clyde Old Girls. They come out of the woodwork to fill St John’s Church hall with a heap of trash and treasure which somehow translates into a heap of cash. It’s a fantastic group effort, always funny hats and clothes to marvel at or the odd mink coat to flash about in, magnificent cakes, jams and preserves to take home to appreciative families. Profits from the jumble sale support vulnerable families and children

Congratulations to Christina Hindhaugh who was awarded an OAM in the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours list for her community service. She is the fourth member of the Beggs family to receive a national award. This achievement reflects the many years of meaningful and generous support they have contributed to the community.

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It has been a pleasure to work with the COGA committee this year. Our meetings are usually held at Mt Erica pub in Prahran, with dinner afterwards for hungry travellers. Committee members live all over Victoria, in Queensland and in New South Wales, so those who cannot attend might phone in from afar.

her invaluable work in maintaining the accuracy of the mailing list, entering changes and communicating with Katie Rafferty and Dougal Morrison at GGS to ensure that details match GGS records for COGA. A big thank you to Sue, Dougal and Katie. Together with her work on the Cluthan, Sue always provides vital advice and assistance to the committee. Golf Coordinator Anna Tucker has ensured that Clyde golfing teams continue to win trophies and stare down the opposition in some formidable competitions. Those Barwon Heads bunkers must have seen some awesome birdies (Clyde) and awful bogeys (St Caths). It is great to see plenty of Clyde supporters attending the golf days. Thank you Anna and congratulations to the amazing Clyde golfing girls.

So long as we have a quorum of four committee members on hand, the meeting can go ahead. Thank you so much to Peta Gillespie, our reliable and experienced Treasurer who hails from Ballarat and juggles her duties as President of Legacy with being a busy grandmother and traveller. She has organised many things for today; the list of replies, the registration table, the agenda, the morning tea and of course her finance report. Trish Young our Secretary has had a very busy year on the home, family, work and sport front and we are pleased she is still able to spare time for the committee, she is a much valued member of our team. Thank you to Fern Henderson our VicePresident who drives in from the Mornington Peninsula where she organised her second superb COGA Garden Tour in October 2013. She is the committee’s events advisor. Katrina Carr flies in from Queensland when possible and is our liaison contact with Clyde House. We really appreciate the research work she organises to compile the Clyde House liaison list, which shows that 15 current Clyde House girls are closely related to 35 Clyde Old Girls. The Clyde House report written by students for the Cluthan and the liaison list have become a great tradition, enhancing our relationship with students at GGS. Elizabeth Landy travels from Gippsland and always offers a helping hand and excellent advice, even if she’s away in the Northern Territory. She has kindly brought cleaning equipment today to help salvage our bond for the venue hire! Di Whittakers is based in the Riverina and, despite a busy year, has been a great contributor to COGA, thank you Di. Sally Powe commutes from Balnarring on the Mornington Peninsula and contributes to meetings even when she has work commitments. Lunch today was organised by Sally through Store 6 catering company at South Melbourne Market. Thank you very much to Sally, who although not able to join us today, liaised with the caterers to make sure her Clyde friends were adequately provided for. Also thank you to the committee members who have brought along home baked delights for morning tea and coffee.

Archives Coordinator Jackie Mackinnon has achieved a lot this year. With some dedicated volunteers who help when possible, a unique collection of memorabilia from a unique school is being developed.

Please read Jackie’s archives report in The Cluthan which lists numerous other generous contributors to the archives and the range of material collected. Congratulations and thanks to Jackie for her valuable work, travelling and researching archives material.

Several people have said how much they enjoyed the story of the mysterious, wild young artists of Clyde School in 1938.

Life on the OGG committee has been eventful with the publication of the OGG history book: “Light Blue Generations”, launched at Corio in March. This book shows how important the OGG network has been for the survival of GGS and its development into a world class school. And within the OGG and GGS community are the names of many Clyde girls. Those names appear as mothers, sisters, wives, grandmothers, daughters or grand-daughters of those who built the school or serve as inspiration in its development. For example: The Handbury Centre for Wellbeing, named after Helen Handbury; Elisabeth Murdoch House, named after Dame Elisabeth; the David Knox Equestrian Centre named after the father of Alice Brettingham Moore (Knox); Clyde Old Girls or their offspring serve on the GGS Foundation (Rosalind Adams, Brigid Robertson, Hugh Robertson, Neil Robertson, Bill Ranken) and on GGS Council (Amanda McFarlane, Paddy Handbury). COGA has done well to maintain its own identity, continuing to make a vital contribution to the GGS community and to society in general.

It’s a great team and everyone has agreed to stay on the committee for 2015, so there are no retirements to announce and no flowers to present!

Margie Gillett (Cordner) COGA President

COGA’s non-committee helpers do a great deal every year and we owe them a huge thank you. In between her extensive travels and busy commitments, COGA Database Coordinator Sue Schudmak has continued 6

er lost at wedding or funerals on one side of the world or the other. And the music rooms. Mrs Fox never really understood that I was never going to hit the centre of high G with any accuracy. But she never gave up on me and I am not aware of a single mistress who gave up on any of us. Even if we deserved it.

COGA AGM GUEST SPEAKER 2014 We are delighted to welcome Susan Duncan as our guest speaker here today. Thank you so much for travelling down from New South Wales.

Susan attended Clyde from 1963-1968 and was a dignified and forbidding senior when I was a junior. I always envied her posture girdle, worn with the winter tunic and, despite many attempts to stand upright and dignified like Susan, I was never awarded that elusive prize. She was also on the library committee, so her love of books was evident from a young age …

More important than anything else, I will always be grateful for the strong sense of right and wrong that was hammered into us from our first scary day as a new girl to the nervous but euphoric last. Which meant, in turn, that our primary instincts forever more were to be decent, polite, honest and to step up to take the blame if you were the culprit. A moral compass embedded so deeply that even when I behaved badly long after I left school – which I certainly did on a regular basis – they never fully disappeared. And they guided over and over often without me even realising it.

After a 25 year career in journalism, Susan is now an award-winning writer whose life story was the subject of her famous memoir ‘Salvation Creek’, a book which has become a favourite with reading groups and book clubs everywhere.

Her refreshingly positive outlook and frankness about life in general has endeared her to thousands of readers worldwide

Looking back, I am slightly ashamed of the way I took all that privilege for granted without much – if any – understanding of how those wonderful teachers were gently and sometimes not so gently, laying the grit, stamina, knowledge and basic social essentials, into the foundations that would carry us through whatever life saw fit to deal.

I’m not sure how many of the class of 1968 knew exactly what they wanted to do after leaving school and I’m sure we all wondered what lay ahead, how we’d find a place in a world that was suddenly so much bigger and more complex than the genteel and structured one we were leaving. In many ways, we were a generation on the cusp. Women’s liberation had begun to rock traditional ideas of where we fitted in. Stereotypical roles were dissolving like ice on a hot day. We were suddenly aware of how many male writers wrote about women – as objects – and we began to see how it had influenced the way we saw ourselves. And to reject it. Suddenly, we wanted more out of life. Mostly, we wanted freedom to choose instead of being slotted into a niche because of our gender.

SUSAN DUNCAN’S SPEECH

Changed faces and yet still familiar in a shadowy sort of way. And so many memories triggered by those faces. Midnight feasts. Running up and down the front terrace when we were caught talking after lights out. Mrs Hurle’s magic cinnamon tea cakes. The thrill of meat pies on a Saturday night. Those black velvet jackets and navy blue knickers. Girdles – dreadful word – for deportment.

As a result, we became part of a generation that blindly ripped into the old ways without a clue where it would lead but protected – always – by that thick padding of impermeable Clyde values. I now realise it gave me a cool-headed barometer to suss out the sharpsters, grafters and charlatans one inevitably meets when stepping out of the inner circle of family and friends to scrabble for a place in the wider world.

Will any of us ever forget the final day at school as we drove down that amazingly beautiful bush driveway and looked back one last time: the eclectic collection of semi-gothic and post modern buildings that had been our home for most of our formative years, the hedge where we laid our eiderdowns and greedily sun-baked as soon as the sun came out, the hall where I learned the words of so many hymns, I am still nev-

And that’s why – in a louche manner – I decided to become a writer. I wanted to see and understand more.

I wanted to live in places until I understood them. I didn’t want to casually skip through countries on a mission to fill a passport with weird and wonderful stamps from weird and sometimes not so wonderful 7

countries. I knew I could always file a story from somewhere exotic and that, in turn, would help to pay expenses. Later, I cottoned on to the fact that journalists usually travelled at someone else’s expense, that they were thrust into the thick of events in a flash and that they were deeply immersed in strange cultures within the hour. It was the fast track to understanding or as I learned to call it: The inside story. And it was addictive.

Cape Town for a year, working as a feature writer for the Cape Times, and then on to London for another year, where I worked for United Press International, a wire service, as a receptionist. I just couldn’t break into journalism in the town we all wanted to crack in those days. I returned to Australia and the Melbourne Sun until an opportunity came to move to New York and I grabbed it. There, I cracked a job in the NY bureau of Australian Consolidated Press, then owned by Kerry Packer. I wrote for most of the magazines, the now defunct Bulletin, racy Cleo, style leader Mode, even a yachting publication when we were ferociously involved in the fight to win the America’s Cup away from the snooty, rule-bending – if not breaking – NY Yacht Club. But mostly, I wrote for the Women’s Weekly. Which was not such a very different animal to the magazine on the stands today except that the market was much smaller then and it was known as the Bible. Read by politicians, decision-makers, housewives, the rich, the famous, the aspirational and anyone who wanted to fathom the current psyche of Australian women. Ita Buttrose was the editor. It was a time when magazines had never been more powerful.

In the course of 25 years, I jumped ice floes in Newfoundland in an effort to bring the baby seal hunt to an end. I became part of polar bear relocations in Churchill, Manitoba, where bears were transported in an old DC-3 to an abandoned wartime airstrip in the middle of an empty white expanse of snow and ice.

The cages and the door of the plane were opened and we journos ran for our lives to climb on the roof of the sole remaining tin shelter before the bears realised they were free and probably very, very hungry. It is impossible to describe the particular stink of a polar bear breath – perhaps rotten kippers comes close – while it’s breathing down your neck in the cabin of a plane so decrepit that we all prayed it had enough grunt to get us there. And back. Freezing hands, holding cameras close to our body to keep the batteries warm and functioning. Tummy churning with a good old dose of fear, not just for our lives but terrified of returning to the office without the shots and the story.

The pressure was always there. Get the pictures. Get the story. Go the extra mile to make it as good as you could. The extra mile – it always paid off for me. And you know, mostly I didn’t even realise that’s what I was doing. I just always wanted to know a little bit more.

We operated out of an office on the 22nd floor of the Newsweek Building on Madison Avenue. We were a small group of reporters, headed by a wonderful, gnome-like character called George McGann, who loved a martini and played a mean piano. We had fun, in other words. We also worked hard but I was aware I was living a dream life. Traipsing downtown to a joint called The Cookery to listen to jazz great Alberta Hunter, hearing crazy Kinky Friedman in the Lone Star Café, swanning off to Haiti for the weekend in search of a French millionaire who’d been kidnapped (with my photography teacher, who worked for Paris Match), and hitting all the casinos looking for a bloke who’d had his little finger removed. We never found him but we managed to hit the jackpot and win a small fortune.

As it happened, it was the modern plane returning to NY from that assignment, that had the major hiccup.

Not the rattly DC-3. A hole blew out of the back door of a scheduled Air Canada flight on our descent into Halifax and we barely made it. There were about 12 international journos on board and we formed a club.

Once a year we met at the top of the Pan Am building on Manhattan to celebrate our survival. Until a helicopter crashed there, not once but twice. We disbanded after that. Wisely, I suspect.

During an almost ten-year tenure, I danced at the White House when an Australian Prime Minister visited the U.S. Took Billy Snedden to an opera in Central Park: “Who’s this Pavlotti anyway,” he wanted to know. I could explain in detail because only the day before I’d interviewed Pavarotti, the world’s greatest tenor at the time, and been bounced off his tummy when he reached up to kiss my cheek – Italian style.

It’s impossible to describe the adrenalin rushes of turning up in a foreign country and hitting the front line within minutes. I loved it. And there wasn’t a day I didn’t feel as lucky as heck. Not even when I was covering a story on Australian troops in Somalia and we later found out a trio of terrorists had tried to mortar the truck I was in. Nothing, but nothing, makes you feel more alive than when you are closest to death.

I will never forget interviewing Richard Burton – back in Canada again, when he was married to Susie Hunt and allegedly off the booze. He had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen and enough charm to fill the huge caravan where we sat and chatted. He offered me a drink….the fridge was full of beer. “Mr Burton,” I said, “I thought you were off the booze.” “Beer isn’t

But I’m getting out of sequence here. After completing a cadetship with the Melbourne Sun, I moved to 8

you, is that it forces you to reconfigure your life. I chose to do it in a self-destructive way. I gave up working: I didn’t care about other people’s stories any more. I sold my house: I didn’t want to stay in a place with all those echoes of my former life. I fell into an affair with a deeply unsuitable man. And I looked for solace in the bottom of a wine glass. But somewhere along the way, perhaps when I understood it was make or break for the final time, I found the courage to take a huge risk. I bought a tin shed in a funny little place called Pittwater, about 45 minutes from Sydney’s CBD. And I turned every notion of civilized life that I’d clung to, on its head. Because the place I’d bought was accessible only by boat. Naturally, I didn’t own a boat. Certainly had no idea how to drive one.

There were no roads, no streetlights, no cafes, definitely no restaurants. The men weren’t the lounge lizard charmers I was used to, either. They were bluntspeaking shipwrights, sailors, artists, musos and knockabouts, seduced by the romance of the sea but, as I soon discovered, they’d never see anyone do it hard if they could make a difference. Even the smattering of doctors, lawyers and architects had a different view of what mattered instead of what many considered to be important. So Pittwater with its ragged red escarpments, a magical waterfall that I could see through the kitchen window, and gently pulsating tawny green waters, cast what I can only call a spell.

Which is not always the smartest reason to move somewhere especially when you’re throwing yourself into a world to begin again without any of the familiar support systems.

alcohol,” he replied drily.

I interviewed Darryl Hannah on a film set on the banks of the Amazon River, near Belem in Brazil. She was lovely. Kind of coy and smart and unearthly. One of her co-stars in a movie called At Play in the Fields of the Lord, was a neurotic egotist. I forget his name.

And the movie industry has largely forgotten him.

That’s something I learned. The bigger the star, the better the manners.

Looking back, there were many celebrities. Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Charlie Sheen. Grace Kelly’s niece – can’t remember why on that one but I recall thinking she was more beautiful than her aunt. The thing about celebrities, though, is that most of them fade into nothing. Which taught me a lot about fame.

It doesn’t pay to take it seriously and if you do take it seriously, unless you’re very, very careful, you’re headed for trouble. I’ve interviewed many, many people who defined themselves by what the media said about them – and I’m talking Australians as well as Americans here. Socialites and actors. Sportsmen and women. Once the media lost interest, they had no idea who they were or where they fitted in. Not everyone of course. But enough to make it a pattern, not a rare event. Charlie Sheen had nowhere to go after our interview and hung around in the doorway waiting for someone to say let’s go. Swayze went to the bathroom so many times I lost count. And it had nothing to do with a weak bladder. Demi Moore, beautiful skin, beautiful eyes. And so disciplined, she ate only half a petit-four. Not enough to satisfy an ant. Now she’s older and she’s allegedly a mess. Beauty like fame, fades and it’s as well to have something to fall back on. A strong family, a rich intellectual life, a coterie of close friends who aren’t afraid to tell you if you’re messing up. Or in my case, a wonderful education that instilled practical values. Although for a while, I was just like all those people I’m talking about. I thought my life in the fast lane would go on forever and none of the pitfalls I’d seen others fall into could possibly happen to me. Then my wonderful, larrikin brother died and three days later my husband. I was forty-four years old. I’d spent a lifetime recording other people’s stories as well as covering droughts, floods, famines, the victims of crime, child abuse and the big news stories, such as Lindy Chamberlain’s release from prison and, in the later years, putting those stories together as an editor. Then poof. All vanished. Suddenly, I had no idea where I belonged anymore. I couldn’t come to grips with the fact that nothing would ever be the same, that what I thought was an unassailable status quo, could fall apart. I spent the next two years in a blur. Goose-stepping onwards and unaware I was quite mad with grief.

But I was an old Clyde girl. Fallen by the wayside for a while, perhaps, but I’d picked bracken on the golf course in the middle of a freezing mountain winter.

I’d walked to the Cross through snow until my hands and feet were so numb with cold I thought they’d fallen off. I’d run to Clyde corner to get fit for basketball, taken the steps to the art room three at a time – going up as well as down – and I’d weathered Madame ten Brink’s stern eye when I’d failed to satisfactorily complete a French assignment. Thinking back, that was probably the toughest rite of all.

As it happened, lifestyle really wasn’t the challenge.

Three weeks after moving into the tin shed, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It is one thing to live and even thrive on risky edges by choice. Quite another to be told you have a lifethreatening disease and to feel the disorienting sensation that goes with understanding that suddenly, you’re not like other people any more. You dare not make plans for the future. Dreams are out of the question. And hope is a foolish indulgence.

It was like walking down a long narrow corridor and having every open door slammed shut in my face. It

The thing about the death of someone very close to 9

bush and the glorious bays where the beauty of yachts under sail loosened any tightness of spirit. Another old Clydie also turned up, lovely Deborah Eastwood (Llewellyn-Jones). In time, we all met each afternoon for the dog walk. And we still do. Even though faces change from time to time.

was the worst of all wake-up calls.

I stepped on the treadmill of surgery – a mastectomy – and chemotherapy and told myself to give getting well everything I had. Bizarrely, I discovered a neighbour, Barbara, up the hill in a beautiful home built for Dorothea Mackellar in 1925, was also having treatment for cancer and we sat often, on the wide verandah with its muscular columns, drinking tea and eating lemon cake while the colours of the bay changed with the shifting light. Talking always about life, not death.

When Barbara, my neighbour up the hill in the beautiful cream-coloured house died, her husband, Bob, started coming down to the tin shed for dinner. He brought the wine. I cooked. It gave us both something to do in the empty hours between nightfall and bed.

We talked and talked, sometimes on the foreshore while we held fishing lines. Sometimes in front of a roaring fire. Sometimes over a cuppa and a slice of cake. We were two people who’d experienced death up close and personal. I still had no idea if I would live a year, two years or ten. Actually, none of us really does. As it happens, so far it’s been fourteen. But when you have a very clear understanding that life is finite, you grab happiness when it comes your way.

Bob and I fell in love and married. As Barbara knew we would long before Bob and I. Suddenly, at a time of life when I thought there were only diminishing possibilities ahead, I found that I was happier than I’d ever been.

But for me, it was a time of many questions. Who chooses who lives? Who dies? Why do some people wake up happy and others find gloom in the best moments? Do people who’ve had privileged lives suddenly run out of luck? Do we all get a turn at hitting rock bottom or do we find our way there by ourselves? Does everyone fight her way out of the mire?

Or only the toughest people? And what does it take to be tough?

When the boys died, I watched videos when I woke in fright in the night, panicked and bereft. I watched Moonstruck so many times at one stage I knew every character’s dialogue by heart. “Do you love him Loretta? Too bad.” You see, after so much death, I needed to know the endings of stories. I couldn’t cope with any more grief, even fictional grief.

After a year or two, he encouraged me to find a hobby. Cooking meant investing in new, larger clothes more frequently than was good for us. But I didn’t do hobbies. Never had. “So! You’re a writer,” he said.

“Write a book.” And with a lot of hiccupping and false starts, that’s what I did. Instead of the guide to Pittwater I’d intended to write, I penned Salvation Creek. When it was done, I threw it at Caroline, who’d guided and mentored so beautifully all the way: “See if anyone wants it,” I said. “I’m not an agent,” she squealed. “You are now,” I said.

After the cancer diagnosis, I read cook books. Especially Stephanie Alexander. I lost myself in studying recipes, learning about different vegetables and how to prepare them correctly, marking particularly complex dishes to cook when I felt better. The great irony was that all I could eat during chemo was spaghetti Bolognese and canned tuna and peas. I suppose, I was subconsciously setting a future agenda without investing in it in any foolhardy way.

It is a strange thing to wake up and understand you’ve laid yourself on a marble slab and given everyone a scalpel.

I settled into life in Lovett Bay. Nurtured in a way I could never have imagined by our strong offshore community. There was always someone to carry my shopping. Always someone to sit and chat to on the waterfront. Always life to watch unfolding at the boat shed next door. This may sound odd, but there was much laughter. My hair fell out and no one gave a toss so neither did I. Although it was quite cold and I slept through winter, with a ridiculous woollen cap on my head. I bought two Jack Russell puppies that created mayhem and havoc in the bays. But people were kind.

No one complained. There was only support.

What have I done, I thought? What Pandora’s box have I opened? I considered withdrawing the book and editing out the raw stuff. Then I stopped. What do we ever learn if no one tells the truth? As a journo, I’d learned to smell a fib a mile away. I’d be as shonky as all the people I’ve written about who’ve hidden, lied, or spun the facts. I didn’t want to be that person.

I asked Bob if my frankness might upset him or his family. He just grinned: “If it gets too much,” he said.

“I can always go to my shed.”

Soon, I found another offshorer, gorgeous Caroline Adams (Blakiston), who’d been at Clyde a few years behind me, was also having treatment for breast cancer. We began walking our dogs together on the tracks that wound around the bays, stopping often, to breathe, smell, rejoice in the wonder of the Australian

It was the beginning of a roller coaster. The book became a best seller – no idea why. I never thought anyone would want to read about death, loss, grief and illness. Perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps it was the stories of Pittwater and the description of how a strong com10

munity creates strong individuals. Or perhaps none of us escapes hard times, perhaps all of us have the same dreams and perhaps none of us ever truly loses hope.

And that we all need to love and be loved in return. I will never know. But it launched a new career for me.

I never saw that coming, either. I also discovered that when you write something down it leaves space in your head for new stuff. For so long, I held onto memories because I was afraid I’d forget. When it’s written, you never forget. That was a gift I didn’t see coming, either.

However, the fact that so many new items (whether it be clothing, books or bric-a-brac) can now be purchased very cheaply because of overseas imports, the 500% increase to hire the St Johns Hall as well as the immense amount of work involved for the few volunteers who put their names forward to help, requires us to have a close look at how we may better assist the Isabel Henderson Kindergarten in the future.

In the meantime the next jumble sale has been booked for Thursday 23 June 2016 at the Toorak Uniting Church Hall (TUC) in Toorak Road. Their costs are reasonable at $40.00 an hour, considerably more affordable than the $500.00 being charged by St Johns.

And somewhere in all that morass, I discovered that no one escapes difficulties. What truly matters is how you deal with them.

OTHER EXPENSES

And as my first husband used to say: It’s never all over until the fat lady sings. The trick is to keep breathing.

There is very little to report here, with no Garden Tour in 2015 and our Incorporation Fees are back to the regular level.

All up, a successful year resulting in a profit for the first time for several years.

TREASURER’S REPORT 2014-2015 This report refers to the Financial Statement of the Clyde Old Girls Association Inc for the year ending 30th June 2015.

Peta Gillespie Honorary Treasurer June 2015

It is with pleasure that I again present the Treasurer’s Report to the members of the Clyde Old Girls Association.

NOTES TO 2015 BALANCE SHEET

It has been a quiet year, financially, for COGA and we have ended the period with a surplus of $1,952.12 and with no major expenses.

AT THE AGM

THE CLUTHAN

Again, OGGs and GGS have covered the cost of the Cluthan for both printing and distribution. This saves us a considerable amount – particularly with the way postage is rising – and I would like to acknowledge their support.

THE JUMBLE SALE

Pru Hunter (Cl’69), Jackie Mackinnon (Kelly Cl’69) and Amanda Elliott (Bayles Cl’69)

Another successful Jumble Sale was held this year and $2,550.00 was forwarded to the Isabel Henderson Kindergarten. Jane and her team of hard working helpers do a marvellous job in getting everything set up and then keeping an eye on what “walks out the door” on the day!

It should be noted that the float of $1,250.00 has been included in both the Income and Expenditure figures, to reflect the actual transactions. The Retained Earnings figure this year was $159.69.

As will be mentioned later in the Jumble Sale report we need to have a close look at the future of the Jumble Sale. Since 1956 we have raised over $62,000 for the Kindergarten and COGA has a strong commitment to maintain this relationship.

Jill Wilkinson (Gunn Cl’68) and Margie TempleSmith (Bond Cl’68) 11

BALANCE SHEET AS AT 30 JUNE 2015 2014-15

2013-14

NAB (Opening Balance) 01 July 2014

26,604.47

36,576.98

NAB (Closing Balance) 30 June 2015

28,556.59

26,604.47

0.00

0.00

28,556.59

26,604.47

O/S Cheques

0.00

0.00

Total Liabilities

0.00

0.00

28,556.59

26,604.47

AGM Lunch

1,075.00

875.00

AGM / General Donations

1,675.00

2165.00

Jumble Sale (includes cash float)

4,371.75

5,977.50

517.43

719.97

0.00

15,760.00

480.00

0.00

Assets

O/S Deposits

Total Assets Liabilities

Net Assets INCOME and EXPENSES 2014-2015 Income

Interest Garden Tour Reimbursements History Book Fund

65.00

Total Income

8,184.18

25,497.47

1,137.00

2,409.57

40.00

0.00

Jumble Sale Proceeds to Isabel Henderson Kindergarten

2,550.00

5,200.00

Jumble Sale Expenses (includes cash float)

1,662.06

300.00

Golf Cups (Fun and Inter-School)

390.00

380.00

English Prize to GGS and Braemar

400.00

800.00

53.00

211.90

Expenses AGM Expenses Meeting Expenses

Incorporation Fee Clyde House – Plaque and Trophies

469.38

Archives

475.13

Garden Tour

0.00

Gifts

25,158.00 66.00

Total Expenditure

6,232.06

35,469.98

Surplus / Loss for year

1,952.12

-9,972.51

12

AT THE AGM

Annette Webb (Cl’62) and Annabelle Pobjoy (d’Antoine Cl’65) Georgina Barraclough (Moran Cl’68) and Lynette Moore (Stevens Cl’73)

Sally Salter (Stevenson Cl’51)

Judith Emerson (Shaw Cl’57)

Felicity Dalgleish (Gardner Cl’58) and Elizabeth Smart (Goode Cl’57)

1968 classmates: Ann Willcock (Thomson), Georgina Barraclough (Moran), Susan Story (Duncan), Margie Temple-Smith (Bond) and Sarah Bullen (Lobban) 13

AT THE JUMBLE SALE

The very experienced and successful ‘Bookies’: Celia Jones (Griffin), Christina Hayward (Pym) and Deirdre Gowan (Leviny) Long-serving jumble specialists: Felicity Dalgleish (Gardner) and Sally Salter (Stevenson)

Happy complement of Jumble Helpers, thanks to Jane Loughnan (Weatherly)’s admirable coordination

14

AT THE JUMBLE SALE

The Check-out chicks “We’re sure we didn’t see anyone with Armani!” Fern Henderson (Welsh), Leslie Griffin (Vincent), Ann Willcock (Thomson).

A fond farewell and huge thanks to Jane Nevile for her years of Jumble Sale patronage and good humour Peta Gillespie, Sue Strachan (Skene) and Mary Hildebrandt (Downie)

Standing, L-R: Julie Cole (Baird), Susie Perchey (Russell), Susie Strachan (Skene), Ann Willcock (Thomson) Sitting: Jane Nevile (Lewis)

Jumble clothing stall specialists: Kate Robinson (Richardson), Katrina Carr (Moore) and Anna Tucker (Kimpton) Left: Deb Bray (Finch) catching up before they roll in 15

COGA ACTIVITIES Libby Gardiner (Gardner) is President of the Catalina Country Club and won the Division 3 Matchplay Championship (Batesman Bay). She is also VicePresident of the Far South Coast and Tableland Golf Association.

GOLF REPORT INTER SCHOOL GOLF

Clyde golfers continue to have wonderful and varied success. The team of Janet Coombes (Dalrymple), Deb Middleton (Noall), Kate Robinson (Richardson) and Sandy Taylor (Dalrymple) played skilled golf to finish 3rd out of 30 teams at Metropolitan GC in April 2015. Well done on a fabulous result. Kate also won a NTP prize.

Ros Bromell (Gardner) is a keen golfer however has put it on hold recently to work as a Ranger at a bird life reserve near Waikerie.

Felicity Dalgleish (Gardner) recently won C Grade Championship at Royal Melbourne and the best net overall.

A new Inter school website for information and photos has been set up. Hope you will all have a look. www.womensinterschoolgolf.com

Angela Alcock (Gardner) has been a regular pennant player winning a flag for Gisborne in 2015.

Other keen golfers are Eda Ritchie (Beggs) and Judy Austin (Wettenhall) who play at the lovely Port Fairy GC where Judy is the Ladies Captain.

Jo Armytage (Barr-Smith) had a great score at the Grampians GC in September 2014 winning the Mary Simpson Trophy. If that wasn’t enough, she took home the raffle prize as well. Jo has been a wonderful support in playing in all the Fun Cups along with many others for many years and thoroughly deserves her success. Great stuff Jo!!

L-R: Janet Coombes (Dalrymple), Sandy Taylor (Dalrymple), Kate Robinson (Richardson) and Deb Middleton (Noall) FUN CUP GOLF

The Fun Cup was played at Peninsula/Kingswood GC last October. It was a very close result with Toorak College winning for the first time in quite a few years with 140 points. Clyde and St Catherines were equal 2nd with 133 points.

Our team was Gay Morton (Howard), Janet Coombes (Dalrymple), Deb Middleton (Noall) and Kate Robinson (Richardson). Jo Armytage (BarrSmith) and Kate MacDougall (Howard) won the NTP prizes. Congratulations to all the girls who came and joined in the fun of the golf and the dinner the night before.

This years Fun Cup is at Barwon Heads GC on Monday 12th October 2015. A shotgun start at 8.30 am.

We look forward to seeing everyone there.

I would like to thank everyone who comes along to play in the golf days. I really appreciate all the support you have shown.

OTHER GOLF NEWS

Any queries contact: Anna Tucker (Kimpton) Golf coordinator (M) 0408 540 252 (E) annatucker8@outlook.com

How many families have four siblings playing golf?

The answer: The Gardner sisters! who continue to involve themselves both playing and administrating golf matters.

16

team whether unpacking, setting up displays, selling or clearing up.

JUMBLE SALE REPORT The aim of the COGA jumble sale held each year since 1947 is to raise funds for the Isabel Henderson Kindergarten. This tradition will celebrate its 70th anniversary in 2017.

A cheerful band of workers arrived early on Thursday 25 June at St John’s Hall Toorak to sort jumble and get ready for the bargain shoppers.

Penny Lewisohn felt that jumble standards may have slipped because we do not wear the tailored and classic clothes our mothers once did. We all wear jeans and comfortable clothing nowadays. Even so, there were some top fashion labels available (including Armani) which fetched good prices and were eagerly purchased.

Thank you for all the support and work prior to the sale: collecting, storing, cooking, delivering jumble and of course to everyone who helped at the sale.

Thank you to Peta Gillespie our COGA Treasurer who did a sterling job dealing with our cash and accounts to forward the proceeds of $2,550 to IHK.

Lou Robinson (McMillan) has been the reliable and essential depot in Melbourne for many years and we are very grateful for this.

The result for the day was down on previous years but IHK are extremely grateful for the COGA donation which enables them to support children and families in need. The IHK committee encourages all families to be part of the fundraising and they willingly contribute to the produce stalls.

The book stall was set up by Christina Hayward (Pym) with workers including grandson Fred, Elizabeth Landy (Manifold) and Belinda Philp (Laidlaw).

The produce stall, looking magnificent, was supervised by our preserves champion Jane Nevile (Lewis) and run by Julie Cole (Baird) and Susie Perchey (Russell). It was stacked full of goodies and a lot of cooking donated by parents of the Isabel Henderson Kindergarten students.

The income for 2015 was: Door $1,072.90 Bric-a-brac $523.35 Jewellery $418.00 Produce $532.50 Books $575.00 TOTAL $3,121.75

The bric-a-brac tables were laden with goods being displayed by Sally Salter (Alison Stevenson), Mary Hildebrandt (Downie), Celia Jones (Griffin) and Felicity Dalgleish (Gardner) among others.

Expenses were: Advertising Hall hire TOTAL

Deb Bray (Finch), Wendy Read-Smith (Fenton), Anna Tucker (Kimpton) and Kate Robinson (Richardson) helped constantly with folding, hanging and displaying clothing items.

This resulted in a $2,550 donation to IHK. The float of $1,250 is not included in the above figures nor is an amount of $159.69 which is sundries retained.

$322.06 $90.00 $412.06

Unfortunately no advertising was available in GGS Light Blue this year, as there was no April issue published. Normally we have a good response from the GGS community, with jumble donated and OGG buyers or helpers on the day.

Susie Strachan (Skene) helped Lou Robinson (McMillan) with the jewellery stall along with displaying scarves, hats and accessories.

Jackie Mackinnon (Kelly), Ann Willcock (Thomson), Lesley Griffin (Vincent) and Fern Henderson (Welsh) worked hard on the pricing table going through the piles of clothing and bargaining.

Maybe we did not have the client numbers but the advertising was the same as previous years. Does anyone have any good ideas regarding this?

At 12 noon the pumpkin hour, all unsold goods were collected by the Australian Diabetes Association for sale in their opportunity shops.

Future of the Jumble Sale: With an increase of costs to hire St Johns Church Hall up to $500, plans are underway to consider alternative venues for the 2016 jumble sale. Consequently, a booking for the next jumble sale has been made for Thursday 23 June 2016 at the Uniting Church Hall in Toorak Road, for a reasonable cost of $40 an hour.

Thank you to Sally Hudson (Mercer) who suggested TUC and made enquiries on our behalf. Another helpful suggestion from Mary Hildebrandt (Downie) was that COGA could hold a jumble sale in the Woodend community hall, perhaps on a weekend.

Thank you to Haydn and Deb West (Blakiston) for lending us the van to transport jumble from our depot, Lou Robinson (McMillan).

Others who came to help at various stages included Joc Mitchell (Low), Penny Lewisohn (Weatherly), Ann Spiden (Ross), Susie Schudmak (Sproat) and Annabel Pobjoy (d’Antoine).

Everyone works together in a cooperative and genial 17

We are also writing to the St Johns Hall committee to see if they would grant special consideration to COGA and not increase the cost, because of our long association with that hall.

kindergarten. It was Miss Hay’s wish ‘that the payments of such income be designated as a contribution from the Clyde Old Girls’ Association’ to relieve it from its 1942 obligation to donate an annual sum of not less than 250 pounds. However, COGA decided to continue to donate the Jumble Sale takings to the kindergarten in addition to Miss Hay’s contribution.

If anyone has a good idea regarding the future of the jumble sale or other ways in which we could work together to raise funds for the IHK please email them to me.

THE ARCHIVE COLLECTION REPORT

Jane Loughnan (Weatherly) Jumble Sale Coordinator (M) 0417 535 862 (E) ejloughnan@gmail.com

By the time you will be reading this Cluthan we should have at last completed the categorising and indexing of our extensive and excellent collection of Clyde history and memorabilia.

ARCHIVES

Various Old Girls have worked over the years to put this collection together, especially Betty Clarke (Speirs) before 1976 and Jackie Mackinnon (Kelly) since 1985. Without the invaluable contributions in latter years from Sue Schudmak (Sproat) it would not be so well organised and indexed as it is today!

FINANCIAL HISTORY OF THE JUMBLE SALE

1950 £58.13.20 1951 £76.00 1952 £81.00 1953 £60.00 1954 No Sale held 1955 No Sale held 1956 £114.00 1957 £250.00 1958 £191.00 1959 £170.04.60 1960 £198.14.60 1961 £145.03.60 1962 £215.06.

1963 £204.05.

1964 £172.14.

1965 £168.14.

1966 $3,66.07 1967 $401.00 1968 $337.00 1969 $389.47 1970 $450.00 1971 $472.63 1972 $375.00 1973 $775.00 1974 $751.77 1975 $487.00 1976 $110.00 1977 $500.00 1978 $1,329.00 1979 – 1984 ?

1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

$672.00 $1,092.00 $764.00 (?) $930.00 $844.87 $688.40 $1,047.91 $1,148.34 $1,266.05 $1,035.45 $1,185 85 $1,389.00 $1,521.95 $1,581.31 $1,986.62 $1,309.48 $2,251.60 $1,987.00 $1,914.00 $3,014.00 $3,683.00 $2,857.00 $2,845.00 $2,922.60 $3,069.00 $2,200.00 $2,670.00 $3,004.83 $3,416.95 $4,268.90

We would like to give you a brief rundown of what is in the COG Archive Collection, housed in The Vault of the Fisher Library at Geelong Grammar School, which is now an exceptional resource available to all.

-The history of Clyde, its origins in St Kilda in 1910, the move to Mt Macedon in 1919 and the eventual closure and amalgamation with GGS in 1976. Buildings and grounds are documented, as are some of the pre Clyde days of Faireleight in St Kilda and the Braemar Guest House at Mt Macedon, as well as Braemar College post Clyde.

-Extensive lists and registers of all girls who entered Clyde, including their family relationships, original entry forms, plus all the lists of prefects, house and sports captains etc.

-Each year of Clyde’s existence, 1910 to 1975, has a boxed folder with official photos, plays, notices, activities, Sports Day programs, invitations and sometimes student photos for that year.

-Profiles of all headmistresses and many members of staff, especially of Miss Henderson and her ideas and influence on education and the establishment of the Free Kindergarten movement. There are 2 volumes of letters she wrote to Miss Hay discussing these ideas and giving thoughtful advice.

These records are not absolutely accurate but every Cluthan AGM and Jumble Sale/IHK report available has been checked (total 65!). Contributions from Peta Gillespie, Sue Schudmak (Sproat), Jane Loughnan (Weatherly), Jackie Mackinnon (Kelly) and Posie Durham (Grimwade)’s Jumble Sale Records.

-Many log books on the day-to-day running of the school, including ‘Off Honours’, table rules, bedroom allocation, time-tables plus yearly assessments and reports on the school and students by the Ministry of Education and various teachers.

-Drama files and school music files, anniversaries (with many photos) such as Clyde’s Silver and Golden Jubilees, the 75th Anniversary Dance, the launch of the Clyde history book, the 100th Anniversary

In 1974 Miss Hay died leaving $8,000 to the Isabel Henderson Kindergarten for investment, the income of which would be used for general purposes by the 18

Collection has been digitised and may now be accessed by all OGG/COG members online via the GGS Portal if you have a Username and Password. The GGS website address is: https://www.ggs.vic.edu.au If you have any problems with access ring a committee member or contact Esupport at GGS.

lunch and the 30th Amalgamation.

-Around 350 replies to the two questionnaires sent to Old Girls for their thoughts on their days at Clyde (good and bad) and the influence Clyde had on their lives, initially sent to help with the writing of the history book. These give a wonderful profile of life at school during all eras, the changing trends in education and changes in society in general, as do the 60 interviews recorded with Old Girls from all eras (many with tapes and all transcribed).

Overall, our Archives form an extremely interesting collection, which not only profiles Clyde, its students and staff, but it also provides a valuable reference on education and social history in general, including society and its trends during the years of Clyde’s existence.

-Uniforms; sportswear and awards, engraved cups and shields; badges; early silk house flags; a wonderful collection of informal photographs of girls from all eras in seven albums collected by a team of Old Girls; some priceless student diaries and many other memorabilia items.

We receive a number of enquiries each year from people researching individuals, organisations, teachers or various aspects of education. It will now be much easier to access. Please contact the COG Archivist or head of the Fisher Library if you are interested in making a booking to peruse or copy your archives.

We would like to think all this work has been worthwhile!

-Council minutes, unfortunately only from 1960 to 1975, as the rest seem to have been mysteriously lost when Clyde closed; financial statements, insurance advice and other official documents that go with the running of a school.

A special thanks to all those who spent a great deal of time researching, interviewing, taping and transcribing interviews with Old Girls when research was being conducted for the history book. We especially thank Priscilla Donald (Boaden) who, during this last year, transcribed the remaining 12 taped interviews – not an easy task trying to decipher Old Girls often talking over each other!

-Documentation of the contributions that individuals and the Clyde Old Girls Association made to the school throughout its life, including helping fund many buildings and other projects and, indeed the buying of the school in 1921 from Miss Henderson to ensure its future.

-A large section on the Clyde Old Girls Association; its constitutions and general running, the Red Cross, the Jumble Sale and its connections with, and the history of, the Isabel Henderson Kindergarten, golf and tennis days and garden tours – many of these, along with class reunions, are documented amongst a large collection of photograph albums.

-Much research material from the writing of both Miss Hay’s ‘Chronicles of Clyde’ and Melanie Guile’s ‘Clyde School 1910-1975: An Uncommon History’, plus all the documentation material from both these publications.

The Clyde Archives would also like to thank all those very special Librarians in the Fisher Library at GGS, including the then Archivist Melissa Campbell (up until January of this year) and Anne, Lee, Lilly, Tomiko, Vivien and their Library Manager, Fran Walsh who has uploaded the Cluthans (1914-1975) onto the GGS Portal. The remaining Cluthans will be scanned and uploaded over the coming months, with superb photos to follow. And of course we are always grateful for any memorabilia, uniform, early Cluthans, photos or publications passed on to the Archives – many thanks to all.

-Six volumes of ‘Clyde Girls After School Lives’ profiling their achievements, voluntary work, travels and friendships since leaving Clyde; tertiary degrees and career lists; war enlistments and many obituaries – most of which will continue to be updated.

-An extensive collection of books, papers, poems and music written by Clyde Old Girls. We are keen to keep adding to this to complete our collection and would be delighted to receive more donations. It is a great record of talented Old Girls.

We still have copies of the Clyde History Book available for sale. Please contact the GGS Uniform shop or me.

-A complete bound set of all the Cluthans (and a second set in the State Library) as well as several other sets of loose editions. PLEASE NOTE: The Cluthan

Jackie Mackinnon (Kelly) Archives Coordinator (M) 0417 371 496 (E) jackmack@bigpond.net.au 19

first and last verses and cut out the Bible reading.

Raced down to get our tickets and hats and coats and climbed onto the bus at about 9:30. The drive down was uneventful save for collecting sandwiches in Woodend and getting some chewing gum (which goes to stuffing the hole in my tooth!) Policemen were everywhere and so were army men. The decorations didn’t look anything marvellous in the daylight. From Woodend on it had been misty and wet, but Melbourne was clearer. We arrived at the main stadium to see the finish of the trials of the high jump, having missed the women’s discus trials, being nearly 12:00.

We ate our sandwiches there, then wandered around.

In the morning Mrs Baker, Mrs Calder, Taylor and I went to see the flame, which we can’t see from our seats. We had a heavenly view of the jumpers. After lunch the officials marched on and things really began. The final of the high jump and women’s discus commenced. We saw the heats of the 400 hurdles (metres) and the heats of the 100m and 1,000m and 10,000m which was a terrific race. Kutz (USSR) leading the whole way, then waving to the crowd, he circled the arena once more after he had won the race in record time. The high jumping was very close between Porter of Australia and Dumas of America. Dumas finally won and we heard The Stars and Stripes played by the band. We also heard the Czechoslovakian anthem (discus winner) and the USSR one. Kutz certainly gave a good impression of his country.

FROM THE ARCHIVES CLYDE DIARY 1955-1957

Liz Smart (Goode) has provided several pages of delightful extracts from her school diary.

The full transcript is available from Liz if you would like to read more (email: smarted@bigpond.com.au). Below are some summaries of her candid descriptions of life at Clyde in the 1950s: March 3rd 1956 Pirates of Penzance This was fun. We did it on Friday for the Woodend people then again on Saturday for the parents – which was also a great success. I joined as a policeman but there were too many so I became a pirate … The policemen were terrific. I knocked Rosy over and fought her! After it was all over Mr Collinson took our photos which also were a great success. I got two, one showing the whole cast. There was a terrific write up in the local paper about it. Great columns with all our names mentioned.

Talking of musicals, I was also in ‘The Boy Mozart’ as a dancing lady – dancing a minuet in the king’s palace. This was one of Miss Laidlaw’s productions and it was rather pathetic. Our costumes were feeble too.

Dodds was the Boy, Holty the Queen, Joycie the King, Sam the father and dear old Debbie the mother.

I wore a terrible old dress of Miss Laidlaw’s. Altogether it was utterly feeble.

We left in the rush at 7:30 and spent ages trying to cross the railway bridge. I had spent most of the day trying to fill in my programme. Back to the bus where we had sandwiches again (the school supplied apple, banana, one bottle of drink and sandwiches).

Midnight Feast

We arrived back at school at 10ish and piled into bed.

We all decided we wanted to go every day and our exams could go to ------! Some were swooning over Peterson, the Swiss jumper and it was funny listening in the bus to all the chatter. Anyway it was a superb day.

It was meant to be after ‘Pirates’ but we had to cancel it. It was great fun except the alarm didn’t go off so we woke up at 1.30 and raced down the passage getting everyone. We couldn’t find a tin opener! (There were 10 of us and we had previously moved the beds to make more space.) When we did find it we succeeded in spilling sardines and tinned stuff all over the floor which was frightfully sticky let alone smelly.

We made a hell of a din and had a screaming time and it didn’t finish till 3.00.

Sunday 25th November (Visiting Sunday) I was first call so had a hot shower and got up and did some more of my Olympic scrapbook and wrote a bit more to Ma n’ Pa. I had on a summer dress hopefully, which I found out later we were allowed to wear.

Fried eggs for breakfast! Mr Fabian for C of E Church. Maggi had to play a hymn as Debbie and Holty were away at the games. Tidied our room after church then finished sewing up a jumper for CSS, then Mr and Mrs Taylor and Mary and Pam Pern from The Hermitage arrived. There were nine in the car as Taylor took out Flip, Varcoe, Mable, Rosy and me!

We went to Hanging Rock. It was a drizzly day but we played round till lunch time. We had lunch near

The next morning everyone knew about it – at least we told them – mistresses and all but it didn’t matter cos we went home that day. Anyhow it was worth it!!

Friday 23rd November Excursion to the Olympic Games A heavenly morning. Had a hot shower and climbed into skirt and stockings. Breakfast at the usual time, weeties and boiled eggs. Buses arrived just before assembly (after having tidied our room and got Harold to look for the snake, only finding a lizard!) Sang the 20

the horse stalls where it was sheltered. Cold lunch – heavenly, plenty of fruit salad, meringues and cream.

After lunch Tail, Rosy and Mable went off. We started up and then Mary, Pam and I hid and tried to track the others but lost them and met up with some others. We looked everywhere for them, then found them hiding from us at the top!! We explored for a bit then sat in the sun in a sheltered spot, it was quite hot by this time, and ate sweets and persuaded Rosy to sing ‘The Kid’s Last Fight’. Went down for afo tea then Tail and I ran to the gates, before driving back to school. We arrived back and showed the Taylors over the new building, then they went. I showed Tail where I learned last year and invited her to learn with me. After dinner I got Debbie to play the hymn for me (she really offered!) Helped with last minute things for CSS. Tapped Debbie for the hymn. Went down to fruit tuck with her and she told me all about her doings at the Games. Talked in the Senior Sit after prayers, after Boss made me pick up the hymn books, no reading.

During supper the Boss made me go via the Maid’s corridor to tell the CSS bodies that supper was in.

Braemar won CSS for the year, Clutha came second, then Faireleight then Ingleton! Went to bed then and was disturbed during the night with Flip being sick – three times.

I went out to lunch with Busty Burston. The Governor (Sir Dallas Brooks) arrived at 3pm and walked up between a guard of honour, all of us lined up for them to come between, towards the New Building. All the visitors sat on the hill. He made a speech, declaring the building open, and unveiled the plaque while we all held our breath. Then we rushed to our rooms to finish them while they made a tour. In our room, we had quite a long conversation with him about bulldozers and art classes and which way the New Building faces etc. Lady Brooks asked to see in our cupboard. I opened it up and there, right in the front was a filthy sock of Varcoe’s which she had just used to clean her shoes before the Governor came in. She quickly slammed the cupboard shut in front of Lady Brooks and Lady Murdoch’s horrified eyes and Miss Hay’s glare. Luckily I hadn’t noticed, so was quite innocent and was capable of carrying on a conversation, such as it was. We met the Governor again at afo tea. He came up to us just as I had stuffed a whole cake into my mouth, with another in my hand. The cakes had just been stolen and we had grabbed as many as we could! Everyone else fled and Varcoe had to confront him. He is a dear old soul, just like a koala! He really is awfully nice. Again, we spoke to him as he left. We were lucky as hardly anyone spoke to him. We had afo tea on fruit tuck lawn and there were waitresses dressed in black! The caterers came from Woodend for the first time and have been about four times since including Sports Day and the School Dance. Lots of old girls were there and we had a good old gossip!

When the Gov was going he made us promise to write to him if Miss Hay didn’t keep the holiday he is letting us have in second term. As he was driven off we all rushed round from the front terrace to the east veranda to wave goodbye and Sis called out ‘Clyde on the move’. And so it was with 100 or so great hefty school girls after him! – popular man. (I must mention all the scrubbing that went into the building before hand, windows, bathrooms, etc.) After some more afo tea, the Burstons went and it was nearly time for tea.

Saturday 23rd February 1957 The opening of the new Memorial Building

…

So much has happened that there hasn’t been time to write it up. In the first week we voted. I am senior librarian and am not allowed to be anything else. Also I am art treasurer. It has been lovely weather. I have only played baseball twice and tennis all the rest of the time. I’ve just worked out how to stop doing double faults. Sandy, Rosie Horny, Eril and Tid usually play tennis with me. Varcoe and I have room matches against Holty and Sandy. At the moment we’re leading by two games. Our books didn’t come for ages but I think we have them all now. In English lit we have Pride and Prejudice, Henry Esmond, Evelina, Coonardoo, The Americans, 7 Years in Tibet, Cyrano de Bergerac, She Stoops to Conquer, Murder in the Cathe-

The Age, 25 Feb 1957: Margie Begg and Jane Tinsley, pictured at Clyde for the opening of the new memorial building by Sir Dallas Brooks 21

dral, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Chaucer and Milton besides other English Ex. books! We haven’t been swimming yet as first, we might get colds for the Gov. and now the pool is too dirty. We started Sport’s Day training on Monday, once round the field and exercises.

window. We then piled her into the engine and wheeled her up to the stage where we began mopping our brows and blowing our noses. Finally we received our prize, three small cakes of chocolate for the most sustained group. It was all quite exciting, ‘fair enough’ in fact! When the mistresses had gone we gave rides to everyone. Miss Hay said if she had known we had made Tootle, we would have got another prize for the best made at Clyde! So, altogether it was a very successful evening. After the mistresses had gone, we danced, then had ice-cream and coffee for supper, tidying up and bed. I slept till 7.30.

Fancy Dress Yesterday was the annual fancy dress ball and six of us in Matric went as the Clyde Fire Brigade. We spent the last week ringing up Woodend for helmets and uniforms but they were all at a parade in Bendigo.

When we did eventually get the helmets, Sis nearly took them from us. She said we were impudent making them go to all this trouble. Then she relented and we asked Miss Hay when she came back from town and she said yes! We found the bell in the cellar when we found the box and tried to get it out of there and had an hilarious evening, only to find a better box outside. We painted Tootle all Friday afternoon with bright red paint Crawford bought in Woodend and on Saturday we put the final touches to wheels, mudguards and hoses, ladders, buckets etc. He was a great success, so much so that Miss Hay wants a photo put in The Cluthan. We had to get dressed up again on Sunday for all our fans to take photos.

Tomorrow we are going to Melbourne to the Herald Art Show. We are going by mid-day train and have to know at least 100 paintings!!!

FEATURE STORIES, COMMEMORATING 1915

In 1915 two Cluthans were produced full of stories, poems and descriptions of activities of ‘the war efforts’. The Editorial in the May 1915 edition reads: The war now more than ever engrosses all our thoughts. Although nearly nine months have passed since peace was broken in August last, for our Australian, the last troops of the Dominions to come under fire, it has but just begun. Recent events in the Dardanelles have brought us face to face with the reality of war. We are no longer merely spectators. We notice with regret in the lists published by the Defence Department the names of relatives of members of the staff and old girls of the School and take this opportunity of expressing our sympathy with them in their anxiety.

We didn’t have Tootle in the dining room only the broken down red wheelbarrow with a tiny red billy with ‘fire’ written on it! We left him in the hall covered up. In the middle of the meal we got a junior from the bottom of the table to ring the bell and we all tore out amid clapping and came back five minutes later – amid more clapping – mopping our brows! Finally we disappeared through the kitchen, then marched round the terrace and up to the hall. There, we got poor Tootle into action and when Miss Hay came in we stood to attention. Soon Sandy slipped out and changed into an old woman, curlers, nightie and bed jacket and when the time came she issued forth screams from the project box and shook powder everywhere but unfortunately, she dropped the powder tin! Anyway we tore around the room a few times and then rescued her. Varcoe climbed the gym ladder and the rest of us threw pretend water, using hoses. We rescued Sandy most dramatically through the back

Our pride is thrilled by the gallant achievements of our troops, while our sorrow is aroused for the fallen.

That we may show something of our thought for our soldiers, each day at the conclusion of dinner, acting on the suggestion of the Head Master of Wesley College, we drink to the health of our men and wish them “Safe Return”.

Our efforts in the direction of assisting the various War Relief Societies have so far been steadily maintained and we feel they will be freshly stimulated by the accounts that are reaching us of our troops on active service, for there is surely greatly increased need each day for help of every kind.

(Note: The photo of the ‘Fire Brigade’ is on page 215 of “Clyde School – An Uncommon History”, showing Mary Davidson – fire captain, Rosemary Hanson, Susan VarcoeCocks, Elizabeth Goode, Rosemary Holt and Suzanne Sanderson)

A Letter From France gives further evidence: Just ten days before we broke up for Christmas last year we were asked to give a contribution of work to the French Red Cross. We decided on bed socks and in this time 105 pairs were knitted by the girls and teachers. They were grey, with red, white and blue tops to please the Indians, who like gay colours. Our gift went off with those of other workers and we were pleased to receive in March from Madame Crivelli a 22

letter written to her by her sister, Madame Caubet, directrice of the Buffon Military Hospital in Paris, in which she thanks the people of Melbourne for their help. We give an extract from this letter:

We were way back in Australia And this war was far away.

We were shearing on the station A year ago to-day, I can close my eyes and think I see The wool-shed, as it lay With its iron roof shimmering whitely In the hot Australian sun, With the dusty flocks around it Being brought in from the run.

“What a pleasant surprise! How good, generous and large-hearted is your town of Melbourne, to help from so far off, our poor sick and wounded soldiers. My joy was very great on seeing such very useful and comfortable garments and also those adorable little notes, which speak afar to the unknown. Alas! We need so many things – daily our task gets more complicated.

These unfortunates arrive almost naked and you can guess how welcome were your soft woollen shirts and nightingales. One cannot buy flannel in Paris now, as it is all used up.

I can hear the din and shouting As they yard the frightened sheep, Hear the busy sheep-dogs barking As their lively watch they keep; I can hear the noisy whirring Of the engine as it works, And that noise is sweetest music To the thundering of the Turks.

We have about sixty English and other poor wounded whose legs are amputated and some whose feet have been frozen in the trenches, besides ‘our own’. My beloved English boys we attended to first. Since your gifts came from generous British women, they like our hospital and love us to speak in their own tongue.

To one Londoner, who was shot twice in the legs, I gave a pipe. He begged for some Birds’ Eye, and told me he had a wife and three children, and begged me to return and talk to him. In another ward I have two English and one Scotch, this last, badly wounded, is a stoic and when I complimented him on his great courage, his only grief was that he could not finish a few more of those d... Germans. Another English is a boy of seventeen, with an angelic head, so young, so touching. He has just passed away and implored me not to leave him. How my heart filled with bitterness at the sight of this dying, beautiful flower fading away so early in life. We put an English flag upon his coffin and also the very last of chrysanthemums from my garden. Poor child!

We had finished our day’s shearing, And were loafing round the shed, 'Member Bill was reading war-news When suddenly he said, “Look here, you chaps, I’ll tell you this – It’s time for us to go; They’re wanting men and still more men – It’s up to us, you know.”

And all the boys were silent there; Then someone shook his head: “This war is not my business and It’s not for me,” he said.

And most of them were with him, too, But Jimmy, you and I, Both knew that we were going As each caught the other’s eye.

One Belgian here is a wounded sergeant only fourteen years of age. He saved his captain from the hail of German bullets, took the place of his killed officers and conducted his men through German fire. He had seen his father taken prisoner by the Germans and his mother killed by them. He vowed to avenge them. He longs to return to the fight because, says he, ‘My men have only a corporal to command them.’ He looks but a rosy-cheeked little girl.

So that is why we’re lying here In this dark cursed hole, While the odds are long against us If we ever come out whole.

And ‘midst this hell of smoke and shell My thoughts keep running back To the sunny, grassy plains at home And the shady cool bush track.

Be my interpreter to those of my sisters in heart, who joined so generously in their friendly help of our wounded, and implore them not to stop in their work of mercy.”

I’d like to tell the fellows there What we chaps think of them: But, never mind, they’ll find out soon When we come back again.

It’s hard to tear one’s thoughts away From home and memories dear, But we must do it now, old chap, And fight our fight out here.

FROM THE DECEMBER 1915 CLUTHAN JUST A YEAR AGO

Just a year ago, old fellow, A year ago to-day,

By Edith Armstrong Clyde 1912-1915 23

tic to have kept it even within these bounds. One bus was wiped out of existence with every passenger in it, and one conductor told me his bus had missed the spot by five seconds!

A LETTER FROM LONDON, 1915

Dear Girls – I have just come from seeing one of the many places that have suffered in the awful air raid on Wednesday night. One whole street is completely wrecked, and there is a huge hole in the ground where the bomb fell, or rather one of the bombs, for five are said to have been dropped just about the spot. The street is barricaded and some the wrecked houses propped up. Of course, not a window is left – thousands and thousands have been blown to atoms, including some of the hospital windows. This ruined street is in one of the most thickly populated parts of the city. Huge fires occurred but fortunately the great Cathedral was untouched – terrible as it would be, I am sure everyone of us would rather St Paul’s and even the Abbey, were destroyed than any of the hospitals.

The hospital has at this moment 1,600 patients of whom about 1,000 are Australian and New Zealand lads. This is the hospital I visit most often and to which I have a permanent permit allowing one to visit on any day and at any hour. There are five floors and many wards on each floor, and when I tell you that each floor has as many beds as the whole of the new Melbourne Hospital, it will give you some idea of its vastness. There is an enormous flat roof, bomb-proof (as nearly as anything not 20 feet underground can be bomb-proof) covered with dear little shelter-sheds and sun-houses that turn on a pivot, so that one can bask to the last moment in sunshine and never feel the wind. Some contain pianos, gramophones and games, and all have comfortable seats and tables in them. As you may guess, there is a magnificent view of London from this roof-garden.

At one of them there is a dear Scotch lad of 18, one of his legs has been taken off at the thigh; another had 28 wounds with a terribly smashed arm and shrapnel all over him. He was asleep when the terrible sounds of bombs exploding and our guns began firing when he shouted in his sleep, “Save the women and children, I’ll fight to the last.” Then when he began to wake, he called out “Duck your heads boys!” thinking he was in the trenches again. Our wild Australian boys – of whom there are several hundred at this hospital alone – all those who could move at all flew out of bed and up to the roof, and had to be fetched down by the nurses, but not before they had all distinctly seen the Zeppelins and the falling bombs. It has given them, especially the nerve wrecks, a terrific shock, poor dears, as though they had not had enough in the trenches. Then at 10.40 the first canon shot boomed out. Oh such an ominous, blood-curdling sound! I turned out the gas and ran down four stories of stairs and out onto the street to see two Zeppelins at such an enormous height (about two miles) that they appeared not more than three to four feet in length, and every moment they became obscured in the luminous gases they manufacture and envelope themselves in. I saw many bombs dropped and shells explode from our guns. This continued for quite half-an-hour and within four miles of where I am writing.

I think the sisters and nurses have a very soft spot in their hearts for our boys, though they are such an ‘undisciplined’ lot of darlings. If they can stand up at all there is no keeping them still, you know, and I am constantly coming into a ward and finding tremendous scrimmages going on … One man, who has lost a leg and has a bound-up head, is careering over the beds pursued by two or three, with an arm in a sling, or with only one, or a leg in plaster, or an eye gone, etc, and just screaming with laughter – the poor sisters are always having to unmake apple-pie beds!

When I take Australian newspapers into a ward of our boys, they come round me like bees round a flower and it is such a joy if I happen to have the one each most values. It is awfully hard to get papers and fresh preserves but the British-Australian Office is very generous with whatever they receive from Australia.

At 4 o’clock, when the boys have tea, I went to speak to Private Naylor (a bed patient), whose father is a doctor at Sunbury, and noticed he was not eating his bread and butter. I said, “Aren’t you hungry?” “Yes” he laughed, “but I want some more jam!” So I walked over to the table in the centre of the ward where the ‘up’ patients were sitting at their meal, and said I wanted the jam for Naylor. “Jam, jam,” exclaimed a young rascal of an Australian, “I never heard of such a thing, why he’ll be wanting flowers on his grave next!” Of course the whole ward was convulsed and the boys say he bubbles on like that the whole day and keeps them all merry. Isn’t it a mercy, girls, that they can still feel the joys of life outweighing the sorrows?

Since then I have been with four wounded soldiers who begged me to take them to see the ruins from the worst of the fires caused by the incendiary bombs.

The police gave us special facilities everywhere, and the chief of the whole London Fire Brigade, Col Fox, even took the trouble to explain what the general chaos looked like to one young Tommy, who is perfectly blind. All the men were from the eye hospital. What the fire has done is of far, far greater magnitude than I ever dreamt! The work of the firemen has been gigan-

By C. Pennefather, Clyde staff member.

24

OUT OF SCHOOL

THE WAR STUDY CLASS

Our war activities have increased this year. From knitting scarves and mittens we have advanced to socks, Balaclavas and cardigans. Since December we have made over 350 woollen articles, which we have sent to the French Red Cross Society. Mrs Guthrie sent us a number of Belgian roses, which realised about five pounds. Every girl wore one on April 8th, King Albert’s birthday. The School has subscribed to a wool fund and each week the different forms hand in their collection of money for the Belgian Relief Fund.

Since the beginning of the year Miss Remington has been holding a War Study Class for the Old Girls(!), instead of the former Literature Class. She traced the war for us from the very beginning almost up to the present time. We always had to keep several months behind the events of the day, for it was only the past events which could be treated with any certainty.

Gradually Miss Remington sorted out for us the bewildering facts of the first few months and gave us a concise and connected account of the invasion of Belgium, the advance on Paris and the decisive defeat of the Germans on the Marne. With her help our hazy notions of the Balkan States gave place to a far clearer impression of the various races which compose them and the relative strength of their influence on the final issue. The lesson devoted to Constantinople (now Istanbul) was, I think, the most interesting of all …

THE CLYDE PATRIOTIC CONCERT, XMAS 1914.

Remembering the debt which we owe to the Belgian people, we decided last year that instead of having our annual prize-giving, we would give a patriotic concert in aid of the Belgian Relief Fund. Our efforts were aided by Miss Daniell, Miss Robson, who arranged the national dances and Mrs Mason who taught us the National Anthems.

THE CLYDE CONCERT

Clyde made various efforts in one way or another to help the War Funds, but perhaps the most successful was the concert which, under the patronage and in the presence of the French and Serbian consuls, was held at St Mary’s Hall on July 23rd. The parents and friends of the girls responded most generously and there was a good audience to listen to the program which had been arranged by Miss Daniell and Miss Robson. …

BELGIAN RELIEF ACTIVITIES

In order to relieve the gallant little Belgian nation, which is suffering so much for the sake of the civilized world, an appeal has been made to Australian and New Zealand citizens. In this appeal we are asked to feed the Belgians for two days out of every month.

As the result of this appeal a certain day, March 26th, was set apart on which flags should be sold in aid of this fund. For although we hear of many refugees escaping to England and other countries, there are still in Belgium 7,000,000 starving, miserable and often homeless people. Melbourne presented a scene of much gaiety and activity on March 26th. Flags flew from all trams and buildings and a procession of cars decorated with crimson, golden and black, passed through the city … Madame Melba rendered many stirring patriotic songs. Flag sellers visited Clyde, selling many flags. The amount contributed by Australians on Flag Day was estimated at 8,600 pounds.

… During the interval Mr Norman Trenery made an appeal on behalf of the French Red Cross (for which the concert was held). The audience responded very generously during the auction that followed. The flags of the Allies, in many cases made by the girls themselves, sold for various prices, averaging 20 pounds; the Union Jack and the Belgian flag brought 25 pounds each. Further funds were made by a quick raffle and the sale of sweets among the audience.

There was another short play, the chief parts being taken by Miss Robson (whose acting was greatly admired) and Mr Helton Daniell. After two more songs

by Mr Tralford Foster the curtain rose for the final performance of the evening – the National dances of the Allies, danced by the girls in the costume of the country which they represented. Each dance was preceded by the anthem of the country (the same as last year’s concert), with the addition of the Serbian and Italian sets, and a squad of Australian soldiers, who surely, never passed the height standard, but in spite of this seemed to be experts at drill. After the singing of the National Anthem the curtain descended halfway, stuck, rose again and finally dropped on a scene of wildly-waving flags and cheering girls ...

... On April 8th ... the birthday of King Albert of Belgium … roses were sold in the streets, blended in the Belgian colours of black, yellow and red ... another 5,000 pounds was added to the fund.

Many concerts and fetes have been held with the aim of helping the fund and generous indeed has been the response. A weekly subscription collected from all classes at Clyde generally results in 3 – 4 pounds being sent to the Belgian Fund. If the generosity thus shown by Australia continues unto the end, we may hope that the Belgians will not suffer too deeply for their heroism.

By Lorna Webb Ware and Beryl Beggs

We were pleased to hand in to the French Red Cross the sum of 253 pounds raised by this concert.

25

To have ‘German’ Measles is considered to be in very bad taste!  The knitting girls had advanced from scarves and mittens to socks (of all colours) to hats, balaclavas and cardigans, so committed were they to supporting the War Effort.  1Vb allowed only 20 minutes to knit socks, during Thursday class of ‘Legends from Greece and Rome’.  Borders showed prowess over Day Girls in all team sports: running, tennis, basketball and hockey.  Form Flag Races were very popular, as were interhouse and interschool flag races (running) – Five schools hosted by CEGGS this year were GGGS (3rd), Ruyton, Roshercon, CEGGS (1st) and Clyde (2nd).  Eight girls were elected to the Sports Committee.  New ‘lessons’ introduced, Botany and Theoretical Geometry. Also Ambulance Classes after May, in which Old Girls were asked to join. Cooking Classes were very popular.  Exam results would be pinned up on main Notice Board, announced by the ‘second bell’.  School bell then emits terrible and very strange noise after cracking.  August 23rd: ten Clyde Girls confirmed at All Saints Church, East St Kilda.  Class Numbers: V1b = 9, V1a = 11?, Vb ?, Vr (new form, new flag) ?, Va = 16, ‘V’ Total = 36 + 1Vb = 21, 1Va (Colours: light blue, brown and black), 1V (flag in crimson, bound in gold).  Borders reached 55 (24 in Ingleton, 31 in Faireleight). How many Day Students?  Oct. 27th: Annual Fencing Exhibition and Clyde Class Prize. How many years?  In reference to Public Examinations, also Music, the University Schools’ Board new examination scheme commencing 1916, the Cluthan Editor wrote: “Thus it will happen that those girls who are in the Junior and Senior Public forms next year will be the last of their race and we thus early wish them a most successful end”  Another COGA meeting at Clyde: Miss Henderson (President) announced election results of 1916 office-bearers, who will have the task of framing some rules for the Association’s guidance.  Ballroom dancing lessons with Margot McBean and M. Bibron.  Mrs Fairbairn’s Ball attracted all the Borders who dressed up in gold and silver.  Saturday Expeditions got them to the Zoo and Sandringham.  1915 Melbourne Cup winner “Patrobus” was celebrated by the owner’s daughter back at Clyde.

OTHER ACTIVITIES



Since March of this year we have made a regular weekly contribution to the Belgian Relief Fund, in all thirty-four instalments totalling £105. In addition to this we have responded to various other appeals through the year. On French Day we bought £7 worth of flags and emblems, on Allies’ Day £3.15s was spent in buttons, and on Wattle Day we subscribed £5 for the Children’s Charity Fund. The girls made a number of the gum leaves which they afterwards bought on Australia Day. The latest appeal, which touched all hearts, was that of the President of the Societé Maternelle, founded for the assistance of the little French babies born during the war. We gladly subscribed £8 for this project.

On two occasions we have helped at fetes. At Yarrien we repeated the National Pageant we showed in July; at Merriwa we gave Morris dances at the French Village Fair, besides being responsible for the cake stall.

Knitting continues very steadily. We send away a big parcel at intervals to different centres. To the Australian Hospital in Paris, of which Dr Sexton is the head, we have sent several boxes of goods. The contributions to the Wool Fund amount to £15 and the number of articles knitted to 800. We are always glad to answer any appeal that is made to us, when we can, for we feel that nothing that we can do can show in the smallest degree our appreciation of the great sacrifices our soldiers are making for us.

1915 CLYDE TIMELINE

Clyde School in its fifth year at Alma Road, St Kilda, being fully directed by its founder Miss IH.  21 New ‘Old Girls’ became members after leaving Clyde at the end of 1914.  April 12th: Old Girls Association held at Clyde, St Kilda: 3 staff – Miss Henderson (Pres’), Miss Daniell and Miss Remington (VPs) and about 21 new Associate Members. Business: any member could become a Life Member for two guineas. Subscriptions could be paid for by cheque, postal notes or stamps for 2/6.  First ‘Cluthans’ Book established ritual of attendees signing ... *Please WHERE is this book now?*  Reading classes for Old Girls would be replaced by War Study Classes at 4pm every Monday.  COGA’s 1914 Annual Dux Prize of 8 volumes of Browning awarded to Leslie Henderson (niece of IH).  Old Girls lost basketball match against Present Girls.  Easter 1915 Miss Olga Hay and Mona Learmonth won Portland Golf Tournament.  Old Girls news: Joan Weigall (Lindsay) “intends to take up Architecture next year, but in the mean time is preparing herself for the course”. 

26

REUNIONS

CLASS OF 1964

CLASS OF 1954

Nine of us met at Sue Schudmak (Sproat)’s house in South Yarra for lunch the day before the COGA AGM. As it was only a small gathering we were really all able to talk to each other and have a good old catch up. We were all delighted that Joanna Baillieu and Ailsa Simmie (Mason) had made such an effort to come down from Queensland and Janet Disney (Clarke), the latter whom most of us had not seen for years, had come from Sydney.

On October 16th thirteen Clyde Old Girls gathered at the home of Christina Hayward (Pym), to celebrate 60 years since leaving Clyde. We enjoyed delicious Delatite Demelza Cuvee Rose kindly donated by Vivienne Ritchie (Knox-Knight). With much mirth we watched a DVD of some ancient photographs taken of us all whilst still at Clyde, which even included a sample of Mrs Calder’s art work, Miss Bowden in her famous tiger rag and Miss Hay with a cockie on her head! We continued the fun down at Bacash Restaurant. Before we ate our delicious lunch Gillian Mallinder (Piesse) said Grace and then we listened to a list of School requirements read by Debo McNabb (Grimwade) sent to our parents in 1949 which included one eiderdown, three Linen bags, a table napkin ring, navy knickers and other items which had to be obtained from either Ball and Welch or S.B. Simpson in the Manchester Unity Building. Everyone who interrupted the reading was off honours. Hope Dodds (Kennedy) and Angie Wawn had both come from New South Wales and Hope was staying with Sandra Kay (Moran). Susie Murphy (Crouch) from Queensland was with us having just been on one of her safaris in the outback, she was staying with Jocelyn Mitchell (Low). Jocelyn had helped to organise the event. Fiona Cameron (Shaw) drove from South Australia to be with us and was spending the night in Barwon Heads with Belinda Roper (Manifold). Jenny Shaw (Happell) and Dina MacNamara (Callaway) were also present to enjoy the day and the endless chatter and laughter.

Back row, L-R: Janet Disney (Clarke), Clem Hawker (Davies), Joanna Baillieu, Janet Gordon (Affleck), Celia Jones (Griffin), Felicity Motteram (Neilson), Sue Schudmak (Sproat) Front row, L-R: Ailsa Simmie (Mason), Anne Wyld (Law-Smith)

Back row, L-R: Dina MacNamara (Callaway), Joc Mitchell (Low), Debo McNab (Grimwade) (bending over), Hope Kennedy (Dodds), Christina Hayward (Pym), Sue Murphy (Crouch), Sandra Kay (Moran) and Viv Ritchie (Knox-Knight) Front row, L-R: Fiona Cameron (Shaw), Bindy Roper (Manifold), Gillian Mallinder (Piesse), Jenny Happell (Shaw) and Angie Wawn 27

CLASS OF 1968

Lunch at Susan Story (Duncan)’s home, Lovett Bay. We had a MARVELLOUS time at Sue’s as you can imagine and weren’t we lucky – all of us on planes on Sunday and safely home before the deluge. We had glorious weather and a wonderful weekend was had by all. Full of boats and ferries and delightful bush and Sue and Bob’s house nestled amongst the spotted gums looking down on a serene Lovett Bay (that day at least).

Climbing up the path to Sue’s, L-R: Margie TempleSmith (Bond), Susie Trethewie (Harrison), Bambi Hanson (Brown), Ann Willcock (Thomson), Jo Rankin (Mirams)

Julie Cole (Baird), Georgie Barraclough (Moran), Margie Temple-Smith (Bond), Rosie FairbairnWatt (Fairbairn), Charles Henry (guest), Gay Lewis (Grimwade)

L-R: Susan Trethewie (Harrison), Charles Henry (guest), Rosie Fairbairn-Watt (Fairbairn), Henry Lewis, Jo Rankin (Mirams), Bob Story, Bruce Rankin, Margie Temple-Smith (Bond) hidden, Georgie Barraclough (Moran), Ann Willcock (Thomson), Denise Calder (Landale)

L-R: Susie Ryan (Boynton), Georgie Barraclough (Moran), Denise Calder (Landale)

Susan Story (Duncan) with Susie Trethewie (Harrison) looking in the window as Sue cooks paella!

L-R: Sarah Bullen (Lobban), Julie Cole (Baird), Donald McNeur (guest), Bambi Hanson (Brown), Susan Story (Duncan), Nic Willcock, Susie Ryan (Boynton), Gay Lewis (Grimwade), Rod Hanson 28

CLASS OF 1970

CLASS OF 1974

At a lunch, August 2014, organised by Margi GunnBrowne (Gunn).

A forty year reunion was held at the Kooyong Tennis Club in October 2014, organised by Cas Bennetto and Jane Dumbrell (Selleck).

L-R: Elise Murch (Austin), Miriam Welton (Williams), Sally Davies (Montague), Jackie Brown (Kemp) and Deb West (Blakiston)

Tina Gooding and Liz Balharrie

Class of 1974, Back L-R: Trish Kearney, Margery Higgs, Deb Houghton, Debbie Barnes (Brack) Middle L-R: Dianne Morrison, Jane Dumbrell, Liz Balharrie, Caroline Thomson (Kemp), Cathy Faulkner (Herd), Judy Paterson (Handbury), Cas Bennetto, Deborah Noyce (Baxter), Tina Gooding Front L-R: Lyn Moore (Stevens), Michelle Cook (Chalmers), Di Reed (Diggle), Lindy Down (Bray) Absent: Caro Adams (Blakiston), Janie Pagan (Millear), Amelia Poolman, Graham Maxwell, Sue Heazlewood, Mandy Ronaldson and Elaine Baker

Class of 1968, lunch at Ann Willcock (Thomson)’s home in Ringwood on October 17th.

Sitting around the table, L-R: Andrea Wilkinson (Clarke), Margie Temple-Smith (Bond), Sue Story (Duncan), Jill Wilkinson (Gunn), Georgie Barraclough (Moran), Denise Calder (Landale), Susie Ryan (Boynton), Gay Lewis (Grimwade), Sarah Bullen (Lobban), Rosie Fairbairn-Watt (Fairbairn) Standing at the back, L-R: Amy Tong (Wong). Susie Perchey (Russell), Ann Willcock (Thomson) 29

I was lucky enough to be taken by car on the most wonderful trip to Scotland by my Clyde Woodend twin Joan Mackenzie (Bloomfield) and her husband Kenneth for three weeks in perfect weather. We visited forbears of theirs and mine. Their generosity knew no bounds.

FUTURE REUNIONS Calling all Queenslanders, a reunion is planned for later this year. For more details please contact Julia Ponder, (T) 07 3348 6644 (E) julia@comart.com.au.

OLD GIRLS’ NEWS

Susie Brookes (Lowing) is to be applauded for her continuing support and fundraising for ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) through her role as a board member of the Alison Hunter Memorial Foundation and Committee of Management member, Vice-President and Acting President of ME/CFS Australia (Victoria), [now Emerge Australia] stepping down from ME/CFS Australia (Victoria) in 2013.

Congratulations to our COGA President Margie Gillett (Cordner) who has been elected as the 64th President of the Old Geelong Grammarians Association (OGGA), and is the first non-GGS student in the role.

Margie has been on the OGGs’ committee since 2009.

This is a very demanding position and we wish her all the very best. We know she will fulfil this role in the capable, quiet and intelligent manner that she has shown as president of the COGA for the last six years.

Amanda Dyer (Lewis) wrote in an email: Rarely in life do we get a ‘smooth run’ where nothing unexpected happens. After 21 years of marriage my husband, following a short illness with cancer, passed away. My two sons and I were in shock.

The Alison Hunter Memorial Foundation (AHMF) has operated as a non-profit institution from 19982014 to advance scientific knowledge and medical care for ME/CFS. The AHMF has recently partnered with the National Centre for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases (NCNED) at Griffith University, Queensland. The Foundation therefore is no longer operating as an institution with independent charity status. The focus of Susie and the AHMF will now continue to support and fundraise for the National Centre for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases.

In due course I returned to university to study Theology. Two years later I met and married a widower with four children. Geoff wanted to be a missionary so we started taking steps in that direction.

I was determined to use my life to make a difference.

It has been a bumpy ride. People had difficulty accepting that a couple of ‘oldies’ wanted to go into the field. Raising funds, insurance, visas and selecting the right organisation were initial challenges. We serve with Ywam – Youth with a mission which is a global company of 20,000 volunteers.

Judy Ling Wong was elected an Honorary Fellow by the Society for the Environment in 2014. The Society operates under a Royal Charter granted by The Queen in 2004. It licenses professional institutions to register their members as Charted Environmentalist (CEnv).

This is a professional qualification akin to Chartered Engineer and Chartered Scientist. The Society’s aim is to establish a body of professionals across all sectors with the skills and experience to deploy and develop best practice in order to mitigate the environmental effects of their activities. Twenty three Institutions are currently licensed to award the qualification with 7,000 of their members having been registered as Chartered Environmentalists.

Kazakhstan was our destination. It is a central Asian country and former Soviet republic which extends from the Caspian sea in the west and borders with China and Russia in the east. The world’s ninth largest country, with an abundance of valuable minerals and an Islamic government, is fast becoming a modern, thriving country with a love of sport.

I am part of the anti trafficking movement. We help people who have been sold or stolen into the slave trade. I work in a women’s shelter helping them to rehabilitate. We provide practical help and hope. Women are resilient especially when they have children.

The desire to love and protect our children is very strong no matter the circumstances.

Susie Strachan (Skene) wrote: I just want to say how much I enjoy reading The Cluthan. Thank you all and your many helpers for the wonderful 100th edition, I have read every word front to back.

Margie Robinson (Begg) wrote from England: My grandson William John Robinson is working in his Gap Year at Timbertop, after leaving Kings School Brunton in Somerset last year, and is thoroughly enjoying every minute of it. His sister, Lucy Alice Robinson worked in her Gap Year at Corio a couple of years ago, having left Lewiston school in Dorset, coaching tennis etc. and having a wonderful time too.

The Archives Report was particularly interesting with the items people have ‘tucked away’ such as the Tennis Club sterling silver belt buckle, the Sea Folk collection of lino cuts – what a job locating the 13 ‘mystery artists’. One must feel sorry for Mr. Knight, 30

the charming, kind-hearted handsome art teacher. No doubt his arrival each week was looked forward to!

seen them all for a year since they were with us in our summer. It was seriously cold ... especially having left our summer.

The generosity of those parting with their treasures; particularly those awarded to themselves is completely selfless. I’m keeping my black velvet jacket – sorry!!

I so enjoyed taking Phoebe and Rory to and from school, the constant chatter in the car, meeting their friends and watching them perform in assembly. What a joy it was to be cooking again on the Aga, all those wonderful roasts and slow cooked casseroles and the memories of thawing out baby lambs from the paddock in the bottom left hand oven when I was a child.

And the shopping, never a dull moment. Waitrose was just as brilliant as ever. Then there was the farm supply shop which had everything from fence posts to food. We needed bags of sheep pellets (for the pet lambs that no one could bare to part with so they were now sheep), dog nuts for the spaniel and of course ‘organic hay’ for the guinea pigs!

Photos of reunions are great fun to see. No-one has really changed and many can wear their hair below the collar without the school hairdresser hacking away. No wonder we all had long hair to avoid that trauma.

Many thanks again to all of you for the many hours, days, weeks, months it takes to compile a final edition each year for our enjoyment. I’m sure your generosity of time and hard work is greatly appreciated by all who receive The Cluthan. Well done and thank you again.

The sheep had to be fed daily and I had to break the ice on the trough every morning so they could drink.

Luckily it was mainly dry and frosty which made life much easier. But we forget how seriously cold it is and one can’t go outside without a hat and coat. At least it was perfect weather for walking the dog, Phoebe’s riding lessons and wonderful walks with dogs and children, often several miles to the next village arriving at the typical English pub, which was most welcome! As it was a particularly cold spell everyone was using more oil than normal for heating and even the most organised people were running low, or running out, because of the delay with deliveries. And we thought it was cold at Clyde!!

Meg Hornabrook mentioned that since publishing her book ‘The El Questro Story’, she had been travelling in the Outback whenever the opportunity presented itself. When she’s back in Melbourne she works on a private, limited publication of her own story, which she describes as being ‘on the home straight’. “Once it is finished, I have several projects to deal with before spending most of the winter in the Outback once again, so will not be available until the spring at the earliest”. Her El Questro book is already into its second reprint and is an absolute must-read; her choice of photos are quite stunning!

Meg also said that she always enjoys visiting the Association of Sculptors of Victoria’s sculpture exhibitions, such as the Herring Island Summer Sculpture Show and the ASV’s Annual Sculpture Exhibition (28 September to 16 October 2015) where she is likely to see exciting works done by various friends such as Bronnie Culshaw or COGs Felicity Dalgleish (Gardner) and Jackie Mackinnon (Kelly).

It was wonderful to have been able to spend so much time with the family and to be part of all their activities and most importantly be able to help Catherine’s recovery. When I left the daffodils were coming up so spring was on its way.

Angie Wawn is currently finalising her book about rescued and re-homed dogs. She has about forty stories plus photographs from people in various parts of Australia, which she considers is probably sufficient.

The book was inspired by Angie’s love for dogs, supposedly man’s (and woman’s) best friend, and the fact that they are not always treated the way we should treat our friends. The book is her small contribution to raising awareness about cruelty to dogs and honouring the generous people who are rescuing and re-homing them. After The Cluthan came out with the news about what she was doing and a request for stories from any old girls with a re-homed dog, she received a delightful story from Lil Griffiths (Lobb) about Tigger, their ‘lost dog’.

Hot off the press is a biography called ‘Plum: From Bihar to Berkley – The Extraordinary Life of Plum Rutherford Haet’ (Rhonda ‘Plum’ Rutherford, Cl’ 1939-1944), written by Andrea Palmer, who also refers to Plum’s mother Audrey Rutherford (Dickenson), a Clyde Old Girl in 1917-1918. The book is in Readings and some other bookshops (about $35.00), or it can be picked up in Melbourne via jackmack@bigpond.net.au or at the AGM in October (leading up to Christmas!).

Anne Stoney (Peardon) wrote of her trip to the UK: I wouldn’t normally choose February to visit England but I had an impromptu trip to hold the fort when Catherine (Clyde House) had pneumonia. I arrived on a clear, fine and very cold day finally getting to Wiltshire just on dusk to a wonderful welcome. I hadn’t

UPDATE FROM HANGING ROCK ACTION GROUP

This time last year we celebrated the state government’s Hanging Rock funding commitment. The 31

Hanging Rock Action Group has managed to stay pretty busy since then. We’ve reached a major milestone as Environment Minister Lisa Neville visited the Rock to launch the DELWP Hanging Rock Review, where she said “Today is the first step in looking at how Hanging Rock should be managed into the future, so we can protect it for Victorians to enjoy for years to come.”

MISSING ADDRESSES Does anyone know of the new addresses for the following COGs or any of the ‘Unknown Addresses’ in the enclosed Booklet?

Tracey Oliver (Kingsley) Clyde 1973-1974 Was – PO Box 2083, Rossmoyne WA 6148 Judith McIntyre (Scheps) Clyde 1959-1961 Was – 165/175 Kellets Rd, Waterford Valley Lakes, Rowville VIC 3178

We were definitely glass half full in May when the Heritage Council accepted our nomination of Hanging Rock Reserve to the Victorian Heritage Register. The Eastern Paddock was not added citing more work was needed. Find out more here: www.delwp.vic.gov.au/ news-and-announcements/hanging-rock-review

Nancy Duncan (Coles) Clyde 1940-1941 Please contact Sue Schudmak (Sproat) (P) 03 9867 2663 (E) schudmak@bigpond.net.au CLYDE HOUSE NEWS 2014/2015

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE FOLLOWING AWARD WINNERS

It has been a busy and exciting year for all who are part of the Clyde community. Clyde would not run as well as it does, without the leadership of Mr Ross Patterson, who is in his third year as head of house. He is much loved within the house for his ability to make Clyde a loving and enjoyable environment to be part of. We extend a warm welcome to the new tutors into the Clyde community Ms Jane Dunell, Ms Caroline Gordon-Johnson, Ms Dianna Martin and Ms Timmee Grinham. We were also pleased to again see Ms Jane Headley, who returns to us after maternity leave. A huge thank you goes to our house matron Vivienne Murrell. The house would never run so smoothly without her guidance and the delicious food she provides at supper time, which is a highlight of living in Clyde. Finally we welcome all the new year 10’s into the house and hope that they have made a smooth transition into life at senior school and most importantly are enjoying being a part of the Clyde community.

COGA PRIZE FOR ENGLISH GEELONG GRAMMAR SCHOOL

The COGA Prize for English for 2014 was awarded to GGS students Billie Hook (Garnett House) and Stephanie Fung (Fraser House) at the GGS Prize giving and Speech Day on 19 October 2014. Billie was the GGS girls’ school captain and an International Baccalaureate (IB) candidate in 2014, while Stephanie successfully completed her VCE (her letter to COGA is reprinted below).

“To the President of the Clyde Old Girls’ Association, I am writing to thank you for the English prize I was privileged enough to win this year, both for the prize itself and the message it carries with it. For a person whose strength has always been words rather than numbers or chemicals, I am incredibly grateful for this acknowledgement. Having grown up in a society that tends to value maths and science over the written word, it has become increasingly important to me that the power of language should not be underestimated.

Thank you for providing me and past and future Geelong Grammarians with the acknowledgement that allows us proudly to state ‘I am good at English’ rather than hang our heads as we admit to being only average in other areas of study. I hope to become a writer one day and it is incredibly empowering to me to know that there are those out there who also believe writing to be something worth acknowledging. Thank you so much for this prize and for recognising the achievements of English students over the past fourteen years.”

Our house captain for 2015 is Tara O’Reilly, who has slipped into her role of house captain easily with her fun loving and inclusive nature. Tara has been a great leader throughout the year and has introduced great initiatives. We also have a great group of prefects for 2015, comprising Isabelle Cameron, Xenia Brookes, Emma Darling, Savannah Gill, Bridgette Hardy and Jilly Roberts who have helped Tara make the house a welcoming and fun environment to live in.

The first sporting event for the year was House Swimming, where we were able to come together as a house and support our fellow members of Clyde. We were lead to victory by Isabelle Sanchez, Ella Burgess and Indi Rofe. Everyone put in a great effort to contribute to the win; they were either swimming in the races or cheering enthusiastically on the sideline. We had outstanding results with Zoe Burgess winning her division.

BRAEMAR COLLEGE

The Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Award 2014 Sebastian Antoine COGA Prize for Community Service Bridie Johnstone

House music was led by Tara O’Reilly, Tara Alizzi 32

and Anis Aziz, who put a lot of work into the house music and their efforts should be commended. The House choir sang ‘Proud Mary’, by Tina Turner. The choir sang with gusto and performed outstandingly.

The small group consisted of Tara Alizzi, Tara O’Reilly, Xenia Brookes, Lucy Needle, Mima Hart, Isabelle Luxton, Julia Tallis and Zoe Burgess; together they sang ‘Take me to church’ by Hozier. The Duet which comprised Tara Alizzi and Tara O’Reilly blew us all away with the song ‘Talk is Cheap’ by Chet Faker. We may not have won however each year Clyde is getting stronger and stronger in house music. It is an area in which the house has not been previously very successful.

house outing to Anglesea to participate in team building exercises. Together in small groups we worked through interesting activities, where we had to operate together as a team to complete the task. This was a fun day out and it really brought the house together.

We have also had a Mexican night, which was put together by our wonderful matron Viv. Viv’s theme nights are a highlight of the year. Mexican night was a huge success with an entertaining limbo competition and beautiful food.

Rewinding the clock a touch, we step back into the end of 2014, where Clyde dominated the Athletics carnival once again. Aths day is an important date on the GGS calendar. The weather last year was fantastic and I am sure everyone had a great day out and enjoyed being a part of the wider Geelong Grammar community. We had two girls from within Clyde break school records. Xenia Brookes broke the girls open high jump record, with a height of 1.66m. Lauren Ryan broke the girls open 3000m by 6 seconds; that record had stood since 1993.

Another group of girls to be congratulated are the rowers that produced outstanding results this year; Isabelle Cameron, Xenia Brookes, Tara O’Reilly, Bridgette Hardy, Sasha Culley and Indi Rofe who were in the 1st VIII. They had an incredible season where they won the Australian under 19 and schoolgirls’ titles at the Sydney International rowing regatta after winning the Head of the River and Head of School Girls in Victoria. The 2nd girls crew also must be congratulated. It included from Clyde; Emma Collins, Jilly Roberts and Alice Chirnside. They were the first ever 2nd’s crew from GGS to take part in the Sydney International rowing regatta and the only school 2nd’s crew to make it into the A Final for the national title. They also won at the Head of the River.

A special mention goes to Bridgette Hardy and Sasha Culley, who have qualified to represent Australia, in the junior eight world championships, in Rio later this year.

The class of 2014 were a truly wonderful cohort who made a fantastic contribution to the House and assisted in the strengthening of the Academic culture of Clyde House. The 2014 DUX of Clyde was our House Vice-Captain Alexandra Kent. As a year level the girls achieved a set of outstanding results; 45% of girls attained an ATAR score of over 90 (top 10%) and 82% of girls attained an ATAR score of over 80 (top 20%).

Overall Clyde has had a very successful year and is definitely the best house to be a part of in the GGS Community!

Samantha Reis (CL12)

At the beginning of the year we had a wonderful

GGS Clyde House 2015 33

CLYDE HOUSE GIRLS WITH A CLYDE SCHOOL CONNECTION – 2015

Student

Relationship

Clyde Old Girl

Clyde Years

Married Name

Serena Brookes Yr10 Xenia Brookes Yr12

Niece Niece

Susie Lowing Susie Lowing

CL 1969 CL 1969

Brookes Brookes

Matilda Carnegie Yr11

Grand-daughter Great-niece Great-niece

Carmen Clarke Sylvia Clarke Georgina Clarke

CL 1950-56 CL 1960-67 CL 1955-60

Carnegie McLachlan Bragg

Alice Chirnside Yr11

Great -niece Great -niece Great -niece Great -niece

June Chirnside Judy Chirnside Ann Ramsay Mary Ramsay

CL 1934-39 CL 1934-36 CL 1938-43 CL 1943-48

Rogers Bey Hope-Johnston Sutherland

Sasha Culley Yr11

Daughter Niece

Annette Devilee Rosalyn Devilee

CL/GGS 1974-78 CL/GGS 1974-76

Devilee Whish Ferguson

Olivia Devilee Yr10

Niece Niece

Annette Devilee Rosalyn Devilee

CL/GGS 1974-78 CL/GGS 1974-76

Devilee Whish Ferguson

Lucy Fletcher Yr11

Daughter

Jane Fleetwood

CL/GGS 1974-77

Mathilda Harley Yr11

Great-niece

Helen Kennedy

CL 1939-48

Rollo

Jamima Jamieson Yr10

Great-grand-daughter Great-great-niece Great-niece Great-niece

Betty Anderson Flo Jamieson Joanne Jamieson Carol Jamieson

CL 1923-24 CL 1917-19 CL 1943-49 CL 1949-54

Jamieson Calvert Jackson Hancock

Isabelle Luxton Yr11

Grand-daughter Great-niece Great-niece Great-niece

Margot Davey Deirdre Davey Margaret Luxton Elizabeth Luxton

CL 1946-53 CL 1948-54 CL 1933-38 CL 1925-30

Woods Naylor Roffey Howard

Olivia McFarlane Yr11

Daughter

Amanda Gubbins

CL/GGS 1974-79

McFarlane

Sammy Reis Yr12

Grand-daughter Great-niece Great-niece Great-niece

Mary Murphy Elizabeth Murphy Anne Murphy Joan Kinnear

CL 1931-37 CL 1931-38 CL 1938-45 CL 1940-45

Moore a’Beckett Armitt Moore

India Rofe Yr12

Great-grand-daughter Niece

Zeerust Cameron Julie O’Connor

CL 1920-21 CL/GGS 1973-76

Clarke Farrell

Scarlett Southey Yr10

Grand-daughter Great-niece

Valerie Clarke Margaret Southey

CL 1935-38 CL 1936-38

Southey Mims

Lizzy Spiden Yr11

Grand-daughter Great-niece Great-niece Great-great-niece Great-grand-daughter

Ann Ross Helen Ross Rosemary Ross Mary Ross Susan Staughton

CL 1956-61 CL 1958-63 CL 1959-65 CL 1935-40 CL 1929-31

Spiden Taylor Borthwick Winter-Irving Ross

Annabelle Stewart Yr11

Great-niece

Susan Finlay

CL 1954-59

Sutherland

Julia Tallis Yr10

Grand-daughter

Mary Learmonth

CL 1948-55

Tallis

34

VALE WE RECORD, WITH REGRET, THE FOLLOWING DEATHS

Melissa Jane Batt 24 April 1960 – 16 June 2015 Clyde 1973-1975, GGS Clyde House 1976-1977

Suzanne Joyce Knight (Tallis) 7 November 1930 – 19 March 2011 Clyde 1943-1948

Sally Anderson Bennett (Skene) 13 January 1949 – 1 June 2015 Clyde 1962-1966

Diana Florence Learmonth (Austin) (Nicholas) 30 November 1924 – 13 July 2015 Clyde 1935-1942

Ruby Elizabeth Jean Berrell (Dunstan) (Leggo) 7 December 1917 – 1995 Clyde 1930-1931

Margaret Watkinson Ryan (Moore) 5 April 1919 – around 2000 Clyde 1929-1935

Jillian Elizabeth Boldiston (Meares) 20 August 1950 – 1 November 2014 Clyde 1964-1967

Joan Elizabeth Sargood (Withers) 29 March 1931 – 3 May 2015 Clyde 1941-1948

Joan Irving Crouch (Caldwell) 8 November 1910 – 1 February 2003 Clyde 1926-1927

Noela Mary Shannon (Adams) 21 December 1920 – 10 June 2015 Clyde 1938

Mary El Effendi (Keenan) (Burt) 14 January 1915 – 9 September 2014 Clyde 1930-1931

Mavis Jean Tottenham (Harkness) 24 January 1922 – 23 January 2015 Clyde staff – 1940s and 1970s

Kiera Alison Foletta (Stranaghan) 19 April 1920 – 23 February 2015 Clyde – house and teaching staff 1971-1976

Elizabeth Waters (Trinca) (Ashbolt) 3 April 1926 – 27 September 2014 Clyde 1941-1942

Naida Bonita Hartwig (Chaffey) 3 May 1919 – 29 August 2014 Clyde 1935-1936

Serena Mary Wood 17 November 1959 – 27 June 2012 Clyde 1969-1974

Christina Karen Sandford Hindhaugh (Beggs) OAM Elspeth Anne Woolcott (Thompson) 17 February 1944 – 31 July 2015 15 May 1928 – 28 May 2015 Clyde 1957-1961 Clyde 1941-1944 lived in Geelong and Torquay. The children roamed freely outdoors at the family’s historic Geelong homestead Raith, enjoying adventures in the 2.5 acre garden with its giant cypress hedge. However, from 1961 to 1966 the Batt family moved to live in Scotland while Melissa’s father trained and qualified as an orthopaedic surgeon at the Edinburgh College of Surgeons. At age five Melissa spent six months at a primary school in Edinburgh before returning to Australia where she was enrolled as a primary student at Morongo. She made headline news in the Geelong Advertiser with a full page photo of her in the eggand-spoon race on school sports day.

OBITUARIES Melissa Jane Batt 24 April 1960 – 16 June 2015 Clyde 1973-1975 GGS Clyde House and Timbertop 1976-1977 Melissa Jane Batt was born on 24 April 1960, the youngest of three children born to Dr Erina Batt (Lowson) and Dr Vernon Batt, an orthopaedic surgeon. Melissa’s two older brothers were Michael (b1955) and Peter (b1957). Originally from Scotland, Melissa’s mother Erina Lowson was one of four children brought up in Singapore Johore Bahru, where her father Dr Lowson was a colonial doctor in the Malaysian Medical Service. The Lowsons moved to Australia in 1940 when Japan invaded Singapore. The family settled in Geelong, near The Geelong College where they had friends and connections. Melissa’s mother Erina attended Morongo as a day student, although she always dreamt of boarding at Clyde, believing it to be the ideal school.

Melissa had a form of hearing dyslexia so her parents later moved her to a school more suited to her needs.

St Andrews Primary School (now GGS Bostock House) was run by Miss Wood and Miss Helen Wood, educators who believed in teaching and encouraging children within their capabilities. Melissa participated well and enjoyed playing football with the boys at recess time. She rode her bike to school and would take a short cut through The Geelong College prep school,

Melissa’s parents were married in January 1954 and 35

“alien territory ruled by the first and second form boarders”. Once confronted by an outraged group of GC youngsters, she donned a posh accent and declared she had permission from the headmaster Mr Watson, then rode on fearlessly.

Sally Anderson Bennett (Skene) 13 March 1949 – 1 June 2015 Clyde 1962-1966 Sally Anderson Skene was born on 13 March 1949, the first of two daughters born to Mary (Turnbull) and Tom Skene. Both the Turnbull and Skene families have an illustrious record in Australian pastoral and political history. Sally and her younger sister Susie Strachan (Skene) spent their early years on the family farm Balthayok at Avenel, Victoria. At five years old, Sally was given a bay mare called Kitty by her grandmother. This started her love of horses, riding and competing in country shows around the district.

When she outgrew her pony she was given a larger dapple grey and Susie rode Kitty. During these years, the Skene family were renowned for their hospitality, offering people a warm welcome, wonderful food and acceptance in their open, friendly home.

Melissa boarded at Clyde, Woodend from 1973-75.

Clyde became like a second family and she faced any environmental hardship with gusto – hiking, freezing winters, no home luxuries – nothing fazed Melissa.

According to her letters home she “lived on Tim Tams” which were the currency of Clyde and used to pay others to do chores you wanted to get out of.

Since Melissa was never averse to hard work, she ate the most. At Clyde she showed artistic talent; she joined the choir and wrote poetry for the Cluthan.

Headmistress Mrs Pringle was fond of Melissa, telling her mother that she always knew how Melissa was feeling because she wore a woolly hat pulled down over her eyes on certain days. With Clyde’s reputation as a school which welcomed students of all interests and academic capabilities, Melissa was happy there.

After the amalgamation with GGS, Melissa spent her final years of school at Clyde House, GGS Corio and had one term at Timbertop in early 1976.

Sally’s primary school education was at Avenel State School. At age 11 in 1962 she was sent to board at Clyde, Woodend for her secondary schooling. Sally made lifelong friendships at Clyde. Her classmate Marnie Bishop (Craig) remembers that although they were not too fond of school, they bonded together during cold winters, wondering if the teachers had radiators and electric blankets. She recalled Sally once putting a hairdryer down her bed to warm it up and the hairdryer was confiscated for the rest of the term. With her blonde hair and elegant manner, Sally was beautiful. At Clyde she won the Art prize in 1963 and 1964, joined the Art Committee in 1965 and in 1966 was the Art Club secretary and a member of the Cluthan committee. She played in the senior seconds hockey team and matriculated in 1966 with honours in English literature and modern history.

Melissa was artistic and creative.

Her cousins remember she made “beautiful colourful monsters on windcheaters” which everyone wanted. She had an innate sense of colour which she applied with gusto. One cousin wrote “I admired her talent, I imagined she was filled with frenetic activity, energy and colour. I saw her as an untamed artist”. She also “danced joyfully and wildly, with wonderful abandon and disregard for social graces”. She had so much fun, warmth and energy and “the antics she got up to made us laugh till we cried”.

Melissa’s father died when she was 24, which caused her great distress. In later years, Melissa lived a quiet life in Torquay alongside her mother, making friends among her neighbours who valued her warm and friendly presence. She had cancer for several years which has taken her life prematurely. Melissa was greatly loved by three generations of her family and cousins. Brother Peter Batt has set up a website to commemorate Melissa where friends and relatives have posted messages of love and reminiscence.

Melissa was “always imaginative and ingenious” ... “she charted her own independent path with incredible honesty and bravery”.

Sally was often happiest when working with a pencil or paintbrush. Art, books and reading were lifelong interests which gave her great pleasure. She also loved a good laugh. Clyde friend Mary-Lou AshtonJones (Nielsen) remembers driving with Sally at the wheel in bare feet and shorts when she first got her driver’s licence. Somehow they ended up in a paddock with grass up to the windscreen, collapsing with laughter like Clyde girls usually do. One of Sally’s favourite holiday places was Barwon Heads and the 13th Beach, a place where the Skene family also shared their hospitality. When Sally’s father Tom died in the 1960s, she provided great support to her mother Mary and sister Susie.

Information provided by Melissa’s mother, Dr Erina Batt, brother Peter Batt and their cousins.

36

Sally married Ian Bennett in the 1970s and they had two children, Amanda and Sam. Sadly Ian was to die of cancer, leaving Sally to raise the two children on her own. It was a tough time. Sally dedicated her life to providing the best for her children, despite the difficulties of juggling a full-time job with being a single mother. She forged a successful career in finance and medical administration, enjoying her job at Norwich Union Financial Services, Cabrini Hospital and at other places. Sally’s love and patience for her children was unwavering.

described in a Bendigo heritage study as “one of the city’s most successful 20th century entrepreneurs”.

Before going to Clyde, Joan and Betty Leggo attended school at Merton Hall in Melbourne. They were excellent divers and as schoolgirls aged 12-14 they were asked to promote the Herald Learn-to-Swim campaign by diving off the Princes Bridge into the Yarra River. Victor Leggo was a great amateur movie photographer; Betty’s nephew Stephen Laidlaw says the family has amazing film footage taken during the 1920s and 1930s of the girls diving into the river, visits to the Melbourne Cup and other historic images.

She introduced Amanda and her four step-children to horse riding at a young age. She supported Amanda during years of competitive riding, travelling around Victoria to equestrian events, coping well with the early morning starts and proud of her daughter’s achievements. Sally especially loved her blue heeler rescue dog called Bruce, a loyal companion for years.

Somehow, despite the adversity in her life, Sally found an inner strength, optimism and bravery.

Sally adored her two grandchildren Alex and Ashleigh and was proud to be a grandmother. She encouraged their interest in art and drawing. Her daughter Amanda appreciated Sally for her “love, loyalty, patience, intellect, independence and perseverance when the going got tough, her interest in art history and politics and her sense of family”.

Information adapted from the eulogy by Marnie Bishop (Craig), Cluthans and the internet.

Betty and Joan were enrolled to board at Clyde in 1930-1931, joining Ingleton house. Betty showed a talent for drama at Clyde, acting as a dairy maid (alongside Dahlis Lawson as a ‘lazy old cow’) for a Form IVB production of The King’s Breakfast to entertain Miss Tucker at the opening of the Junior Library Club-Room in 1930.

Ruby Elizabeth Jean Berrell (Dunstan) (Leggo) 7 December 1917 – 1995 Clyde 1930-1931 Ruby Elizabeth Jean Leggo (known as Betty) was born on 7th December 1917 at Pendeen, 582 St Kilda Road, Melbourne (opposite Wesley College). She and her sister Joan Laidlaw (Leggo) b1918 were the daughters of Ruby Gertrude (Crawford) and Arthur Victor Leggo who were married in February 1916.

Their family home Pendeen was described as a ‘commodious attic villa of 14 large rooms on land of 100 x 250 ft’ when it sold at auction in July 1949.

After leaving school, Betty joined the Melbourne Theatre Company, working with well-known actors such as Frank Thring and June Jago. As Betty Leggo she appeared for Garnett H Carroll Management Company at the New Theatre, Melbourne in Welded, August 1948 and at the Princess Theatre in 1950 in Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary?

On 8 October 1945, Betty married Flight Lieutenant Roberts Christian Dunstan at Geelong Grammar Chapel. The couple did not have children and both later remarried; Dunstan in 1957 and Betty to New Zealand-born actor Lloyd Berrell in 1952.

Lloyd Berrell (1926-1957) moved to Australia as a boy and became a well-known stage, radio and film actor in Sydney.

His best known stage roles were as the king in Hamlet for

Betty’s father, Arthur Victor (AV) Leggo (1875-1942) was born near Bendigo, the eleventh child of Elizabeth Jane (Rowe) and William Leggo a gold miner who had emigrated from Cornwall to Australia. A metallurgist and chemical manufacturer and merchant, he was managing director of A Victor Leggo & Company and Victor Leggo & Farmers Limited, with metal-refining works at Yarraville and Bendigo, and a director of several mining companies. His head office was in Melbourne and in 1920 he commissioned architects to build a grand Japanese-inspired California bungalow called Kalimna in Moore Street, Bendigo which the family owned until 1935. AV Leggo was 37

the Elizabethan Trust on a national tour and as Roo in the first commercial production of The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in Sydney 1956. His film credits include His Majesty O’Keefe, The Shiralee, King of the Coral Sea and Long John Silver. In April 1950, Betty Leggo and Lloyd Berrell starred together in a 3AK radio play called Honeymoon for Three. In the Newcastle Sun newspaper of 1 November 1954 under the heading Husband, Wife are Radio Team, Betty Berrell was quoted: “I’m sure getting married was our lucky decision … We feel we help each other – we are critical and at times perhaps a little unkind, but complete honesty with each other has improved our acting. We are both rather undomesticated, but somehow we muddle through”. Betty said she was not fazed by her husband’s adoring fans. Being a ‘pretty fair-haired girl’ she received many fan letters herself from radio listeners. In 1956 the Berrells worked together in the Australian Radio Productions drama series Life in the Balance, which also starred Ruth Cracknell and June Salter.

ciety then boarded a plane home to the US. The documents gave a series of clues: Betty starred opposite George Fairfax in the comedy Lullaby at St Martin’s Theatre, South Yarra. She lived in Mathoura Road, Toorak and had travelled to Italy. A passport issued in 1976 gave her name as Mrs Ruby Elizabeth J. Berrell nee Leggo. There was a photo of her marriage at GGS Chapel on 8 October 1945 to Flight Lieutenant Roberts Christian Dunstan. An OGG, Dunstan was well known as a one -legged gunner in the RAAF in World War II, was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, became a journalist and film critic for the Herald newspaper and later a Victorian MP and minister.

Some database sleuthing by Katie Rafferty of GGS Alumni Relations revealed that Betty Berrell was a Clyde Old Girl and sister of Joan Laidlaw (Leggo).

She then tracked down Betty’s nephew Stephen Laidlaw (a GGS parent and son of Joan Laidlaw) who was thrilled to be reunited with Betty’s paintings and documents Although Betty was quite a talented artist, she apparently painted for her own enjoyment and did not exhibit or sell her artwork. Betty died in 1995 (exact date not confirmed). She was a beautiful and charismatic person with a remarkable career and life story.

Tragically, Lloyd Berrell died at sea, aged only 31, on 30 December 1957 while on a trip to Europe with Betty aboard the French liner Caledonien. He died during a flu epidemic on the ship, just after it left Guadeloupe, heading for Madeira off the north-west coast of Africa. Betty was unexpectedly widowed and alone on arrival in Paris.

In 1958 newspaper articles indicated that Betty and her sister Joan had sold their company Avlo Australia Pty Ltd (A Victor Leggo Ltd, founded by their father in 1906) to Blythe Chemicals. The company’s managing directors then combined forces and bought A Victor Leggo & Co back under their own control.

Information from the GGS database, the Herald Sun, trove.com for newspaper articles, the internet, the Cluthan 1930-1931, Stephen Laidlaw and the Australian Dictionary of Biography (Leggo).

Jillian Elizabeth Boldiston (Meares) 20 August 1950 – 1 November 2014 Clyde 1964-1967

Betty continued her acting career, working alongside many of Australia’s best known actors of the era. As Betty Berrell, she had roles in Armchair Mystery Theatre (1960 TV mystery drama), Night Stop (1963 ABC Melbourne-produced television play set in England), Double Yolk (1963 ABC-produced TV movie combining two short plays By Accident and With Intent), Happily Ever After (1961-1964 UK produced TV series) and The Golden Legion of Cleaning Women (1964 Russell Street Theatre for the Union Theatre Repertory Company). There were numerous other productions.

Jillian Elizabeth Meares was born on 20 August 1950, daughter of Sheila and Bob Meares. She had a brother Robert Meares.

She boarded at Clyde from 19641967. With her warm and friendly personality she made lifelong friends. She kept in touch with Rosie Fairbairn-Watt (Fairbairn) and enjoyed the school reunions and lunches which she attended over the years.

After leaving school Jillian worked at a pre-school in Armadale with Miss Morris (Morrie) and then for several years at a children’s home in Beaumaris. She married Douglas Boldiston in 1976 and stayed at home to raise three children; Andrew, David and Nicole. The Boldiston family went on many family holidays to Hong Kong, Vanuatu, Fiji, New Zealand, Tasmania and Merimbula and up to the family property in the Riverina.

Most recently Betty came to prominence when the Herald Sun published an article on 20 February 2015 headlined “Who knew of Betty?” A shopping bag filled with personal documents along with 20 paintings triggered a search for family and friends of “glamorous Melbourne actor and painter Betty Berrell”. Two American women had found the items when clearing out the home of a male friend in Melbourne, delivered them all to the Victorian Artists’ So38

Jillian had diabetes for nearly 12 years but it never restricted her active enjoyment of life. She regularly played ten-pin bowling and competition badminton.

She loved the friendships and social side of badminton. She loved shopping whether at Caribbean, Dandenong or Red Hill market and kept the family home well stocked. According to her family, Jillian was a keen theatre and movie-goer who saw most films more than once. They joked that she probably fell asleep the first time so a second viewing was essential.

Mary’s father, George, established the 600,000 acre Yinnetharra station in 1906, constructing a comfortable eight bedroom homestead on the banks of the Gascoyne River. Stone from the river bed was used to construct the house and a number of outhouses which still stand today. Despite the hardships and harshness of the land, Mary had an idyllic childhood – pet kangaroos, lambs, galahs, goannas as well as horses to ride, and swimming in the river pools and billabongs.

The children were taught by governesses – some more successful than others – and were often supervised outdoors by Aboriginals of the Yamaji tribe. The female Aborigines made up most of the domestic help while the men were employed as stockmen on the station. They were all highly valued and very loyal to the Burt family over the many years they lived at Yinnetharra.

The Boldistons travelled to China in June 2014, just two months before Jillian was diagnosed with brain cancer. Husband Doug said it was a very strenuous two week tour and Jillian had shown no signs of being ill. Devastated by the diagnosis, Jillian faced her illness with characteristic fortitude and good humour.

At aged 12, Mary went to board at Kobeelya Church of England School for Girls in Katanning, a country town south west of Perth. Kobeelya was originally built in 1902 as a residence for Frederick Henry Piesse and became a girls’ school in 1921. Mary and her Perth friends liked playing golf and horse-riding at the school. A shortage of water meant they were only allowed one bath a week, using reddish water from the dam. She spent four years at Kobeelya before attending Clyde in 1930-1931. Mary’s sister Audrey Horley (Burt) also went to Clyde (1936-1937). Mary joined a group of children, including several Clyde girls, who travelled together eastwards by train from Perth to attend various schools across the country. The six-day journey was an adventure, especially without parental supervision.

Married for almost 39 years, Doug described Jillian as a “beautiful bubbly woman who was always happy and smiling. She was kind-hearted and generous, made friends with everyone and always saw the good in people. She loved giving more than receiving. She loved children, especially babies and couldn’t wait to be a grandmother … we have three beautiful children she absolutely adored and who have been a tower of strength.” Tributes from many friends and relatives described her as a warm-hearted lady who will be sadly missed by all who knew her.

From the eulogy by Douglas Boldiston and tributes from family and friends.

Mary El Effendi (Keenan) (Burt) 14 January 1915 – 9 September 2014 Clyde 1930-1931

Mary enjoyed her years at Clyde and made many friends. On one school holiday she stayed with the Lansell family in Bendigo. They had an open-cut mine next to the house which had previously been a goldmine. She also holidayed in Portsea and was intrigued by its cliff edge houses and staircases down to the beach.

Mary Burt was born on 14 January 1915 at her maternal grandparents’ home Minderoo in Claremont, Perth, Western Australia. She was the eldest of three children born to Margaret Elizabeth ‘Lily’ (Forrest) and George Henry Burt. She had a sister Audrey, and a brother Frank, a pioneer of aerial stock mustering in outback WA, who died when his plane crashed while mustering on his property in 1971. Mary was a granddaughter of the prominent WA lawyer, politician and grazier Septimus Burt (1847-1919), and a greatgranddaughter of Sir Archibald Burt, one time Chief Justice of WA who arrived in Australia from the West Indies in the 1860s.

In 1938, Mary married Patrick Joseph Keenan (19091971) who, although from Perth, was a captain in Hodson’s Horse, a British cavalry regiment formed in 1857 and stationed in India. He was the son of Lady Rose Elizabeth (Parker) and Sir Norbert Michael Keenan of Perth. Mary and Patrick were married in Perth and honeymooned in Melbourne and Sydney before returning to Loralia, India. Mary travelled to Perth for the birth of her first son, Christopher, in July 1939, returning to India after six months.

When war broke out, Mary was unable to return to Australia and Patrick was away at war, firstly in the Middle East and then in North Africa. Many of Mary’s friends were lost in these battles. She had two more children, Timothy, born in Kashmir in 1942 and

The Forrest and Burt families were prominent pioneers of the Ashburton and Gascoyne districts in north western Australia where they opened up vast areas of land and established thriving pastoral properties.

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Jacqueline in Lahore in 1944. In 1946 Patrick and Mary ended their marriage.

ed as 1983). Mary El Effendi continued to live in her beloved Pakistan, eventually spending sixty years there, only returning to Perth occasionally to see family and friends. Her life in Pakistan was comfortable with servants looking after her, while she enjoyed entertaining Maharajas and other dignitaries, golf and bridge parties, fishing and camping and the frequent visits of many Australian friends and relatives.

Mary went to England where she married Hissam El Effendi (1913-1985), a Major in the Pakistan Army who was on leave while attending a course at Sandhurst Army Academy in the UK. Known as Brigadier Sardar Hissam Mahmud el-Effendi, he served in Burma 1939-1945, joined the Pakistan Army in 1947 and served in the Indo-Pakistan War (1965) as a special adviser to the GOC 6th Division. He was awarded several British, Indian and Pakistani medals for distinguished military service.

Finally in the 1990s, Mary returned to live in Perth.

Despite her failing eyesight, she lived happily to the end, especially enjoying the company of her adored cat, Jo-Jo. She died on 9 September 2014 after a short illness surrounded by all her family – only a few months short of her 100th birthday. She was greatly loved by her extended family which included her nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

When Mary lived in India during her first marriage, the partition of the British Indian Empire was taking place which led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan (later Pakistan and Bangladesh) and the Union of India (later the Republic of India). At the time, the regional divisions of Bengal and the Punjab province also included dividing the British Indian Army, the Indian Civil Service, the railways and the central treasury. Riots and chaos ensued and when Mary and Hissam returned to India by boat from England in 1947, the country was in turmoil.

Muslims and Hindus were at war with each other, nearly half a million were killed and 14 million displaced during the retributive genocide. The British viceroy Lord Mountbatten had sent British troops back to England and efforts to keep law and order were in chaos. Mary remembered trainloads of dead people arriving at the station in Lahore, Pakistan.

Information provided by her sister Audrey Horley (Burt), and great-nephew Simon Burt, the Australian Dictionary of Biography (Burt and Forrest), the internet and press articles.

Kiera Alison Foletta (Stranaghan) 19 April 1920 – 23 February 2015 Clyde School house and teaching staff 1971-1976 Kiera Alison Stranaghan was born on 19 April 1920, the daughter of Helen Lillian and Andrew Harte Stranaghan. Following the First World War, Kiera’s family moved to Dookie in country Victoria where her father was appointed deputy principal of Dookie Agricultural College. Kiera attended Currawa Primary School, followed by a year of correspondence through Melbourne High School. She completed her secondary schooling at Melbourne Girls’ Grammar (Merton Hall) from 1933-1937, matriculating and qualifying for university entrance.

From 1947, Mary and Hissam El Effendi settled in Pakistan. They had two sons Podger (Azmari Javid Hissam) born in 1948 and Wicky (Azamat Adham Burman) in 1954. The boys went to school in Pakistan and to university in Perth. They became talented international polo players like their father who was president of the Lahore Polo Club. Mary loved watching her sons competing. Over the years they played in many different countries, Wicky also coached polo in Pakistan and Podger taught polo in Iran and Singapore.

In 1938, Kiera enrolled for a Diploma of Physical Education at Melbourne University, graduating in December 1939. An excellent swimmer, Kiera was the 1938-1939 Australian University diving champion, was awarded a Half Blue for diving and won the MacCallum Cup at the MU Women’s Swimming Club championships in May 1939. Through her love of water sports, Kiera met champion swimmer Howard Alan Foletta. In 1940 she moved to Perth WA to teach at St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls in Mosman, but was persuaded back to Victoria to marry Howard.

Mary’s sister Audrey Horley (Burt) went to visit her in Pakistan. Audrey recalls they were taken camping up into the Himalayas. Every convenience was transported up narrow precipitous tracks carved into gigantic rock mountainsides, with vertical walls on one side and a sheer drop to infinity on the other. Definitely not for the faint-hearted! The camp was fully catered with servants doing everything for the sisters. Audrey related that when fishing she caught about eight trout without even touching them. Another relative who went on a similar camping trip with Mary said he had never quite recovered from it.

Howard and Kiera Foletta settled at Acheron Park on the Maroondah Highway, Buxton in northern Victoria.

Their family homestead was a gracious original Californian bungalow, set in a parkland of lawns, English oaks, elms, cyprus and a mature garden. Together they developed a substantial pig and dairy farm, one of the largest in Victoria, where Kiera meticulously maintained stud and farm records. Their first three children were born during this time; Hugh, Keren and Geof-

Hissam died at Lahore, Pakistan in 1985 (also report40

frey. Kiera also pursued her love of equestrian sports, inspired by her father and sister Lorraine. She was the first rider to complete a dressage test in NSW, when she took her horse Moonlight with the stud dairy cattle to the Sydney Royal Show. This event ignited her interest in studying the history of horsemanship and dressage.

Kiera returned to Victoria in 1971 to take up a teaching position at Clyde. She hoped to supplement the family income and be close to her youngest child Warwick who was boarding at GGS. While at Clyde in 1972, Kiera developed and introduced a subject called Hippology which was accepted by the Victorian Universities and Schools Examination Board (VUSEB). Clyde was the first and only school in Australia offering a course in equine studies – the history, theory and practice of Horsemanship.

Kiera developed the syllabus and took the theory classes. Four ‘guinea pigs’ studied the subject in its first year (Jenny Campbell, Margy Young, Chris Palmer and Cal Robertson) doing regular lessons at Faulkner’s riding stables down the mountain, observing shoeing, drenching and the horse dentist at work.

As a result of her initiative, equine studies are now offered at numerous schools in Australia. Kiera was an inspiration at Clyde. She had that special combination of a warm personality, a genuine interest in all the students she knew and a forthright and cheerful manner which fostered confidence in those she taught. Her students fondly referred to her as ‘Aunty Flot’.

In 1954, Kiera and Howard moved to Coleraine in the Western District of Victoria, adding sheep farming to their cattle enterprise. With the nearest pony club 160km away, Kiera established the Glenelg Pony Club with locals Hartley and Margaret Gardiner.

Kiera took her four young children on the rounds of equestrian competitions which included the Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane royal agricultural shows. In the late 1950s, Olympic three-day-eventing caught her interest and with Howard and Hugh she helped to train a horse Tenacity who became a legend in eventing and show-jumping.

In 1965, Kiera and Howard, now with five children including young Jan and Warwick to complete the family, moved to northern New South Wales. There, with Kiera’s leadership of the Inverell Pony Club and the riding skills of her offspring, membership increased to 130 and Inverell won the annual pony club zone championships in 1966 and 1967. Unfortunately the move to rural NSW coincided with a ten year drought. After six years of hardship on the property,

When Clyde amalgamated with GGS in 1976, Kiera chose to reside in Melbourne, accepting a teaching position at Melbourne Girls’ Grammar. She retired in the early 1980s and moved to live at the Foletta property Dabyminga, Tallarook, near Seymour in Victoria.

At Tallarook Kiera still had 40 horses at the age of 87, was driving her tractor and breeding warmblood horses suitable for eventing and jumping. Thanks to her leadership, drive, dedication and tenacity she became the matriarch of a leading Australian equestrian family. The Folettas became champion riders throughout Australia and internationally for thirty years or more.

In 2007 Kiera and her beloved kelpie Monty moved to the ELMS retirement village in Kilmore, Victoria where she participated actively in community life.

She attended the Clyde Centenary in 2010, numerous reunions and maintained strong ties with her COGA friends. Kiera was proud of her seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Information from the eulogy by Warwick Foletta, the internet, Cluthans and the Clyde history book.

Naida Bonita Hartwig (Chaffey) 3 May 1919 – 29 August 2014 Clyde 1935-1936 Naida Bonita Chaffey (known as Bonita) was born on 3 May 1919 in Mildura to Laura Naida (Rolph, d1970) and William Herbert Chaffey (1887-1966).

Bonita had three brothers, William Benjamin, Samuel Rolph and Peter and the family lived in Merbein.

Bonita’s paternal grandfather William Benjamin

Mrs Kiera Foletta and Mrs Jean Tottenham (Miss Harkness) at the Clyde sixth form picnic, 1971 41

Chaffey CMG (1856-1926) and his brother George (1848-1932) were pioneers of Mildura. Both born in Ontario, Canada, they grew up working with their father on irrigation projects. They met Alfred Deakin in the 1880s in Canada when he was sent to investigate solutions to severe drought conditions in northern Victoria. After encouragement from the Victorian government to establish an irrigation system on the Murray River at Mildura, the brothers migrated to Victoria in the 1880s. They were vigorous and sometimes controversial entrepreneurs who used irrigation to establish significant agricultural projects and developments in the Riverina and Sunraysia districts, earning recognition as the region’s most successful pioneers. In August 1937, Bonita joined members of the Chaffey family on an official stage to watch Mildura celebrate its golden jubilee with a pageant parade. The arrival of the Chaffey brothers in the district was portrayed by a float displaying ploughs and a water pumping plant, “the machinery which transformed Mildura from arid wasteland to a thriving city”. Nowadays there is a ‘Chaffey Trail’ at the Mildura Visitor Information Centre.

Christina (Petee) Karen Sandford Hindhaugh (Beggs) OAM 17 February 1944 – 31 July 2015 Clyde 1957-1961 Christina Karen Sandford Beggs (known as Petee) was born on 17 February 1944, one of four children born to Helen Karen (Seeck, 1907-1984) and Sandford Robert Beggs (1906-1984), graziers and merino sheep breeders in Willaura, Western Victoria. Her mother Karen, daughter of a Latvian-born winemaker, John Alexander Seeck (1869-1942), was a state champion golfer in South Australia in 1933, before marrying in 1935.

On 2 July 1943, Bonita married Reverend Vernon Desmond Hartwig of Quambatook. The Hartwig family had migrated to Australia from Germany in the mid-1800s. From 1942-1944, Bonita’s husband Rev. Hartwig was the acting vicar of Merbein in the parish of northern Mallee. On 25 June 1944, Bishop James inducted Rev. Hartwig as the first rector of Merbein and also baptised the Hartwigs’ first child, Michael Chaffey Hartwig. In April 1946, Bonita’s husband became Canon Hartwig of Broken Hill and the family settled there, raising three more children, Sue (Ambagtsheer), David and Margaret.

Christina was the granddaughter of Hugh Norman Beggs (1863-1943), grazier, sheep breeder and station manager of Nareeb Nareeb, Glenthompson in Western Victoria and his wife Mary Catherine (Reeves) daughter of Henry Sandford Palmer, once high sheriff for County Tipperary, Ireland. The Beggs were descended from Irish free settlers who arrived during the 1850s and established the pastoral properties Eurambeen and Gnarkeet near Beaufort, Victoria in the 1870s and Nareeb Nareeb in the late 1890s. Generations of the Beggs family have presided over the Australian Sheepbreeders Association, the Graziers’ Association of Victoria and the Australian Wool Corporation.

Christina’s brother is Hugh Beggs AM (married to COG Frankie Beggs (Fairbairn) and her two sisters are Eda Ritchie (Beggs) AM and Tamara (Tamie) Fraser AO, widow of former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. They were brought up at the foot of the Grampians, their childhood skyline dominated by mountains and lake, developing an abiding attachment to country life. The Beggs were known as a very close and loyal family who were raised with a strong ethic of community service and national pride.

Bonita was intensely proud of her Chaffey family heritage and spent forty years researching the family history. In May 2012, her daughter Sue Ambagtsheer presented the Mildura Rural City Council with a copy of the full family history compiled by Bonita, commemorating the 125th anniversary of the original 1887 contract signed for the Chaffey irrigation project. Bonita spent her last years at Bethsalem Care retirement village in Mildura and died peacefully aged 95 on 29 August 2014. The much-loved matriarch of her family, she was ‘Grandma’ to seven grandchildren and a ‘happy laughing Great-grandma’ to eighteen great-grandchildren.

Christina and her sister Eda went to board at Clyde in 1957. Tamie attended The Hermitage. Christina made lifelong friends and excelled at Clyde. In her junior years she was captain of tennis and basketball and played in the baseball team. She was form captain in 1958, Dux of Leaving in 1959, senior tennis captain, dramatic committee, school prefect and house captain of Faireleight. She was awarded the Oakley Rhodes Prize and matriculated in 1960. In 1961 her achievements were the firsts basketball team, colours for tennis, sports committee, school dance secretary, school captain and she was awarded the Arthur Robinson Prize.

Information from ‘The Argus’ 12 Aug 1937, the Mildura Visitor Information Centre, Sunraysia district press, the Australian Dictionary of Biography (Chaffey) and the internet.

After leaving Clyde, Christina joined Eda in teaching at Sunday School in Willaura. She later married Chris Hindhaugh and lived on a sheep and cropping property in the ‘red gum country’ of the Western District where they raised three children; Julia, Eda and

Bonita boarded at Clyde from 1935-1936.

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James. Christina became a successful farming businesswoman and writer. She wrote for newspapers, magazines, journals and became the author of four best-selling books: It Wasn’t Meant to be Easy, I Love a Sunburnt Torso, For Better, For Worse and For Lunch and The Great Herb Tour. She also wrote two plays and was the co-producer of an ABC documentary film The First Eleven, which tells the story of the Aboriginal cricket team which toured England in 1868. Her novels were based on her own life experience as a farmer’s wife, becoming a champion for women working in rural industries and also on her sister Tamie’s experience as wife of the Prime Minister of Australia.

family to receive a national award, being honoured with an Order of Australia Medal in the general division (OAM) for her services to the community of Balmoral and to women in agriculture. She was proud to be part of the Ballarat community and was most enthusiastic about her award for services to women in agriculture. She believed that rural women had not received the recognition they deserved for their contribution to farming life, saying they were “the backbone of the country in running small communities and that role often goes unheralded”.

Christina’s numerous community roles included secretary of the Friends of Buninyong Botanical Gardens, president of Balmoral’s Australian Red Cross branch, patron of the Balmoral Health Appeal and the Balmoral Bush Nursing Centre and she was awarded an Order of Merit by the Australian Red Cross (Western Region). Her eldest sister Tamie Fraser received an AO citation for her services to the nation, brother Hugh Beggs was honoured with an AM for services to the wool industry and sister Eda Ritchie (Beggs) was awarded an AM for service to education, government, the arts and health.

In 1996, seeking a fresh challenge, Christina began trialling culinary and medicinal herbs on the Hindhaugh family farm Englefield south of Balmoral, keen to discover a herb species suitable for the Balmoral soils and climate. Two years later in recognition of her pioneer work in this industry Christina was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study the herb industry overseas. In 1998 she toured the USA, France and the UK to research herb markets and production techniques, concluding that rosemary was the herb most suited to their region.

Petee’s humour was evident in her novels. “When you marry a farmer you take more than a husband, you take on a whole way of life. I vowed dewyeyed in the church ‘In sickness and in health’, I pledged from the heart but failed to envisage: in footrot and in fly strike, in stripe rust and in brown spot, through shearing and through harvest …” Petee called herself a wealthy woman because of the love invested in her family. She gave to individuals, she gave to the community every day of her life. She had a greatness that cannot be recognised by medals. Her inner life was that of an undaunted mystical explorer, she firmly believed in the interconnectedness of all things. Petee summarised the good life in her book The Great Herb Tour: “I believe constancy, fidelity, perseverance towards whatever in life, are among the truly great virtues, sticking at it year after year, come what may; keeping on, keeping on, hanging in there for the long haul – not glamorous attributes I’ll admit, but looking back down the tunnel of my years, I think they’re tremendously important”.

In 2000 she and farming neighbour Anita Watt, established Australia’s largest rosemary farm, Glenelg River Rosemary Pty Ltd of which she became Executive Director. They secured a long term lease on 12 hectares of land and by September 2000 had planted 49,000 rosemary seedlings. Glenelg River Rosemary continues to supply fresh rosemary to supermarkets in five states, plus fresh and dried rosemary to food manufacturers and medicinal processors. Now the largest rosemary farm in the southern hemisphere, it is spread across three properties including Englefield and Tralee south of Balmoral and a northern block Changbool across the Glenelg River in the Wimmera.

Christina’s fourth book The Great Herb Tour recounts the story of her research and travel to develop the successful rosemary enterprise. In 2007 Christina was inducted into the Powercor Regional Business Achievement Awards Hall of Fame for her service to agribusiness (Southern Grampians Shire Council Business Achievement Awards). As displayed in her writing, Christina had a strong sense of humour. She became a professional public speaker and presenter, combining special country warmth and a highly personal touch with sound business principles, able to demonstrate that innovation and embracing change are the only ways to guarantee results and gain a competitive edge in today’s business world. She travelled widely around Australia promoting the lives and experience of country women.

Petee was to her family “the adored grandmother, fervent soccer supporter of a little granddaughter, she encouraged the poetry attempts of another, stood in as goal keeper for the boys’ footy practice on the farm and treasured the children’s paintings as through they were original Picassos.”

In 2014 Christina became the fourth member of her 43

Petee’s joy and humour could light up the day. She was a loyal supporter of COGA over the years, keeping in touch with her school friends, attending reunions, functions, AGMs and gatherings. She penned the legendary essay entitled ‘The Woodend Warbler’ which has been immortalised in the Clyde School history book and reprinted several times in The Cluthan.

She was the special guest speaker at the Clyde Centenary Lunch in 2010, writing yet another unforgettable and precious poem, ‘Clyde School Revisited’, summarising her indelible memories of Clyde and its ethos. She read it out to nearly 400 Clyde girls at Nine Darling Street. At once everyone listened and loved Petee, she was a legend and will never be forgotten.

ana did an entry course at HMAS Lonsdale in Port Melbourne, learning detailed Australian geography before being attached to the Melbourne-based radio signals intelligence unit, which was a joint venture between Australia, the United States and the top secret British codebreaker unit at Bletchley Park in England.

Based initially in Queens Road, then in Albert Park, their task was to pick up messages and decipher the constantly changing codes the Japanese were using throughout the Asia and Pacific region. Diana’s unit played a key role in the defence of the Pacific, its greatest success was the interception and decoding of a message that revealed Japanese intentions in the Coral Sea and plans to invade Australia. Cracking the Japanese attack plans was a significant step in World War II. Diana loved naval history and crosswords, so she was well suited to the detailed work of a cryptanalyst: typing, reading, deciphering letters and dealing with tele-printers. She had to be very secretive about her role and could not talk about it for several years after the war. Diana’s Clyde friends Cynthia Wagg (Sterling) and Hilary Hudson (Hay) also worked in the radio signals intelligence unit.

Information from the funeral service eulogy, the internet, the Ballarat Courier and Cluthans 1960-1962.

Diana Florence Learmonth (Austin) (Nicholas) 30 November 1924 – 13 July 2015 Clyde 1935-1942 Diana Florence Nicholas was born on 30 November 1924, the only daughter of Charles Lyndoch and Sheila Nicholas (Nicholson, Clyde 1913). Son of Joseph William Nicholas, Diana’s father Charles served in two world wars. In 1977, he wrote and published a book entitled ‘Happenings of a Lifetime in the Riverina 1902-1977’, an autobiography describing farm life as a grazier in NSW, his days at GGS and years of wartime service. Although born in Melbourne, Diana spent her early childhood on the family property Monaro Vale at Berrigan NSW, once described as “one of the most beautiful small properties in NSW” because her father had planted many trees. She moved to Melbourne with her mother to attend primary school at St Margaret’s School, before being sent to Clyde aged 11 in 1935.

Many years later in April 2012, Diana, aged 88, received a letter of commendation and a medal from British Prime Minister David Cameron, recognising her collaboration with the Bletchley Park unit and her contribution to the decoding of Japanese intelligence messages during World War II. (Ocean Grove Voice, April 4-17 2012.)

After the war, in April 1946, Diana married exserviceman Derek Austin, one of the former ‘Rats of Tobruk’. Initially the couple settled on the Austin family’s property Darra at Meredith, near Geelong, before moving to a soldier settlement block in Berrigan NSW, which coincidentally was part of Diana’s father’s property Monaro Vale. They raised three children; Bill, John and Helen (Tinky) Urquhart (Austin). In 1961 they sold Berrigan and bought a property at Whorouly South near Wangaratta, where they lived until they separated in 1966.

At Clyde Diana was popular, excelled at sports and was a natural leader. Captain of junior forms in 19361937, junior library committee 1938, junior debating committee 1939, sports committee and captain of running 1940, firsts hockey team 1941, hockey colours and firsts baseball team, running champion, house captain of Faireleight, school prefect, member of the CHA committee, winner of the Lady Robinson Reading Prize and awarded a Pass prize for Honours VI in 1942. When interviewed in 2005 for the Clyde history book, Diana recalled the impact of the war years on Clyde. Petrol rationing meant few visitors to the school, students did a lot of housework and cleaning, plane-spotting from the tower, making camouflage nets and knitting socks or scarves for the troops.

Diana moved to Barwon Heads on the Bellarine Peninsula, a favourite holiday place where her mother Sheila Nicholas was living. At this time, her sons Bill and John were living independently and her young daughter Tinky Austin went to board at Clyde (19661971). Diana had several secretarial jobs in Geelong before she met and married retired SA grazier Peter Learmonth in 1971, father of Jamie, Gillian Learmonth and Jessie Cole (Learmonth). They had a wonderful life together with many friends, dinner par-

After leaving Clyde, Diana attended Holmes Commercial College in Melbourne where she completed secretarial studies. She joined the WRANS (Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service), aged 19 in 1945. Di44

ties, golf, fishing and road trips to south-east South Australia. Peter died in 1978 and Diana renewed her love of golf at the Barwon Heads Golf Club where she had been a member since 1938. She played regularly and reduced her golf handicap. She served twice on the ladies’ committee and became the ladies’ President 1976-1978, playing for many years in the pennant team and winning many trophies. In 1990 she joined the committee and in 1991-1992 became President of the South Western District Ladies Golf Association (SWDLGA – founded in 1933).

was an exciting novelty compared to the remoteness of farm life in rural NSW. In 1948 Joan was a prefect and school sports captain, Ingleton house captain for the second time and captain of firsts baseball and hockey. She was on school committees for sport, the dramatic club, CSS, CWA and golf, reflecting her wide range of leadership skills and interests. She had a leading role in the senior school play and was awarded the Dorothea Cecily Tucker memorial prize.

Joan was in her final year at Clyde when little brother Geoff arrived. She loved him dearly but according to family anecdotes at 17 years younger he would embarrass his big sister by calling her ‘Mum’ in public.

Although unable to play golf in recent years, Diana always met up with friends at the BHGC for lunch on Tuesdays. At the time of her death she was the longest serving member of the club – 77 years. Diana valued living independently and was known for her active involvement in the Barwon Heads community. She is survived by her three children, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Over the years she was a great supporter of the Clyde Old Girls’ Association, working with the COGA Red Cross branch, regularly attending AGMs and reunions and maintaining school friendships over a lifetime. She was a welcome, popular and much-loved presence at any time for her friends and family.

Joan met David Sargood at a country tennis party and, after a lively engagement period, they were married at St John’s Church Toorak on 6 July 1953, with a reception at Nine Darling Street and a honeymoon in Surfers’ Paradise. The newlyweds moved into a cottage on the Sargood family property Iona in Corowa, NSW. Although intended as a temporary arrangement, it became a happy home for 23 years until they moved into the main homestead. They were happily married for 53 years, raising three children Susan Buller (Sargood, Clyde 1966-72), son Richard and Barbara Botterill (Sargood, Clyde 1973-1975).

Information from family eulogies (John Austin), Cluthans, trove.com for newspaper articles (National Library), Ocean Grove and Riverina newspapers and The Age obituary of 12 August 2015.

Joan’s life on Iona was busy. She and David taught their three children the skills of country life including how to swim in the river. Once the children were at secondary school, Joan became involved in Corowa community life. An active contributor to several committees, daughter Barbara remembers the “dining table covered in unfilled sponge cakes with coffee icing and walnut halves, ready for despatch to another street stall”. Through the local school committee, Joan was involved in the building of a new primary school which her grandchildren attended in later years. In the 1970s she was involved in establishing the Corowa Kennel Club to provide dog obedience classes, training and competitions. With friend Shirley Nolan she organised huge fundraising dinners such as the ‘Gourmet International Lamb Tasting’, the ‘Gypsy Romp’ and the ‘French Affair’. They raised thousands of dollars, enabling air-conditioning to be installed at Karinya retirement village in Corowa; full training for a Labrador pup called Corowa to become a guide dog; sponsorship of a child in Hong Kong to do professional study; a local Boy Scout to attend a jamboree in Tokyo; in addition to supporting many local groups.

Joan Elizabeth Sargood (Withers) 29 March 1931 – 3 May 2015 Clyde 1941-1948 Joan Elizabeth Withers was born at Corowa Hospital on 29 March 1931, the first child of Murray and Jean Withers (Brown, Clyde 1916-1923) of Kildonan, Cobram. Her brother John Murray (Bill) followed in 1933 and a second brother Geoff was born 15 years later. Joan spent a happy childhood at Kildonan, the Withers’ family property south of Berrigan, NSW. Home was shared with a variety of ponies, dogs and a marauding goose that had to be deterred with a swinging bucket. School holidays were often spent with her cousins the Upjohn family and her lifelong friend Helen Hamilton (Kennedy).

Joan showed her spirit and character early. Aged 8, she gave herself a haircut, removing her plaits and hiding them in the incinerator. After being schooled at home by a governess until the age of 10, she was sent to board at Clyde. Life at Clyde was an adventure she thoroughly enjoyed, making many lifelong friends. She loved sport, playing team games with other girls

Joan was a keen golfer who tried hard to add her name to the honour boards in the club house. Although this eluded her, she was very proud when grandson Sam won the championship in 2014. She joined David in taking up lawn bowls, playing regularly for many years and making friends on the greens.

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Joan’s family said that many words recur when friends remember her: “strong, polite, determined, tenacious, stubborn, independent and inspirational”.

Like her brother Bill who died in 2013, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease at age 60, facing it fearlessly for nearly 25 years and always willing to try new ways to combat the symptoms. (Parkinson’s Disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that impairs motor skills, cognitive processes and other functions.) The Health Culture personal trainer who assisted Joan with therapeutic exercises said she had the best attitude he had ever encountered in his years as a trainer, sometimes providing moments of pure inspiration and awe as her unwavering willpower propelled her beyond anything expected of her.

the years Jean spent at Clyde were some of the happiest of her life. She remembered plane-spotting from the tower during the war, driving with blackout shades back and forth from Woodend, the chef with his pet bird and spoke fondly of Miss Hay. She appreciated the people she met at Clyde, the students, teachers and house staff and the friendships made in the school’s unique environment.

After leaving Clyde, Jean taught at Alexandra College in Hamilton. She married Nicky Tottenham and they moved to a soldier settlement block near Balmoral.

These were difficult times for a city bred girl, initially living in a rustic garage for eight months while their house was built, helping to work the farm and then raising three children. During this time, Jean took up golf, a game she loved and played till her mideighties, achieving a hole-in-one twice and competing successfully.

Joan was loved and admired by her family, friends and community for her courage, positive energy and generosity which endured through the hardship of later years. Loved mother and mother-in-law of Susan and Rick Buller, Richard and Louise Sargood, Barbara and Geoff Botterill, grandmother of eight and great -grandmother of two.

Jean returned to Clyde in the early 1970s to teach Physical Education again and to live in as a house mistress. This time known as Mrs Tottenham, she was teaching and helping nurture the daughters of her former students from the 1940s, who still fondly referred to her as Miss Harkness when they visited Clyde as parents. After leaving Clyde, there were tough times ahead as she endured the illness and death of her youngest child.

Information from the eulogy by Barbara Botterill (Sargood), personal trainer Darrell Spencer and the Cluthan 1948.

Mavis Jean Tottenham (Harkness) 24 January 1922 – 23 January 1915 Former Clyde staff member Miss Harkness (1940s), Mrs Tottenham (1970s)

Nicky and Jean retired and settled in Point Lonsdale where Jean kept busy with the Laurel club, meals-onwheels, the RSL and her beloved golf at Barwon Heads. In 1998, aged 76, she won the South Western District Ladies’ Golf Association (SWDLGA) Dorothy Smith ‘Senior Veterans’ championship.

Mavis Jean Tottenham (known as Jean) was born in Bendigo on 24 January 1922, the second child of Andrew and Annastacia Harkness. Her father was Mayor of Bendigo (1908-1909) and was tragically killed when she was 7. After moving to Melbourne, Jean attended Fintona girls’ school while Miss Margaret Cunningham was principal. Jean was described as “being of superior intellect, having a pleasant manner as well as a poised and sensible outlook”. At Fintona, she was a good scholar, received an award for General Excellence in 1935 and was a member of the school’s baseball and basketball teams. She matriculated in 1938, which enabled her to undertake the new Physical Education course at Melbourne University. In 1941, she graduated with a Diploma of Physical Education. She worked for a short while as a playground leader in Melbourne before Miss Olga Hay offered her a live-in position as a ‘roustabout’ at Clyde, Woodend in 1942. When the Clyde sports teacher resigned, Miss Harkness was put in charge of Physical Education and Games. A letter from Miss Hay describes a “most capable organiser, a teacher who had a very pleasant manner and got on very well with her pupils and colleagues. She was of real value to the school in a great variety of ways”. There is no doubt

Age did not stop her from learning to use a computer, digital camera, mobile phone and her pride and joy, an iPad which was given to her on her 90th birthday. She would access ‘google-earth’ and share information with fellow retirement home residents. Faced with a difficult question she would say “I’ll look it up on the iPad”, so she was nicknamed ‘iGranny’ by her grandchildren.

After her husband died, Jean moved to South Australia in her late eighties to be closer to family. She enjoyed doing cryptic crosswords, lunching with grandchildren, lazy days on the houseboat on the Murray and staying fit. She was “as sharp as a tack and on the ball” until she died from a stroke one day short of her 93rd birthday. She will be remembered as an excellent, popular and kind-hearted teacher at Clyde and is greatly missed by her family. She is survived by her daughter Jayne Redmond (Tottenham), granddaugh46

ters Sally and Pen, her son John’s daughters Anna and Sarah and great-granddaughter Brooklyn.

1949 and worked with the Government pathologist.

In 1950, at Lenna, Lady Ashbolt celebrated the announcement of Elizabeth’s engagement to Dr Geoffrey Trinca. Elizabeth and Geoffrey were married in 1951 and settled to live in Melbourne where they raised three sons. Some years after the death of Geoffrey, Elizabeth married Hal Waters. In February 1974 her mother died and Elizabeth enrolled that year at Holmes Commercial College in Melbourne to learn book-keeping, shorthand and typing skills as part of a graduate secretarial diploma.

Information adapted from the Clyde History book, the eulogy by Jayne Redmond (Tottenham) and the internet.

Elizabeth Muriel Wayne Waters (Trinca) (Ashbolt) 3 April 1926 – 27 September 2014 Clyde 1941-1942 Elizabeth Ashbolt was born on 3 April 1926, daughter of NZ-born Sir Alfred Henry Ashbolt (1870-1930) and his second wife Muriel Wayne Walker (Lady Ashbolt) who were married in 1919. Sir Alfred Ashbolt, manufacturer, ship-owner, shipping agent, timber merchant and tin-mine owner arrived in Australia in 1891 aged 15 and became ‘the undisputed leader of the commercial community in southern Tasmania’.

President of the Hobart Chamber of Commerce (1913), agent-general for Tasmania (1919), he encouraged significant British and US investment in Tasmania as the vice-president of the British Empire Producers Association. He became the managing director of merchants AG Webster & Son of Hobart (1924) and was knighted in 1925. Elizabeth’s childhood home was the historic Hobart mansion at Battery Point, Lenna owned by her father from 1914. Lenna, an aboriginal word for ‘hut’, was built 1874-1880 in an Italianate style of local sandstone with a spectacular outlook from a tower over the Derwent River and Hobart, just steps from Salamanca Place waterfront.

During Ashbolt ownership, many social parties and dinners were held in the drawing room where the original gas-lit chandelier still hangs. The light was converted to electricity by Elizabeth’s father. After the death of Sir Alfred in 1930, Lady Ashbolt continued to live at Lenna.

Elizabeth was always a loyal and enthusiastic supporter of Janet Clarke Hall (JCH). She was an active member of the Trinity Women’s Society which was renamed the Janet Clarke Hall Past Students’ Society in 1968. She served on the JCH Committee for many years and was active in assisting the College in fundraising appeals and in organising past student reunions. From 1977-1987 she served as a member of the College Council and was the Chair of the Executive and Finance Committee 1981-1987. She gave generously of her time and management expertise. During the year of celebrations for the JCH Centenary Elizabeth was a member of the organising committee for the Centenary Dinner and other events.

After her retirement from Council, Elizabeth continued to support JCH and never lost interest in its progress. She was a regular visitor to the concerts and reunion dinners. The outstanding contribution of Elizabeth Waters to Janet Clarke Hall was deeply appreciated.

Elizabeth also attended COGA functions, reunions and annual meetings over the years, keeping in touch with Clyde friends throughout her lifetime.

Information from Janet Clarke Hall, the Cluthan 1941, 1942 and 1948, trove.com for newspaper articles, the Australian Dictionary of Biography (Ashbolt) and Tasmanian heritage websites.

Elizabeth’s early education was at Fahan School in Sandy Bay, Hobart. Established in 1935 it was an independent school set among beautiful gardens overlooking the Derwent River. She boarded at Clyde in 1941-1942, joining the camera club committee and serving as treasurer of the gardening club. She completed her Leaving and Matriculation certificates and was awarded an honours prize in 1942. She enrolled at the University of Melbourne in 1945, boarded as a resident of Janet Clarke Hall (JCH) and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1948. While at JCH in 1947, Elizabeth was awarded the Grace Maudsley Memorial Award for leadership and citizenship, which had also been won by a Clyde girl in 1946, Prudence Myer (Boyd). Having completed her degree, Elizabeth returned to Hobart in

Elspeth Anne Woolcott (Thompson) 15 May 1928 – 28 May 2015 Clyde 1941-1944 Elspeth Anne Thompson was born on 15 May 1928 in Wilmslow, Cheshire UK, the third daughter of Sir Joseph Herbert Thompson (1898-1984) and Lady Thompson (Kathleen Rodir). She had older twin sisters born on 27 April 1927, Audrey Diana Brayne (Thompson) and Phyllis Kathleen Kiggell (Thompson). The girls spent their childhood in India as their father joined the Indian Civil Service in 1922, having been a Sopwith Camel pilot for the Royal Naval Air Service in WW1. In 1926 Sir Herbert Thompson was appointed to the Foreign and Political Department, Government of India, becoming Deputy Secretary of 47

the Department 1941-1943, Resident for Kolhapur and Deccan states 1944-1945, Resident for the Punjab states 1945-1947 and a political adviser to Lord Mountbatten. He was knighted in 1947 for services to British India.

milk powder. The hospital treated up to 600 patients a day, and Elspeth said ‘it was like an assembly line, babies were delivered in the corridor’. Elspeth was known for her high-speed efficient approach to nursing. She once administered over 700 separate inoculations in a day. To her children she was brisk and matter-of-fact, no days off school for illness, and off to England for boarding school.

With the threat of Japanese invasion, Elspeth was evacuated to Australia with her mother and sisters.

The girls boarded at Clyde from 1941-1944, participating happily in school life. Among a range of activities, Audrey was house captain of Braemar and earned a Dux prize in 1944, Elspeth won the Prefects’ Prize and class reading prize in 1943, while Phyllis was voted Senior Belle on fancy dress night, dressed as an Indian beauty. Elspeth spent her childhood alongside Plum Haet (Rutherford) not only at Clyde but at the same prep school in Surrey, UK and then in India where both their fathers were posted with the British Raj. In 1944 after leaving Clyde, the three Thompson girls returned to India. In 1949, soon after the turbulent war of independence and partition, the Thompson family returned to the UK and settled in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire.

After 24 years in Zambia, the family returned to the UK in 1976. Tigger worked for the Zambian mines, based in London. Elspeth continued nursing; for a general practitioner, a school, a local fracture clinic and at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. At age 75 after a career spanning six decades, she finally retired, very reluctantly, when the hospital said she could no longer be insured.

Elspeth was an energetic and compulsive networker long before the word was fashionable. She stayed in contact with all of her family including cousins round the world, with Clyde friends in Australia by letter, phone, and lastly by email. Each year she wrote numerous newsy Christmas cards and was always delighted to hear if her card was the first to arrive. The family house was festooned with cards received in return, and if anyone failed to reply, she would try to find out why. Over the years, Elspeth wrote to COGA expressing her thanks and delight in receiving the Cluthan, updating her news and that of other Clyde friends she had encountered.

Elspeth trained as a nurse at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, and then as a midwife in Edinburgh. After completing her training she went to Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) to work, joining her sister Phyllis whose husband was a colonial civil servant. In Zambia, Elspeth met and married her husband Oswald Woolcott (known as Tigger) in 1953. They had six children; Sandy, Christopher, Justin, Simon, Matthew and Clare. A republic since 1964, Zambia is a landlocked country bounded by the Congo, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Angola. Most rural Zambians are subsistence farmers, subject to the vagaries of erratic rainfall and drought.

Elspeth was proud of her 17 grandchildren. Her daughter Clare and grand-daughter Anna Woolcott have followed Elspeth’s footsteps, making three generations of passionate and dedicated nurses at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. Her son Justin said that while indignant about the physical restrictions of age in her final years, Elspeth’s mind remained sharp and her personality vivacious and friendly as ever.

After the children were born, Elspeth resumed her nursing work in Zambia, becoming matron of the local regional hospital, running various town clinics and even serving as a sales rep for Cow & Gate babies’

Information provided by Justin Woolcott, Elspeth Woolcott letters to COGA, the Oxford UK press, Cluthans 1941-1944 and the internet.

Late notice: Barbara Joan Gilder 9 April 1928 – 5 April 2015 Clyde 1943-1945 The Clutha ferry passenger harbour steamers plied a service up and down the River Clyde in Glasgow from 1884-1903. They were collectively known as Cluthas. Passengers included workers commuting daily to the docks and industries along the river, such as shipyards and engineering workshops. Though quaint and sturdy, the Cluthas were superseded by Glasgow tram and subway services and withdrawn in 1903.

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