W.R. (Bill) Ridgway

In February of 1943 I was feeling quite pleased as I had gained high enough marks in the Qualifying Certificate to enter ATHS. On the first day of school I waited with many other students in the corridor on the third floor of the School of Mines and Industries’ main building on North Terrace. Eventually I was drafted into first year Tech B, one of two first year classes in the technical course (boys only). There were 36 students in Tech A and 40 in Tech B. We had been well disciplined at Blair Athol Primary School so I did not expect any difficulties in that respect, however I was concerned that there would be well-qualified students from other primary schools in my class and wondered how I would fare.

World War II was well under way and many goods were in short supply. Tea, butter, sugar, meat, clothing and petrol were rationed but note books and text books were available. Complete schools uniforms were out of the question but most students had a school tie.

Many students travelled to school by tram or train and a significant number rode bicycles despite the restricted supply of bicycle tyres and tubes. Bakers and milkmen delivered their products in horse-drawn vehicles. The councils used horse-drawn carts to collect household rubbish and some abattoirs’ motor trucks still had solid rubber tyres and were chain driven. The riding of bicycles presented few problems because motor traffic was quite light.

During the first year we studied English, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry, drawing, sheetmetal work and woodwork. We did not proceed with sheetmetal work after the first year. The subjects continued almost unchanged in the second year although we dropped woodwork and took French if we wanted to matriculate in science or engineering. We sat for the PEB Intermediate Certificate at the end of second year.

Fitting and turning was introduced as a third year subject. Although this did not count as a subject for the Leaving Certificate it was a great help in complementing woodwork, sheetmetal work and drawing to develop manual skills. Once again there was little change in the core subjects although trigonometry was added to algebra and geometry. I failed at the first attempt at the Leaving Certificate but passed the following year and matriculated by passing in special maths, an addition to the matriculation requirements which was introduced in that year.

In general my school days were happy and interesting. We were not forced to participate in sport, however we were given a short period of physical training or PT each week in the Brookman Hall. There were enough students who were keenly interested in sport to fill both A and B teams in football, cricket, tennis and baseball, and one team in rifle shooting. There was a lack of sports materials at that time and some of the inter-school competitions were temporarily suspended. The once- a-year athletics sports day and the once-a-year half day of swimming events were well attended and keenly contested.

There was no school lunch room or canteen. The nearest thing to a canteen was provided by an enterprising salesman who sold food and drink from the back of his van which he parked alongside our sports oval which was opposite the University Jubilee Oval in Frome Road. We spent most of our lunch hours at the sport ground where the girls doing the commercial course were allowed to use the seats surrounding the tennis-cum-basketball courts while the boys sat or leaned on the rather dilapidated cast iron fence running along two sides of the sports ground. During wet lunch hours we were allowed to eat our lunch while sitting on the seats in the corridor outside our class rooms.

After finishing lunch we would often visit the Technological Museum on the ground floor below Brookman Hall. The museum was closed in 1962 and its contents scattered, an action that was unnecessary and later condemned. One of the items on display, hanging on a wall, out of reach, was a racing bicycle used by Hubert Opperman in one of his long distance record breaking rides. I believe that bicycle inspired many of us to make use of our ‘push bikes’ to get away from the city on weekends and term holidays. In our view those were long journeys. We visited Victor Harbor, Murray Bridge, Wallaroo, Port Noarlunga and Second Valley and often carried all our camping gear on the bikes.

I was certainly not a high achiever in class but I attended classes in arithmetic and English given by our dreaded headmaster and survived the experience, with no physical or mental scars, despite the commonly held view that he was a real tyrant.

As I recall, the outstanding teachers were Mr R. F. Canney, my class teacher, and Mr D. H. Slee, a lecturer from the School of Mines and Industries who taught chemistry. Mr Slee was one of those rare teachers who could draw the best out of students with his immaculate presentations of practical demonstrations and his obvious love of the subject. Mr Canney, by some means unknown to me, instilled in me a desire to study which has remained with me all my life.

On leaving school my jobs were many and varied. Two decades later I qualified as a professional civil engineer and spent the last two decades of my working life as an engineer in a testing and research laboratory.

The affection which students had for the old school was shown by the 500 old scholars who attended the 75th anniversary of the founding of the school. In 1993 they came from every state in Australia and from New Zealand and Canada.

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