Christopher Keenihan

When I went to Adelaide Tech I used to live in St Peters. My first recollection is when, in 1957 at the end of seventh grade, it was quite a prestigious thing to go and to do the test for Adelaide Tech and parents wanted their children to do it. I went along and did the test in Brookman Hall which is still part of the University of South Australia on the corner of Frome Road and North Terrace. The hall was full – perhaps 300 or more in there and I assume there was more than one sitting. I don’t remember much about the test. It might have been one of those general aptitude tests that were quite common in those days.

When I received an offer to go to Adelaide Tech later in the year there was quite a buzz of excitement. My parents were particularly excited about it. They had the local greengrocer’s shop on Sixth Avenue and Stephen Terrace – it was Walkerville Road in those days. To be accepted was almost like going to St Peter’s College. I remember riding my bike around the district and finding out from a few friends who else had got in.

There was one girl, Elaine Delsar. Her father was a teacher at East Adelaide Primary School where I had gone. There was Peter Merkel, who lived in Seventh Avenue. His nickname was ‘Gus’, a similar nickname to that of his older brother who also went to Adelaide Tech. Stephen Crouch lived at the back of my place facing Seventh Street. Janis Jonatz, now in Port Lincoln running the fisheries, was also chosen. Later on there was an Andrew Topperwein, a year or two after me.

The start, I guess, was like anywhere else. We were told we were going to be victimised – that sort of worried us. My parents got an older friend, John Gneil, now an architect for the Walkerville Council, and Peter and Bobby Marshall to come around and talk to me about the school. They told me all kinds of things and I listened wide-eyed to the stories of teachers and what would happen to us. While I was a little fearful of starting school, this was a good thing to happen – something my parents did that was very positive for me.

I don’t remember the start being all that spectacular. I know we had to wear uniform. In those days we had to go to John Martin’s school uniform department and buy our blazer, our grey suit, our tie, our hat, socks and shoes. It was quite the thing to do: each school, each college had a section. We were divided into years and I was put in 1B. I guess there were between 70 or 80 starters in the three classes – not a very large intake. I think the two boys’ classes, 1A and 1B were academically streamed because the students in 1A just seemed to have that bit of an academic edge over the rest of us all the way through. There was a commercial stream, mainly of girls. The few boys in the class did accounting.

I started by doing the normal range of subjects. The first year class teacher was Ian Marshall, affectionately known as Sporty Marshall, whose nickname was well entrenched by the time I got there. We started in the basement or the dungeon at the bottom of the building near the chemistry laboratories. Ian Marshall took us for English and might have taken us for other subjects but his ambitions were elsewhere and early in the piece he left to become a producer for ABC radio and, I think, produced the Philip Satchell programme. The other teacher we had at this stage was Mr Magor,³³ who seemed very sick. He took us for history and later taught me English. We probably had Mr Pitman for chemistry.³⁴

There was a teacher I remember most because he was terrible. I think, even then, we thought he was a bit strange. He was quite a violent person. He would twist a student’s ear, he’d smack students across the head, punish us for even working. We’d be working away and might ask someone to borrow a rubber or a pencil. The next minute we’d find ourselves sent out of class to write out a chapter of the book. I’ve no fond memories of him.

I managed to pass first year. Those who did very well in English and seemed to be at the top of the class would do French as a free choice subject. I was never chosen and I don’t think French would have been much use to me.

In second year I actually had that teacher as a class teacher and we went up a floor. We were on the ground floor in the south eastern corner which is still the administration centre today. That was our class room, IIB. This year was called the sub-Intermediate and we had the three exams, one at the end of each term as in first year. As in first year we had spelling most mornings. We had to revise up to 20 words at night and the next day we’d have a spelling test. If we didn’t get 80% right we would have to write out those words during the lunch hour or after school.

I remember we had a diabetic as an English teacher. It was interesting. He just sat at the desk and chewed chocolate all day. I believe that because he was a diabetic, quite often there would be another teacher at the back of the class watching in case he threw a fit. He regularly visited the Botanic Hotel during lunch breaks. Second year didn’t mean much to me at all. Second year was my worst year.

When we got to Intermediate we had Mr Knauerhase as our class teacher and moved up a storey across to the north-eastern corner of the building. I was in IIIB. It was at that stage that algebra, geometry and trigonometry came together as maths I and II when we were prepared for the Intermediate PEB exam. We had to go to Wayville – a horrible place, very dusty and hot, and difficult to get to from St Peters. It was quite a task to do maths I and II in the one day. There was an hour break and one delicatessen across the road in which several thousand people seemed to be trying to get something to eat at the same time. One chemistry exam in the old car pavilion was 105°F. Students were constantly fainting and going away in ambulances. Many students, particularly college students, just tossed water around. That was a death knell for Wayville. In 1963 the exams were held in school halls.

The system at Adelaide Tech of doing exams, three strict exams and particularly the one before the PEB stood us in good stead. We, however, were never taught examination techniques, just learned the hard way by doing them. So, we became hardened to examinations although students don’t always learn how to do exams but this preparation was certainly better than nothing. I passed my Intermediate with a couple of credits – they just gave A, B, C, D, E in those days. I would have passes in seven subjects – English, maths I and II, physics, chemistry, drawing and economics – and an extra subject PEB woodwork which I passed. I built a surfboard in Leaving in fourth year. I guess it gave me a good grounding because I’m still sharpening plane blades, chisels and using techniques taught to me as a school boy.

As far as the tech studies scene was concerned, we did three subjects. We did fitting and turning on an old Hercus lathe in the basement below the Brookman Hall for half a day a week for a while. Above the fitting and turning laboratory, at ground floor level, straight in front of the main entrance was a museum that used to fascinate me. We spent many hours of our free time in there although I don’t ever remember being taken there by a teacher. A wonderful resource – it was never used by teachers that I knew. When I think of it we had the Botanical Gardens near by and we never, that I am aware, went there for any kind of teaching. It was even taboo to go into the ‘Speakers’ Corner’ next to the zoo and the switch-back riding track. Often students spent lunch-times illegally in the zoo, the Botanical Gardens or hiding and smoking in ‘Speakers’ Corner’.

We would purely sit in a class room, in rows. I never remember anything other than rows. The chairs – once we selected a seat – were ours for the year. If we misbehaved we were brought down the front and that’s where we stayed. None of this conference-type set up or people working in informal groups. We were banned from talking to each other in class – that very rarely occurred.

But the museum was fascinating. It had an aeroplane in there and a motor car and a sample of a meteorite and a small ship, a copy of an ocean liner, one of the famous ones. There was a huge collection of guns and swords. And, because of the School of Mines, it had a big mineral and gems collection. In my time they didn’t have geology which is beyond me as they had all the facilities there for a student. A caretaker used to come out and talk to us. That wonderful resource has now disappeared. The only thing I know is that the aeroplane and car went to the Birdwood Museum.

We did sheetmetal in the Sheetmetal and Plumbing School in the Jubilee Building, one of the oldest buildings down Frome Road. There was a new one, the Playford Building, started in 1957 and finished in 1958/59, when the old Jubilee Building was demolished. In its basement was the carpentry shop. If we did anything wrong there we used to have to come back after work and flatten the oil stones by grinding them on glass with an abrasive, for hours on end it seemed, just to get them flat. Often we didn’t know what we’d done wrong but we didn’t question because we knew our parents could belt us across the ear as well when we got home. The teacher was all powerful in those days and parents seemed to believe that what they did was right and what children did was wrong.

I went on to do a fitting and turning apprenticeship and the sheetmetal work was helpful. I’ve used it when I’ve done roofing, so the practical side of it has given me some very good grounding for the long term future. Incidentally we also did woodwork at East Adelaide Primary School so it must have been the thing to do in those days.

In the Intermediate I remember that we started doing plays – Shakespearean plays. I remember Mr Knauerhase and Mr Magor. Both were very good English teachers. Mr Knauerhase, in particular, used to stand up on the elevated platform that was where the teacher’s desk and the chalkboard were and he’d get carried away with the acting and almost forget that he had students. I found him entertaining and he tried to make it living English and, not being a person who liked English all that much, I guess he made it as interesting as he possibly could.

I remember we used to file up to the local picture theatres – there was one I seem to remember in Wakefield Street – and we would go and see the current films because in those days you had the choice of two plays for the PEB – Macbeth or King Lear – one of the Shakespearean plays, and there was probably a choice of about half a dozen novels. I remember Great Expectations was one that I enjoyed. I vaguely remember that we went to the University of Adelaide to their theatre and they performed one of the plays. It was all very nice and comfortable and organised, very focused in a few areas but that was a sign of the times.

My best memories are of the Leaving year. I remember affectionately some of the teachers, although I must say that back in Intermediate I had Mr Kohler, I think, for physics or mathematics. I remember him affectionately for being a lovely teacher. He actually treated us like adults. He gave us responsibility. Bryce was an immaculate dresser: I remember the lovely suits that he wore. He actually ran the Tech High School Old Scholars Association at that stage because he was an old scholar himself. So was Peter McInerny – that’s why they taught there. Both of them were doing the AUA and would have had time to go to their lectures. They were probably only four or five years older than we were. Being so young could create interesting situations when a teacher was attracted to a girl in a class. One notable romance did eventuate.

The other person I’ve got a lot of time for and wonderful memories of is Cedric Cannell or ‘Doggie’ as he was called. He was the headmaster all my time there and he was a lovely guy. He was an eccentric, with a professor style and waddled around like Charlie Chaplin. He was a rather tall man, about six feet three inches. His son Peter was in the same class as I was and he treated all of us evenly. He was a brilliant mathematician and was equally brilliant in the way he put it across. He couldn’t understand how we couldn’t get mathematics but he made it entertaining, he made a bit of fun. He always seemed to have some eccentricity about him to laugh about, the human side of him I guess. As a result I’ve always done well in mathematics. I got a very good background from enjoying his lessons.

Another teacher I have fond memories of was Pitman; his nickname was Berris. He was a strict sort of teacher and he specialised in chemistry. I think his knowledge and his professionalism came forward and we responded accordingly. I think it is sad that the modern teacher – and I’ve been through Teachers College myself through the Technical and Further Education system – doesn’t have these qualifications. In those days the teachers were specialists; they had a science degree or mathematics degree or they were industrial chemists or studied English as their main focus, and then they did their teaching. Now it seems, with the diplomas and the Bachelor of Education which I’ve been through, teachers don’t actually specialise. You do a semester of something – you might do a semester of maths – but that doesn’t equip you in lots of cases to teach at that very high level.

(I know myself in the trade teaching as I am now – I’m a TAFE teacher – that the trade is not enough. Teachers need to have a lot more outside; they need a lot of experience. Teachers today don’t seem to have that outside experience of working for a firm or doing that higher level of mathematics to help them through their teaching and provide a bit of diversity and a bit of conversation to share interests outside the curriculum.)

Sports-wise we weren’t very good, it was not encouraged as a main objective. We’d kick a ball or play cricket. Baseball was fairly strong with a few of the lads. There was volleyball – a brand new sport in those days. We were quite successful at that because we were probably one of the first schools to do that. The difference in sport was incredible. Adelaide High School had gymnasiums, several football teams, rifle shooting and archery; they had just about the whole range of sports and it was prestigious to play sport but at Adelaide Tech sport didn’t get a high profile at all. But we didn’t have the facilities. Frome Road oval was a shocking oval, full of ruts and not much of a grass surface, so we couldn’t be expected to play wonderful sport.

There were two highlights of the year. One was the Belair National Park sports day, an athletics day with more of a picnic atmosphere with running and three-legged races. Two Aboriginal brothers, Bill and Joe Paterson, took part and the older brother won the senior sport award which meant he must have won the running and jumping races that day. We went there by train. It was a good day off for everybody and most of the time we’d disappear, walk round the park and do our own thing. The other highlight was swimming. We used to go down to the Henley Pool, on the beach, the salt-water pool now filled in, for a swimming carnival.

We had four houses – Kelvin (I was in that one and its colour was red), Rutherford, Newton and Cavendish – named for great scientists. I think the stained glass windows in the Institute represent those four men – they are the beautiful stained glass windows we saw as we went up the stairs. We had house captains, the normal structure and there were competitions to get points to win the shield at the end of the year. One year we were particularly strong in swimming. We had the Duhne brothers, both very good swimmers. Barry became a very famous long distance swimmer and there were three other brothers as well. There was Rodney Payze, Grantley in the middle and Graham or ‘Butch’. They became eminent life savers. Incidentally Rodney is the Commissioner of the Highways Department. When I think of successful Adelaide Tech ‘old boys’ I remember three politicians, Kym Mayse, Mark Brindell and Graham McGuire, a senator.

I left Adelaide Tech at Leaving level and went to Adelaide High School to do my Leaving Honours. Doing so I missed being taught by a teacher with a brilliant reputation in mathematics. They called him ‘Spinny’ Williams and he was credited with one year getting every student he taught through, at least at credit level in Leaving Honours maths and more that half the class getting double credits as well as the top of the state. He must have been a great motivator because students were happy to get to school at eight o’clock and they’d be working till five o’clock at night. From reports I received he really treated students like adults and if they had to go and get something to eat or get a hair cut it was just, ‘OK, go and do it guys and come back when you’re ready.’ There was no compulsion about it and students worked through their lunch hours. The story went that, unless students did a 1,000 problems a week in matriculation maths, they wouldn’t do very well. That was the way he did it and I guess many hundreds would have gone through his hands over the years and would have achieved well in maths simply because of his professional attitude. I would have loved to have studied under him.

One of the teachers who should be mentioned is Dave Dallwitz, very famous in the jazz and art scene. Dave, or ‘Dizzy’ as we called him because he was very tall, was our drawing teacher and a bit of an ‘arty’ person and a very good teacher as well. I remember getting a credit. I remember him with much affection. He left Adelaide Tech after the school was broken up and pursued his professional art and jazz career.

I haven’t mentioned Mr Newell, our English teacher. He was an English person, quite short in stature. Rumour was that he had been a spy for the British forces during World War II. I know he was mad on Esperanto and was trying to get students to do Esperanto after hours. There were Esperanto classes for many years. According to him it was going to become THE language. He was a very credible English teacher and I passed: that must have been a good indication for someone who used to struggle with the basics of English. English then was more likely to be to be taught by rote. It wasn’t anything like the creative writing that appears to be taught to students nowadays. We had to memorise up to 20 sonnets and many lines from Shakespearean plays. We had to study The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and have many quotations memorised.

For one final PEB exam, with all the quotations memorised, I was ready to pick my question of choice. That year the examiner included an obscure story about a skink and asked us to analyse it. All the hours of memorising quotations went out of the window. That PEB exam caused much comment but students like me were the ones who were let down.

Our deputy headmaster was a man of great note who, I believe, had been a captain in the army. Was it is the First or Second World War? To me he looked ancient as most deputy heads seemed to be. He was probably only in his 50s but age seems to vary greatly when we are young. He was a stern disciplinarian and had a limp. We could hear him yelling at people from great distances. If we had to be punished, we would be outside his office which was like something out of Charles Dickens. Books were wall to ceiling and there was a leather-cigary old book smell in the room. He used to delight in either belting students across the tail or caning on the hands – several swipes on each hand would be quite common.

Some of the misdemeanours were quite incredible: maybe a student dropped a paper or there might have been a bit of a fight with a student or boys had gone home early or were caught in town by the prefects. There was the odd prefect who took great delight in ‘dobbing’ in boys without caps. Maybe a student was in a shop when he shouldn’t have been or was riding his bike where he shouldn’t have ridden it. You name it – they had so many things we could get into trouble for. One fault that was very common occurred if we were going up or down the flight of stairs. If we actually didn’t step on every step or stepped over a step to take a larger stride, we’d be caught. He would just stand up at the top of the stairs much like the way the police hide themselves with radar cameras and, if he caught us – which he invariably did – he’d yell at us down two flights of steps. We knew we were in trouble and would have to go and see him after school. With a loaded bag – our kit bag in those days full of books – the boy would probably have to go up and down the four flights of steps 40 or 50 times, whatever was deemed the punishment of the day. I guess it did me good because it strengthened my legs but it’s primitive when I think of it.

It was the nature of the day and we just accepted it. We didn’t like it and, in fact, many students tended to rebel against it by wearing bright socks when we should be wearing grey ones. There were all sorts of ways to try and rebel – taking threads out of ties, changing the emblem on our blazers – all sorts of things we deemed mischievous that they didn’t ever seem to notice.

Gordon Haskard had a Mathematics Tutoring College over next to the Botanic Hotel. It was his private school. In those days it would have been quite a new concept.

I didn’t have anything to do with the lady teachers. The girls had their commercial classes at the other end of the building, other than in economics for the technical stream when the girls from the commercial classes joined our class. There might have been 12 girls and 30 lads doing economics.

A couple of things do come to mind and are associated with Brookman Hall which still to this day, with its stained glass windows, is a magnificent room. We used it three times a year for our formal, very formal, sit-down, pre-PEB dress rehearsal examinations and learned to work under pressure. I thought it was useful to do that.

We had singing lessons with Elsie Woolley and her husband. They seemed very old to me and we used to sing rather ridiculous songs that had no meaning for us at all. We made up our own words to those songs. At the end of the year when we had our very ‘pomp and circumstance’ presentation night for all parents and all students, the whole school of 500 or 600 students would be singing these songs. We thought it was rather corny. Boys would be up to all kinds of mischief such as letting live mice go and making up different words. When there was someone with a good wit parodying the lyrics we couldn’t help laughing. Still, all the ceremonies were interesting. The teachers paraded like peacocks with their magnificent colours, some of them in purple and bright red. They all sat on the reasonably large stage watching students pass to get their certificates of merit, awards and giving particular applause for the dux of the school.

Besides these ceremonial occasions, Brookman Hall was used for school concerts throughout the year. School plays would be about something fairly topical at the time. I remember I was a stage hand most of the time. I’d help actors with their lines, take props on and off stage but I would never go on stage. Those who did were received with great joy. Among the teachers who helped was Dave Dallwitz who did a lot of that production work.

After a while the productions became larger and, for two years, we used the Freemasons Hall across the road. The productions became more lavish and the hall was much more comfortable for players and audience. I remember those rehearsals and performances with great affection. Often actors would ad-lib, or develop very English accents or, on one occasion, smash a card table to the amusement of the audience. A number of performers went on to amateur and later professional theatre. Peter Trevaskis comes to mind. Some became the basis of first ‘The Twilights’ and then ‘The Little River Band’. Kevin Peake joined ‘Sky’, the ensemble formed by John Williams.

Another memory from those days was religious instruction which was compulsory until the end of third year. For 30 minutes a week we were divided into Catholics, Congregationalists and Methodists. A few overseas students had their Buddhism or their other religions. Sometimes the teachers took us. Mr Magor, who was involved in the Billy Graham crusade in 1959, took religious studies for some groups. To be honest, I really don’t know what it achieved. It certainly didn’t affect my life. I do remember it wasn’t very popular.

Once a year we had a school dance, held in the Brookman Hall. Often we had our own band, Jonny Perry and The Hurricanes. These dances were organised by the students’ council committee. Of course we didn’t dare do anything wrong and felt rather good in our non-school uniforms. The girls were very well dressed. Like most dances in those days not many people did much dancing. Most stood around and talked. There was a bit of giggling in the middle. It wasn’t ballroom dancing but we enjoyed these dances which provided some social life for the school.

The school wasn’t devoid of social life but it carried on many old traditions and hadn’t broken into the more modern schooling that the Adelaide High and other schools that I perceived were probably years ahead in their socialising and in the curriculum that was available. I know when I transferred to Adelaide High School the range of subjects was far wider. We could do geology and biology – to my knowledge these subjects were not available at Adelaide Tech. To my knowledge French was for the so-called brighter students. I was pushed into the technical stream and would go off to do the metalwork and the drawing side of it. In some ways we had a technical streaming system, not as strong as occurred in the Norwood and Thebby Techs where there was a whole programme based around trade. At Adelaide Tech trade entered only one of the eight subjects.

School was very much focused on going to university. That was assumed to be the next step. I would have been one of the lower achievers in the ‘B’ class. I’d be 29th in a class of 30 but I matriculated quite easily and in the ‘A’ class all would have matriculated. The top ten per cent went on to great careers. I think a lot just went on to university and ‘bombed out’. I finished up getting my Master’s and three other degrees at university almost 30 years later when I was more mature and enjoyed my studies instead of being forced or expected to do them.

The school kept pushing the old scholars’ contacts, encouraging students to believe that there would be no problem getting a job because, it seemed, that all heads of industry – at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, the RAA, the Department of Woods and Forests and the Highways Department – at that stage had some connection with Adelaide Tech. There was no compunction about ringing someone or being organised to go and see an old scholar who had a ‘key’ to open doors for you. It gave us a lot of security because we knew that something would happen for us or be made to happen for us. The tradition was there, the pride was there. Certainly the record was there. We’d probably stand up against any college, any school of note in its day. It was very rare for anyone to fail. A huge number won scholarships, I just missed out.

When I think back I was probably fortunate that I went there rather than Norwood Tech for example. Students still need, as we needed, a bit of a push along on top of encouragement. I guess the techniques have changed. Today teachers tend to encourage or mentor the students to achieve, whereas in those days it was almost pure fright and the strictness and the homework set, the constant homework, hours of it set for us and we were expected to do it. If we didn’t our parents would be told via a diary note that had to be signed so we couldn’t get away with anything. Parents were told regularly about our transgressions and we’d be straightened out at home and at school. I’m pretty sure that formal reports were posted so we didn’t really know what our results were until this envelope arrived, was opened by our parents and we either ducked for cover or got a brand new football for achieving.

Yes, it was quite formal. I don’t think it did me any harm because it did, at least, make me learn a lot of the basics which have carried me through to my present day. In fact some of that idea I do carry through to my own teaching and try to build into students that there is a work ethic required if you want to achieve. If some aren’t achieving I try and coach them and tell them the importance of good basic knowledge and skills well learnt, to carry them for many, many years if not for life.

I didn’t go across to the new Adelaide Tech when it was moved to Glenunga³⁵ because the transport was a problem. Living at St Peter’s, it had been easy to ride my bike through Hackney, swing down through the Botanical Gardens, past the zoo, over the bridge that’s still there but it’s not a traffic bridge any more, take the main road straight up Frome Road, park my bike, go to school and ride home again.

To go to Glenunga was quite a long way and, I think, by that time I was sick of the system and this was an excuse to go to another school. I’ve no regrets that I went to Adelaide High because I did see a totally different environment for learning. It was more, I assume, like today where if students do the work they do the work. If they don’t no one seems to care about it very much.

At Adelaide Tech they tended to force and punish us. We were liable to have to write out the whole chapter from the physics book or something and we didn’t dare not do it. At Adelaide High it didn’t seem to matter whether we wore uniform, or even went to school. I guess at Leaving Honours the responsibility had to be ours.

Academically I think the top achievers at Adelaide High did as well as Adelaide Tech. Many successful people came out of there in that year of 1963. The secret is that Adelaide Tech got rid of the lower achievers via the entrance test. They picked up everyone in the 80 and 90 per cent range who provided good raw material to work on and push forward, without the impediment of slow learners in classes.

Today there are what I’d call ‘opportunity classes’. I’ve actually interviewed students from St Peter’s College for apprenticeships and they came from classes where they would just do work experience with very little emphasis on academic studies.

Adelaide Tech’s secret was its academic selection system and tradition. The school looked like something out of Charles Dickens. There was nothing modern about it and the building hasn’t altered much. I remember those days when the furniture was very sparse, very dull, with plain wooden, single desks. Nothing like the bright class rooms of today with pictures on the walls, overhead projections and students working as they move around the room.

Return to contents Buy A Broader Vision	© Erica Jolly and individual authors