Told by Harry Macklin-Shaw

to his son-in-law Peter Armstrong

In 1922, as a student at Tailem Bend Primary School, I won a bursary to cover my secondary schooling. The bursaries were worth £15/0/0 to country people. You would be chosen for a bursary on the strength of your grade 7 marks. I had scored 634 marks out of a possible 700, including 100% for English, even though I never rated myself as a 100% student of English. At this stage my mother felt that I was too young to go on to high school so I repeated seventh grade the next year. The second time was worth another £15/0/0.

My mother became aware of the fact that some technical education was available at Thebarton Boys Technical High School when she met Dr Charles Fenner, who was then Superintendent of Technical Education, at the opening of extensions to Tailem Bend Primary School. He suggested that because of my record at Tailem Bend Primary School and my interests, I should attend Thebarton Tech. My mother took the bull by the horns and said, ‘Right, we’ll do something about it.’

A family called Sabey, who lived at Tailem Bend, had a son and daughter living in Huntriss Street, Torrensville, where board was available. George Sabey was a bookmaker. Another daughter lived at 14 Francis Street, Cowandilla, just behind the Cowandilla Primary School and about a mile from Thebarton Tech. There were other boys from the country who were boarding in Adelaide and attending Thebarton but not as many as I had expected.

The Director of Education at the time was William McCoy. He had recommended a movement in secondary education away from the straight academic education towards some technical work and, therefore in 1919, established the Thebarton Technical High School. The academic curriculum in high schools at the time consisted of English, Latin, maths I and II, physics and chemistry, and that was it. So, for technical education in South Australia, this was a starting point.

Dr Charles Fenner had come from Ballarat as the first Superintendent of Technical Education. He really had the responsibility for establishing a form of education for people out in industry which was part of the apprenticeship system. People undertaking apprenticeships were required by law to attend Thebarton Technical High School to do the theoretical study of their particular trade. This study consisted largely of engineering, sheetmetal work, woodwork. They were taught by untrained teachers who were qualified tradesmen. When I started at Thebarton in 1924, it was the first year in which it had taken secondary students. (After opening in 1919, the school had been used initially to house apprentices.)³⁶

As to what I remember most from my student days, there are a lot of memories. I was very keen on sport and, of course, the school was right alongside of Thebarton Oval and also there was an oval at the back of the school which was part of the school playground. You could play football, cricket and tennis in those places and I participated in all of those, becoming captain of cricket, football and tennis.

As captain of the side, the material that I had to use was pretty immature and I remember having to try to get the best out of these youngsters – obviously that’s what a captain’s job is anyhow. As a result of being captain of the football team, I was selected from representatives of all of the secondary schools to go as part of a football team to Victoria, where we played the Victorian secondary schools on the Melbourne Cricket Ground. I can remember vividly, in that match, kicking the ball out of bounds from the square. It was raining like blazes – which was not unusual of course as far as Melbourne goes – the ball came over the back of the pack. I grabbed it and kicked it. It went at right angles, straight out of bounds. There was a hell of a roar from the team. The person who organised this trip was a teacher from Thebarton Tech, Vern Maloney. He had been a rover for North Adelaide. My liking for North Adelaide and for Vern Maloney was because the football colours for Tailem Bend were red and white, so that stuck in my mind.

With the tennis, it should be stressed that the boys from Thebarton Technical High School were very much junior – in terms of experience – to the boys from the high schools, who had teams in a round robin competition. Therefore as a school team we won very few matches indeed, and very few individual matches were won. I can remember the first individual tennis match that was won by anybody from Thebarton Tech was me. I defeated a fellow called Batt from Norwood High School, and there was almost a celebration of the fact that Thebarton Tech had finally won something.

I can remember being dux of the school in each of first, second, third and fourth years and receiving prizes at the Annual Speech Nights at Thebarton Town Hall. Dr Fenner presented the prizes. This is how I got to know Dr Fenner – the fact was that I was continually running up – not just for the dux prize but something for English, something for science and so on.

By the time I left at the end of 1927 I knew practically all of the teachers. The headmaster was Alec Paull who ultimately left Thebarton Tech to become a primary school inspector. The senior master was Harry Cant who was a science and mathematics teacher. When Alec Paull later left the school Harry became the headmaster. The next senior teacher was a fellow called Adolf Kriehn who was really a mechanical drawing expert. He took over the job of senior to fill the shoes of Harry Cant. Other teachers I remember there included Sid Harvey, who ultimately became Nailsworth Boys Technical School’s headmaster and a chap called Gibson who was a maths and science teacher. Tom Charlesworth was an English teacher as was Harry Allen. Tom Bone was the artist who ultimately became one of South Australia’s leading water-colourists. Fred Middleton was an importee from Ballarat as a metalwork teacher. He looked after all the art metalwork side and was supported by a general metalwork man, Ted Matthews. Bill Beare and Bill Schultz were woodwork teachers. The blacksmithing man was Sid Gibson.

After completing fourth year in 1927, I left Thebarton to attend the Teachers College in Kintore Avenue. I had to get special approval to attend the college because the requirement was that you be 17 years of age before you became a Teachers College student. This was tied in with the Adelaide University because you also could not attend the university under the age of 17 unless you had special approval.

I can well remember the difficulties over the school holidays of trying to get me into the Teachers College. It was only after insistence by Dr Fenner that they finally approved me as a student. He came down to the college about four months after the courses had started. The course then was the B course with students also attending the university. Dr Fenner convinced the principal of the college, Dr A.J. Schulz, who was a legend in those days, that he could recruit, from the B students, potential teachers with a technical background, who would then be transferred from the B Course into what they just called the technical course.

I can remember Dr Fenner coming and saying, ‘I want you Harry.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re saving me,’ because I had no real ambition to go out to the West Coast teaching in a one-teacher school. He replied with a twinkle in his eye, ‘Well, that’s fixed that up!’ I asked him who were the others. One was Stuart Wissell, an ex-Adelaide High School student. There was Reg Meaker from Kadina High School. He used the same excuse I think I did to avoid going out to teach in a one-teacher school. The interesting fact is that both Reg and I were appointed to Mallala when we were in the air force. The fourth was a student from Thebarton Tech who had no real ability and I never understood why he was chosen. We were all transferred from the B Course to the technical course which involved attendance at the University, the South Australian School of Arts, Practising Schools at Sturt Street and Currie Street. We did our woodwork training under Arch Peake.³⁷ We also went back to Thebarton Tech to do advanced metalwork, which was of very little use to me because I had done it as a student.

We also had to do college subjects so we had a pretty wide spread of courses to deal with. I suppose it tested us out pretty well. It was interesting that I topped the course, followed by Stuart Wissell who ultimately became my assistant manual training inspector. Reg Meaker was killed during the war. Our fourth member failed the course and he was sent to the West Coast so he got his just desserts. Stuart Wissell and I were both appointed to Thebarton Tech. Over the following years this course became the source of many of the teachers who became craft teachers in the technical high schools.

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