R. William Nettle

At the age of 11, I came to Thebarton Technical School in 1928. I can’t remember whether the Dalton scheme was working then. I remember that the school’s motto was ‘Carpe Diem’ – ‘Seize the Day’. I can only remember sitting in class rooms being taught that year. Most kids seemed to have more money than I did. I could never go with them to the shop at the end of Shipster Street to buy food. I always took my lunch from home, travelling from the bottom of Bevington Road, Glenunga, on the route 14 D type tram with its closed-off saloon for ladies who sat opposite one another at one end. I changed to a drop-centre tram on the Henley Beach Road line, getting off at Shipster Street corner and walking through to Ashley Street.

My father was determined that I should have a technical education. He had emigrated from Cornwall and had wanted to be an engineer. He enjoyed design. In Cornwall there had been a School of Mines at Camborne so when he came to Adelaide as a young man at the turn of the century, he went to Broken Hill to find work. There he couldn’t go down into the mines because his lungs were too weak. Instead he was employed as a bookkeeper and became the paymaster. When he returned to Adelaide and married later in life, he stayed working in commerce but he hoped that I would have a different career. I had been top of my small primary school but my marks were not high enough to get me into Adelaide Technical High School, so Thebarton Tech was the best alternative.

We called our first class teacher ‘Curly’ Martin but I didn’t do geography, the subject he taught. I did French instead. It was a very hot class room. Inevitably I ended up with a seat in the hot afternoon sun. An only son, I was alone and none of the boys I knew from Glen Osmond Primary School had come to Thebarton. The bright ones had gone to Unley High School, the others to a central school. I’d been to a woodwork centre, at Parkside, half a day once a week for woodwork during grade 7. We had also travelled, during that last primary school year, to Maud Street, to the Unley Crystal Pool, marching in ‘crocodile’ from Young Street to the pool to learn to swim, but I had never travelled as far as I did to Thebarton during those first two years of my secondary education.

In second year ‘Bunny’ Allen was our class teacher. He taught us English and I remember most of all being taught how to write essays. I didn’t enjoy essay writing, particularly one topic we were given about a brother or sister. As I didn’t have one, I invented one – I was learning to lie. The language of Shakespeare seemed strange. My knowledge of history was very poor. In primary school it had been largely Australian, the explorers.

I remember, with pleasure, studying drawing. Mr Choate was the drawing teacher and Max Bone worked under him as a junior teacher in the drawing office. I loved maths, particularly solving problems and Thebarton had a hobby exhibition into which I put nearly every piece of my No. 4 Meccano set, including an engine I’d traded. The pleasure I derived from winning an award for that exhibit was tempered by the displeasure I felt at having to dress up for something else.

When my mother knew I had to dress up as something, she turned me into a safety guide. She made a pair of red overalls covered in safety signs but creased the trousers down the sides instead of fore and aft. Willie Nettle, safety guide, won a prize but I could only feel the other boys’ scorn. I was old enough to resent feeling mollycoddled by my parents. While they tried their best, they didn’t have the money to let me join in the mad forays to the Torrens with the other boys. Besides I had to be home and home was a long way away.

My parents did everything they could to make up to me for being an only child. I was in the Scouts, having moved up from a ‘senior sixer’ in the Cubs, and in the church choir and where school was concerned both tried to help. In 1926 I had missed a good deal of grade 6 when we visited relatives back ‘home’ in England – my mother was from Yorkshire. There they bought me the Meccano set but I was not allowed to open it until I was able to use it properly. The reason had nothing to do with a bribe for success, it was a matter of maturity. By second year I was allowed to build with it and enjoyed making exhibits.

The headmaster was Mr Paull and I knew very little about him but the deputy head master, Mr Kriehn, came into my life in second year through a school concert held in the Thebarton Town Hall. We were to sing ‘Behold the Lord High Executioner’ by Gilbert and Sullivan and were to march on and off the stage to the strains of ‘Under the Double Eagle’. I played the piano and could ‘vamp’ very well so I volunteered to accompany the choir. I spent the whole night at the piano learning to play the piece and had it half mastered for the rehearsal the next day. At the practice I thumped out the bit I knew but couldn’t play the middle part, so a boy called Naegeli, Swiss I thought, was called on and played it perfectly from sight. I returned to the chorus with a red face.

In second year, 1929, our work was set out in monthly assignments. The monthly deadline was broken into suggested four weekly ‘bites’ but it was up to us how we used our free time. I always had the maths done straight away but the maths teacher never gave us additional problem-solving exercises if we showed that we could master the work quickly. Drawing was well done but I always left the English to the last minute. French assignments were always translations of passages into and out of French. There was no oral French at Thebarton. For some reason I was made to do clay modelling but I hated it and I didn’t enjoy metalwork very much. Mr Matthews was rough and rude and swore in class and I was no good at his subject.

We were divided into houses for sport and assembled in them on the Thebarton Oval. I can remember Sturt, Hindmarsh and Flinders but not the fourth one. Frank Fenner, the son of Charles Fenner, was one house captain, Sid (now John) Bleechmore – later Commander of Fourth Military District – was another and Doug Lillecrapp was mine, house captain of Hindmarsh House. I played almost nothing, only occasionally running in relay races.

At the end of second year I was top of the class at the age of 13. My father talked to people and I was enrolled at Adelaide Technical High School, so much closer to home. I was transferred into their all-boy second year technical stream, the year that ATHS did the Intermediate. Adelaide Tech did not use the assignment method and I was happier. I didn’t have the self-discipline required for the Dalton scheme. My parents bought me a bicycle to ride to and from Glenunga.

My move to Adelaide Technical High School, 1930–1931

It was 1930. The Depression was being felt. The W.A. Norman importing agency in Flinders Street, selling farm equipment, separators and ‘do-it-yourself’ sheds covered in Malthoid – a roofing material not suitable for the purpose – closed. Father was out of work but Mr Norman found him a job collecting rates by instalments. He would trudge from house to house in all weathers, collecting 2/- or 2/6 a time and was paid by the council. He had acquired seven cottages during his working life and the rent from these cottages had to be collected. This was how he spent the last years of his life. He died when I was 16.

My new class teacher was Stan Tiver,³⁹ a good bloke who had the knack of bringing to life the plays we studied. With him I studied The Tempest. Maths at ‘the Tech’ involved much more problem-solving. In problem-solving then we were either right or wrong. We worked at a much higher level at a set syllabus, spending nearly all our time on drill. Gordon Haskard taught me maths. He was able to be understood. I enjoyed his classes and did well. He was a man of medium build, about five feet nine inches tall, with a round face and sandy hair. His manner was abrupt but friendly. He took us through the process, adjusting always to the level of his students. As he taught at first year university level as well, this was a skill we valued. Not everyone could do it. In 1931, my Leaving class teacher was Joe Canney, old but wise and gentle. I topped the state in Leaving maths I and II. But I failed arithmetic and had to take a ‘sup’ the following January.

The headmaster, Mr ‘Siddie’ Moyle, taught us arithmetic and English at Leaving level. As headmaster Mr Moyle carried an aura that he was always right and I felt this to be a barrier in his English classes. Arithmetic lacked meaning for me. At Leaving level all kinds of weird things were built in such as the number of significant figures that had no relevance in life as I saw it.

Physics was taught by Mr Theel. He was ponderous and heavy with a big jowl and deep voice. I came top in the class and second in the state. For chemistry we were marched from the third floor down two flights of back stairs to the Bonython Laboratories (I can see the name in Gothic-like lettering over the church-like door), where the School of Mines did assaying. In silence we marched straight into the laboratory to be taught by Dougal Slee.

As technical students we often escaped from the top floor. Our class room environments were more varied. We did physics on the first floor. Drawing was taught at the eastern end of the Exhibition building in the School of Arts. The commercial mob occupied the western part of the top floor and never seemed to get away from there except for assembly.

Leaving drawing was the equal of a first year university subject. There were six components to School of Arts drawing, three at Inter and three at Leaving: plane and solid geometry and freehand drawing for Intermediate and perspective (valuable for architecture), mechanical drawing with cross-sections of valves or wheels and isometric drawing for Leaving which was third year at ATHS. I was second in the state in drawing but felt swindled as I had topped all three components in the School of Arts exams but was pipped in the PEB by one Shepherd of SPSC. To this day I don’t know how.

To make sure that we made no noise as we moved up or down the stairs teachers were posted on the landings. We were forbidden to speak to girls although we did manage to make contact passing in the corridors. We could contrive to be late in the chemistry lab and emerge when girls were returning. The only time I was caned at ‘the Tech’ was for speaking to a girl – it was a caning offence.

A language at Intermediate level was a pre-requisite at university, even for engineering. Old Ma Beevor taught us French. A visiting teacher, she would send us up the stairs ahead of her to the Tower, a tiny class room above second floor where 10 or 12 of us did French with her. She seemed old. Her hair was white and she was quite thin. She had no real authority: some of the class didn’t know why they were there but she got all of us through the examinations.⁴⁰ It was all language: we worked relentlessly through Longman’s French Grammar. There was no culture but at least we knew exactly what the homework was each night, which exercises we had to complete.

There were no socials. There was very little money for extras. In 1931 I was dux of the school and won the school medal. I was offered scholarships but, because I was only 15, and too young to matriculate, I accepted the School of Mines’ three year scholarship and enrolled in metallurgy. I did well in that first year and was allowed to sit for the university exams. The School of Mines Fellowship course was the same as the Adelaide University’s Bachelor of Engineering but students at the School of Mines had to do one extra subject. Only maths was taught in both places. I was top in drawing II and maths I and II and passed physics, chemistry and mechanical engineering. I also studied fitting and turning at the School of Mines.

Later in 1932 my father entered Parkwynd Hospital suffering from pneumonia but I was able to tell him how well I’d done before he died. In 1933 I took on eight subjects and failed four, but gained credits in girls and poker. My mother sold some of the cottages (there were no pensions) and in 1934 I switched to civil engineering and started work to keep us. Eventually I ended up with a degree in civil engineering from Adelaide University as well as a Fellowship from the School of Mines and led an engineer unit in World War II in the south west Pacific.

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