Rhondda Gluyas (née Rose)

I went to Largs Girls School which later became St Alban’s Church of England Primary Grammar School, where Miss Baddams was the principal. While there, from 1928, for two years I regularly attended an art class conducted by Edwin Newsham on Saturday mornings in the Port Adelaide Institute. At the end of that time he suggested that I apply for a scholarship and was successful.

In 1930, I became a full-time student at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts. The subjects included English, French, history of art, geometrical drawing and perspective as well as the art subjects – object drawing, plant, design, lettering and showcard writing, artistic anatomy, clay modelling, antique, china painting and embroidery and also museum studies.

Mary P. Harris was our class teacher – a very keen English teacher. We studied Shakespeare’s As You Like It and eventually performed it in the Botanic Gardens under several large Moreton Bay fig trees for all and sundry to witness. I was a ‘woodman’ and just made up the background numbers while the actors played out their parts.

The following year we performed Maurice Maeterlinck’s play The Blue Bird which was performed in the Australian Natives Association Hall in Flinders Street. I had three characters to play – ‘Sugar’, ‘Sleep’ and ‘The Neighbour’s Little Girl’. The ‘blue bird of happiness’ was supposed to escape from his cage and I was meant to be very upset and call out, ‘Oh, mother! He’s gone!’

But the bird (a rather large pigeon) didn’t want to and wouldn’t go. I moved to the side of the stage and repeated my lines several times while someone gently poked the bird, hoping it would fly out of its cage. Suddenly the poor bird took off, dive-bombing the audience, causing quite a stir. I declared that was going to be my very last stage appearance – and it was.

Another incident that I clearly recall is that we had three boys in our class – Gordon Johnson, Joe Byrne and (I think) Clive Brook. The walls between the classrooms were wooden partitions that went half way up to very high ceilings. A lot of area was divided with wooden screens and, because of the high fire risk, fire extinguishers were situated in each room. On this particular day, someone wondered if the fire extinguisher worked so, boys being boys, it was turned on and to everyone’s amazement an enormous jet of foam shot clear over the partition into the etching class in progress in the next room. No one could turn it off – it had to run out and by that time everything was swamped. A rather uncanny, quiet fury seemed to take over, plus a huge clean-up for the remainder of the day.

We enjoyed most of the subjects, all made interesting by dedicated teachers. Clay modelling was great and so was the antique room where we learned to draw Michelangelo’s David’s features individually – his nose, ear, mouth and eye and then the complete statue.

We were taught china painting by Lois Laughton and embroidery by Miss Prosser. Edwin Newsham and Charles Pavia did their best to instil geometrical drawing and perspective into our heads.

The Exhibition Building, where all this work took place, was later unfortunately demolished to make way for modern architecture.⁶⁰ It had been the home of the School of Arts and Crafts which, in 1932, changed its name to the Girls Central Art School. In the basement of the building, we designed and prepared the scenery for The Blue Bird and rehearsed for both plays. Lots of mess and light-hearted nonsense went on during our working periods.

Behind the building was the Jubilee Oval and, during my time at art school, the Manufacturing Exhibition was held for three months. Most of the students had a full season’s ticket which enabled us to spend our lunch hours wandering around watching confectionery and furniture, among other products, being made. Very similar to Expo but on a much smaller scale.

I had to leave in October, before the end of the year because my mother said there was no opening for me there. She thought I might as well go to business college, so I went to Miss Ward’s in King William Street and then Miss Mann’s and I took to it like a duck to water. It was the middle of the depression after all. People who were good, like Marjorie Hann at the Art School and Vanessa Lambe at the GCAS, could get jobs in big stores or as teachers. For others there were few opportunities.

They were happy years and we made life-long friends. A group of old scholars still meets once a month and often chat about the Art School days – Marjorie Hann (née Fisher), Vanessa Smith (née Lambe), Mary Jones (née Harold), Pat Sherwin (née Strauss), Norma Ford (née Jefferson) and me.

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