Gordon Phillips

When I came to Adelaide there were two technical high schools: Adelaide Technical High School, attached to the School of Mines, as well as Thebarton Boys Technical High School. Many of the first teachers at Thebarton Tech felt down-graded, looked down upon by their colleagues in educational circles. However many of them later became heads of tech schools. Among other heads who came out of technical schools were Mick Ryan – Strathmont, Clarrie Martin – Nailsworth, and Norm Dowdy, the best teacher I ever saw in front of a class.

Thebarton was Dr Fenner’s pride and joy – his ‘baby’. I met him when I asked to be allowed to teach in a technical school. He was a bit at odds with the general view of education and believed students could learn worthwhile things from woodwork and metalwork. In fact he would often say that you could learn as much from soldering a joint as you did from learning the third declension in Latin.

By 1940 Dr Fenner had convinced the Minister for Education to add classes for first, second and third year at secondary level to a number of schools that had been central schools and teachers could now be appointed directly to the secondary part which were renamed junior technical schools. Gilbert McDonald had me posted to Norwood in 1940 where Henry Nadebaum was head of both the primary and the secondary schools. The tech part was run by Bob Burnard in charge of English, Ern Frith and Maslin-Green in science and this triumvirate ran the school telling Henry what they’d done rather than asking permission. I was teaching geography and a bit of maths and I finished my degree while I was there.

The boys at Norwood were quite a good lot. I remember we put on a play, a play about Jonathan Broadacres. We had a bright student able to ad lib whenever there was a hiccup in the performance. His name was Lance Ingram. ‘Mo’ – Roy Rene – took Lance and furthered his career in France. He became Arthur Lance, a leading tenor in opera.

I’ll never forget the real support for one another at Norwood. It showed me how teachers helped each other. For example, Bill Fyfe was a marvellous woodwork teacher. He was a fine carpenter. There was no storage room for sports gear but there was a corridor. He built stairs across it, creating a kind of mezzanine floor and made cupboards to store the sporting equipment. Whatever he did he did perfectly. But he was being held back. Ern Frith could see that he needed university subjects, got him to take up geology and got him through it.

In 1941 I joined the Royal Australian Air Force. I was not in the air crew because I was colour blind but I was allowed to go in as an education officer to teach meteorology and navigation. I was given a month at the Melbourne weather bureau to learn meteorology and navigation and went to Sydney to study aircraft recognition. I taught for the rest of the war at Victor Harbor and was able to take my family down there. Gilbert McDonald lost eight teachers to the air force. In 1945 I returned to Norwood Boys Junior Technical School for one day and the Education Department didn’t have to pay me for that day.

In 1946 I became a senior at Goodwood Tech working with Paul Hilbig. An influential headmaster, if Paul Hilbig taught something every one listened. I was there when Alan Vowels was a junior teacher, a year after Jeffrey Smart left. He’d left a bit of a reputation behind him. One story was that he hadn’t turned up one Monday. He did arrive on the Tuesday and took the wind out of the head’s sails by asking, ‘Wasn’t I at school on Monday?’ But I was soon sent to Strathalbyn High School to be a senior.

Strathalbyn was such a good school. I took classes for geography. One day the kids came and told me, ‘We’ve taken your blackboard outside.’ We worked outside under a great tree, enjoying studying in the open air. The best classes were mixed. I taught one for history, a very bright lot. The only one who failed had had to spend time, when not at school, hoeing bindy-eye. I remember Josie’s family didn’t think it worth while Josie sitting for exams. Later she worked as a typiste in a university. Four of the class gained credits.

I continued the work that I had done at Norwood Tech and Goodwood – a project on their surrounding district – that attracted the attention of the local council. The students explored the history of the townships of the area as far as Milang. They researched how the people used the land. They were champion kids. Alby Jones, when he was an inspector, was most impressed by the work we were doing and thought it was first class. We had phone calls to find out what we were doing and there was interest in recording the information we had gathered.

I applied to become principal at Willunga which had just been changed from a higher primary school to a high school. Instead I was chosen to open Gilles Plains High School in 1960 with an enrolment of about 50 boys and 50 girls. I believe the fact that Alby Jones had seen the work of the students at Strathalbyn helped me to get this promotion and, of course, I knew the system. On the staff was a very able art teacher, Yvonne Hill, who later became a champion rifle shot and represented Australia in the Olympic Games.

In the first two years students were housed in a wing of Strathmont Boys Technical High School where we had three rooms and the use of a laboratory. Mick Ryan and I had a fine working relationship in those first two years when Gilles Plains High was a paddock of Scotch thistles or Jerusalem artichokes. Mick would do anything to help and, in return, I taught a subject for him.

In our second year, in 1961, I was reprimanded by Ken Barter, the Superintendent of High Schools, for failing to follow protocol. We had insufficient room for the additional enrolments in the western wing of Strathmont Boys so I arranged with Nancy Bartleet, founding principal of Strathmont Girls, to have two rooms for two classes housed in her school – a top first year class and a second year commercial class. Nancy was so easy to work with even though she was fighting the pain of terrible arthritis: she didn’t even have a phone and had to come down to our offices – Mick and I shared one phone through a hole in the wall between our adjoining offices – when she needed to make a phone call.

Ken was annoyed that I had not gone through the proper channels. The high and technical schools were controlled by different branches of secondary education and Ken had always been a stickler for formalities. The buildings for Gilles Plains High School were, however, not erected on that vacant land till 1961. We were only able to move in the following year. This was not my only brush with the administration. I wanted to go on with general science for first and second year but the inspector, Mr Glastonbury, insisted that boys must move early into physics and chemistry and the female inspector was keen on physiology for girls.

I was there as a Class IV head but the school numbers increased so quickly that, by second year, with 200 enrolments, Gilles Plains became a Class III school. I went up to Class III as principal until Ken Barter said he couldn’t leave me there. There were country heads seeking return to the city and they had seniority. I didn’t want to go to the country because I knew what country heads’ wives had to do. So, unwillingly, I accepted the position of deputy principal to Lou Kloeden at Elizabeth Boys Technical High School. Ken Barter thought that this decision to go back to a tech school was a step down. It’s an aside but I remember learning more about staffing moves from Arthur Wurley, the Rigby’s representative. He seemed to know more about what was going on than anyone else.

At Elizabeth I found more resentment of costs by parents than I had ever heard before. I still hear their complaint, ‘We didn’t have to pay for that back home.’ I taught half time and spent the rest of the time dealing with the behaviour of the malcontents. The best classes were very good. I was there for one year until, after an interview with Max Bone for the job, I was made principal of Angle Park Boys Technical High School.

Postscript. Later my son, as a teacher at Elizabeth Boys Tech High, realised that many students needed work experience to understand the different avenues to which their studies could take them. He visited different industries to set up work experience arrangements before anyone had thought about ‘transition education’.

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