Viv Veale

I passed my Qualifying Certificate in 1939 as a student at the Goodwood Primary School. We lived in the Goodwood district and, as I didn’t own a bicycle, my parents decided I would attend the Goodwood Central School as it was within walking distance of our home.

During the Christmas holidays momentous decisions were made turning the central school into the Goodwood Boys Junior Technical School and the girls were required to journey to the Unley Central School, now renamed the Unley Girls Junior Technical School. On arriving at the school I discovered the fence used to divide the boys from the girls in the central school was in evidence and remained in place during my stay at the school. Also, the woodwork ‘shop’ which I attended as a grade 7 student had been removed from the corner of Surrey and Essex Streets and relocated in the school grounds.

We, as students, moved from room to room for our lessons and the rooms became specialised for the subject taught. For example, Room 1 was for social studies and the walls were adorned with maps, pictures and charts about the history and geography subjects being taught at that time. The teachers at that time were Messrs P. Williams, M. MacPherson, H. Gray, B. Payne, R. Brown, H. Bone, G. Crowe and F. Dunn and the subjects taught were English, maths I and II, social studies, general science, drawing, woodwork and metalwork.

Although the school was now a junior technical school the bonds with the old central school days were not broken. The primary school headmaster was still the nominal head of the school. 1941 saw a few staff changes as Messrs MacPherson and Gray volunteered and served in the armed forces. As far as I can recall 1942 was the big year. The school assumed its own identity with the appointment of Mr P.B. Hilbig as its first headmaster.

With the appointment of a separate headmaster changes did occur as the school population had grown. Other teachers were appointed with Jeffrey Smart the second drawing teacher and Jack Winter as the third manual training instructor. Physical education was introduced to the curriculum with Mr Hilbig taking the Intermediate class. With the war situation becoming worse Mr Bone installed a gas producer on the back of his car and it was a sight to see him charge the container with coke and set it alight before he could drive home.

Inter-school competition was introduced in Wednesday afternoon sport against the other schools and the high point of the year was the inter-school athletics carnival held on Adelaide University Oval. Two memories of the athletics carnival were the long cricket ball throw over 100 yards was won by Alan Rumble from Croydon, while the fastest runner, the winner of the 100 and 200 yards events, was Howard Creeper. What a reverse to his name.

The end of the year saw the awarding of the first Junior Technical Intermediate Certificate, the production of the school’s first magazine called Arunga and the adoption of the school badge and motto. 1943 produced another leap forward with the establishment of the first Leaving class at Goodwood which consisted of nine students from Goodwood and four from Croydon amongst whom was Alan Rumble, so we had a mortgage on the long cricket ball throw.

With the advent of the Japanese in the war the threat to Australia was taken seriously and the Leaving students, under the direction of the headmaster, approached the residents in the streets to allow the students to shelter in their houses in the event of an air raid. As a result of this, students were allocated a house in a street and, at regular intervals, air raid alerts would be practised with the students moving quietly to their appropriate house and returning to school when the ‘All Clear’ was announced. How we enjoyed these escapes from the classroom.

With the growth in the school population other teachers had joined the staff, namely Messrs H. Rabone, A. (Bert) Mitchell, M. Ryan (later founding head of Strathmont Boys in 1960), R. Hoare, J. McConan and, in 1943, Mr H. Schuetz who was appointed as a specialist physical education teacher.

Mr Hilbig introduced the house system although maybe that had happened in 1942 with names that were synonymous with South Australia’s history of exploration, namely Barker (red), Flinders (blue), Light (yellow) and Sturt (green). Likewise a club system was introduced with one period per week being devoted to these activities and students changing their clubs at the start of each term. One of these clubs was the newspaper club¹⁹ which displayed written articles on a special board outside the entrance foyer with a great number of contributions being kept for use in Arunga at the end of the year.

Not only was the inter-school sports programme enlarged to add additional sports to football and cricket but minor sports were added with an inter-school swimming carnival added to the athletics carnival.

Mr MacPherson, while on leave from the AIF, visited the school and addressed the students on the dangers and the waste of life caused by the war. Early 1943 saw the completion of a magnificently built Commonwealth building to be used by the RAAF for the training of mechanics to service both motor vehicles and aircraft engines. This building became significant in the later school life and, when it was eventually handed over to the school, it was converted into a school hall and gymnasium, the forerunner of the later additions to most secondary schools.

Two incidents in 1943 remain vividly in my mind. The first involved Mr Jeffrey Smart, now a renowned artist. Monday morning was always an assembly and Mr Hilbig insisted with great fervour that all students must wear a tie. At these assemblies any luckless student seen without a tie would be called to the front and made to wear a tie supplied by the headmaster. Well, lo and behold, when the assembly was well under way who should come around the corner but Mr Smart not only late but without a tie! (No doubt he had one in his pocket to put on later in the classroom.) Mr Hilbig called him out the front and presented him with the school tie.

The second incident involved Mr Mitchell who was the class teacher of the Leaving class of which I was a member. Mr Mitchell was an ex league football player. A tall and well-built man, on entering the classroom before going to sign on, he would place his kit bag (Gladstone bag) on the top of the low cupboard near the door and, after roll call as the class moved off to its various lessons, he would pull the bag off the cupboard and allow it to fall and at the last moment he would flex his arm and, taking the weight of the bag, would prevent it from crashing to the floor. On April Fool’s Day we, the students, approached Mr G. Lowe, the metalwork teacher, and borrowed two lead blocks used as a base when punching holes in sheetmetal. While Mr Mitchell was signing on we placed the lead in the bag on the top of the cupboard. When Mr Mitchell entered the room he looked for tables turned about and all the usual childish pranks expected on this day. What a surprise when he attempted to prevent the bag hitting the floor. It did so with a loud crash. He was most impressed that we had caught him out on one of his habits.

The end of the year saw the awarding for the first time of the Junior Technical Leaving Certificate signed by the headmaster and Gilbert McDonald, Superintendent for Technical Education. With my Leaving Certificate Mr Hilbig advised my parents, especially with the shortage of teachers, that I should seriously look at becoming a manual training instructor, so I was appointed in 1944 as a junior teacher to Norwood Boys Junior Technical School.

Postscript. It occurred to me the other day that a first is now probably forgotten and it happened after I had left Goodwood Boys Junior Technical School.

Goodwood was located at the eastern end of Lily Street which presented the students who bought their lunch with a half-mile walk to Goodwood Road. To overcome this problem and no doubt to keep the students in the school grounds Mr Hilbig decided to have a school canteen and provided the students with wholesome lunches (Oslo lunches).

He achieved this by converting one of the cloak rooms into a canteen, the first canteen to be established in a departmental school and it probably took place in the late 1940s or early 1950s. It became the doyen of canteens and as the other schools took up the idea they were directed to Goodwood to observe how it was done. Of course canteens are now an established part of the school campus but their origins go back to the good old tech schools.

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