Maxwell G. Smith

I lived in Prospect for most of my life. My first primary school was Prospect where I was taught by the artist, Ivor Francis, who also came to Blair Athol Primary School when we were forced to change schools because Prospect was over-crowded. For my secondary education I went to Adelaide Boys High School, then in Currie Street. There were a lot of villains on the train we took to and from town and kids often threw hats out of the carriage windows to make us go back and get them.

At Adelaide Teachers College I was one of two chosen to be craft teachers: Jack Mausolf was to do metalwork and I was chosen to go back to Adelaide Boys High School as a woodwork teacher. However the war intervened. At Teachers College, in the early stages of the war, students had to be air-raid wardens and work in shifts up in the tower checking the skies above Adelaide for aircraft. Colin Thiele shared my shift and, while I watched the skies, he sat in a corner writing his poetry.

In 1942 I joined the RAAF and reported to the Exhibition Building, and then to the old Trade School in Pirie Street for preliminary training. This was followed by training in NSW and then at Laverton as a wireless maintenance mechanic. I met my wife in Victoria, married, spent 12 months in New Guinea and returned to Adelaide Teachers College in January 1946 to be paid 17/6 as a married man and a bonded student. Rehabilitation helped and we ended up with £4 15s 0d a week, barely a living wage, for three years. Irene worked for J.M. Taylor & Co, who sold cycles, motor parts and marine engines, in Grenfell Street – next to the RAA – and we coped.

After three years in Teachers College, in 1949 I began my teaching career at Goodwood Boys Technical School. The headmaster was Paul Hilbig who ran the school with military precision. He was a little fellow, a real cock sparrow and I was one of the few on the staff who could meet him eye to eye. He would wander around the school, looking in windows checking what was going on.

One lunch time he had come to the door of the room I was in and had seen me working with music students in the lunch hour. I loved music and was studying singing at ‘the Con’ with Clement Q. Williams. I was developing a choir and was quite unaware of his presence. Later that day I was summoned to his office. He was angry that I had not invited him into the room.

‘Mr Smith, when I come to a room I expect to be answered.’

‘Mr Hilbig, when I’m with my class I don’t leave the room for anyone.’

We understood one another. Once I got into music Paul Hilbig accepted me and never came to my room again when I was working with kids. Paul Hilbig, German in his origins, was fascinated by music and was proud to have a boys’ choir, established in 1951, which we called the Arunga Boys Choir – Arunga (an Aboriginal word for kangaroo) – being the name of the Goodwood Boys Tech School Magazine. For many years Walter Koch was my accompanist.

I not only taught singing and music appreciation but also woodwork, metalwork and social studies. I was also a SANFL football umpire, mainly umpiring school matches. As well I ran the Air Training Corps – the school’s cadets – and we held three weeks’ training at Mallala each January. I became the Flight Lieutenant of the School Cadet Corps and many of the cadets were also in the school’s choir. Goodwood produced youngsters full of music. Goodwood’s students often came from the hills on the train-line from Belair.

While I was teaching at Goodwood, I was researching An Historical Survey of Technical Education in South Australia. Completed in 1955, it provided the background to the technical education emphasis that was developing. In the conclusion of Chapter I, ‘Landmarks’, I wrote:

By this time, the Central Schools in the metropolitan area had shown very considerable signs of failing with the result that they were closed only to reappear as Junior Technical Schools in 1940. In this form the institutions obtained an individuality not existent while part of the primary school system. This has enabled them to actively develop technical education at the secondary school level. In addition they have, in 1955, already established classes in adult education. With the officers of the Education Department, Technical Branch, alive to the possibilities which this form of education offers and a public obviously prepared to partake of it, the Technical School is, perhaps, destined to become an even more important member of our education system in the near future.²⁵

While I was well aware of the growing importance of technical education my heart was in the music we were making at Goodwood. It was good music. The choir performed in the Goodwood Institute. One of the teachers at Goodwood Tech was Werner Gallusser also the librarian at the Elder Conservatorium. He was a great man of music, an asset intellectually and musically, but his classes were often in an uproar. The choir however benefited from his knowledge and we went from strength to strength.

The boys were invited to broadcast over the ABC in 1954. ‘Maxwell Smith’ received a fee of five guineas. In 1955 they presented A Mozart Festival at the Goodwood Institute. It was The Boy Mozart, an operetta in two parts, the music by Mozart, written and arranged by J Michael Diack. The performance was well received. Clement Q Williams wrote a letter to the Advertiser stressing the importance of music and singing as part of the life of a school and John Horner’s review of the performance included the following comment:

Some 40 young gentlemen from Goodwood can now sing from memory such famous arias as ‘Voi che sapete’ and ‘Non piu andrai’ though Mozart would be surprised to hear the new expurgated libretto.

At this time, while I was still working towards my degree, I was singing at the Conservatorium and working with such great artists as Harold Parsons – violoncello, Clemens Leske – piano, and Allan Giles the accompanist. In 1956 we presented a Schubert – Schumann Cantata, in 1957 a Festival Cantata and in 1958 a special musical evening.

While Goodwood Tech was concentrating on choir work as its form of musical performance, other technical schools were moving towards theatre, often musicals such as Gilbert and Sullivan. At this time Cliff Rooney was an inspector in the technical schools, both girls’ and boys’, and he was encouraging this approach. At Norwood Boys Technical School, of which he had been the founding headmaster, Eric Bryce had composed The Enchanted Garden. The lyrics had been written by Wally Welburn. So music was being encouraged in the techs in more than one way.

I knew the importance of music in a school’s curriculum and in my Historical Survey of Technical Education in South Australia I wrote, in Chapter IV of Technical Education in Secondary Schools:

 

Progress in industry has played its part. Because of rapid growth, far greater numbers are employed in its ranks and the stigma attached to industrial work and education, present at the turn of the century, is rapidly decreasing…Their [Technical Schools] curriculum, a varied one, endeavours to give the students an all-round education. English, music and art provide emotional expression in contrast with the intelligent use of motor forces gained in the craft shops… (p. 38, 1955)

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