I went to Goodwood Boys Technical School in 1956 at the age of 11 on the basis that that is where most of the lads from my suburb (Hawthorndene) went. My parents had not been to secondary school and most of the lads from our area went to Goodwood Tech and that is why I went there. So there was no choice in any real sense or any awareness of alternatives. I was really going along with what others did in that particular suburb. There was no local high school at the time – Blackwood High School was opened in 1961 – and access to Goodwood Tech was via train from Blackwood to Millswood or Goodwood station. At that time school transport was free on the train.

My brother, John, who was two years older, was also at Goodwood Boys Technical School and this was a factor during the initiation time which took place in one’s first days at the school. During the first week, first year students were usually initiated by older students by various techniques – dragging them through prickles, ‘pushing’ them over, (one student would crouch behind – another would push from the front) and other sorts of activities. Unfortunately, on the day that I was subjected to this my brother and his mates were nearby and the perpetrators were given an initiation of their own (that is, launched into space) inflicted on them by my brother and his mates.

In many respects I was too young to go to high school at that age. It was quite a shock having come from Coromandel Valley Primary School, a small school with 70 students and a somewhat insulated and protected environment. It was a rude awakening to be confronted with some of the more boisterous and rough-edged lads from some of the inner suburbs of Adelaide.

The school had a very strict discipline policy under the direction of Paul Hilbig, the principal, who was not averse to using the cane. His welcoming speech always went along the lines that ‘this school is made of boys not bricks’ and, as he said that, he always thumped the brick wall of the school.

The subject choice at Goodwood was naturally oriented towards the technical area – metalwork, woodwork, technical drawing. Whilst those subjects were certainly not my first choice, in hindsight, that technical knowledge has assisted me. The subjects that I have found to my liking since leaving school – Australian history, economics and politics – were not offered at the technical high school. The curriculum was limited and certainly did not provide subjects such as history, economics or languages. Never-the-less many of the students at the school did not limit themselves later to a technical career; many went on to non-technical areas but the curriculum was specifically oriented towards the technical area.

Many of the lads were ‘resistant learners’ who did not particularly want to be at school and as a result I and many others engaged in pranks and practical jokes which were non-malicious boyish activities.

The school was never equipped for much in the way of sporting activities and these were essentially done off campus using the parklands. Cricket was played in the parklands on a fairly dry grass area opposite what is now Annesley College and was then the Methodist Ladies College. Some other sporting activities were played at Goodwood Oval and the school had some limited tennis court facilities in a street nearby. The emphasis at the school was thus limited in regard to facilitating participation in sporting pursuits.

I was actively involved in school athletics. Technical high schools were involved in inter-school competitions particularly in athletics and swimming. The swimming competition would always start with the school’s own carnival at the City Baths in King William Street. Swimming was not my forte. Athletics was usually at Unley Oval. This was followed by inter-technical high school sporting competition at the Adelaide Oval or City Baths.

Towards the end of my school time rowing became somewhat popular at Goodwood but they were never able to match the resources or boatsheds the private schools had.

So there was a push within the school on athletic activities but this was hampered by the lack of facilities at the school and having to trek off to the parklands. I was tall for my age and therefore I was able to do very well in athletics and broke many of the school records. I was actually designated to be in the sub-junior midget category based on age, even though I was nearly six feet tall!

The principal always arranged church services throughout the year, particularly for Easter. There were other services as well which were held in the Methodist Church on King William Road. This part of the unofficial curriculum, I believe, reflected the particular beliefs of the principal but there seemed to be no criticism or opposition to that sort of involvement, either by students or the parents and there was certainly no indication that it was something that one could easily opt out of.

I spent five years at Goodwood Tech. I left at the end of what is now called Year 10 without the equivalent of an Intermediate Certificate, to work on a farm and then came back the following year to repeat Intermediate and went from bottom of the class to the top and went on to do my Leaving in 1960. Once again, the subject choice was not really to my liking; it was heavily focused on the technical areas and to my amazement I actually passed chemistry.

Life at Goodwood, being a boys’ school, had, as one would expect a particular flavour to it. There was quite an emphasis on wearing uniforms. Not many students came from wealthy backgrounds and so most wore jumpers in the school colours and reluctantly also a collar and tie. Some of the affluent and older students wore school blazers. Because it was a boys’ school, interest in girls was outside of the scheduled school time, other than in the thoughts of the boys. Goodwood boys naturally related to Unley girls and there tended to be a natural affinity between the boys of the boys’ technical high school and the girls of the girls’ technical high school.

As a student, not only at school but travelling to and from school, we were aware of being in a different category to private school students and indeed Unley High School students. Whilst we would not have expressed it at that time in social class terms, in reality there was a clear pecking order not only in regard to private schools vis a vis technical high school students but also between us and the other ‘élite’ high schools such as Unley and Adelaide. This was reflected in the way the travelling public on trains and trams treated Goodwood boys as if they were somehow a lesser or lower category of human life than those attending the other schools. At the time this class distinction did not worry us unduly although we sensed the difference, certainly when in the public arena, in that students from private and élite high schools usually had fancier school uniforms and accessories than we had.

Whilst we were not conscious of it at the time, on reflection, there does seem to have been a particular type of teacher who worked in the technical high school area who reflected the Education Department’s philosophy of the time. We not only had teachers with a technical training background but teachers who were very closely linked to an industry background and in many ways seemed to have an ideology to assist lads from families who were less affluent than those from other schools.

One unique aspect at Goodwood was that we had the apprentice trade school on site in a building that had been used, I understand, during World War II and it created an interesting dynamic to have what were in fact apprentices on the same site as the technical high school students. This was partly due to the fact that the apprentices indulged in motor bikes and (to a lesser extent) motor cars and this naturally captured the attention of mechanically-minded teenagers enrolled at Goody Tech.

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