Bill Cowley

At last I’ve started to write a report as a contribution to the book about technical schools. I’m starting in ideal surroundings, sitting by the side of the pool which is shaded by tropical trees in the beautiful Darwin weather.

I have just watched a programme on the discovery of man in South Africa, by the Leakey family. However they had scientific instruments, carbon dating and sedimentary sands and clays which gave them ideal dates of their formation.

The previous information gave me an opening for the start of the manual arts teachers and names which readily come to mind – George Crowe, Tim Derbyshire, Jack Winter, Bill Fyfe, Mr Matthews, Con Carey and many more. Later the Education Department decided to train their own students. Jack Peake and many others joined the force after 1945, along with direct entrants with two or three years’ experience after completing their apprenticeship. These people were expected to do academic subjects, finally completing a Teacher’s Certificate course.

Another form of increasing these numbers was the transfer of primary school teachers, who also had to do subjects to become fully qualified. Martin Leditschke, Murray Jackson and Ken Pearce are a few who come into this category. In the interim years, small groups were trained, until the next surge – the post war baby boom – which meant more schools and an extension of courses. High schools began to extend their courses as well and metalwork was included.

I had migrated from the United Kingdom in 1951 and worked for nine years with the South Australian Railways. I’d come from Swindon in Wiltshire with City and Guilds qualifications, a coppersmith by trade and a welder. In September of 1960 my wife saw an advertisement in the Advertiser for trade-based teachers. I was 41 when the Technical Branch took me in. Mr Wissell and Mr Longbottom interviewed me and I was posted to Goodwood Boys Technical High School where Paul Hilbig was headmaster and an acting inspector. His way of checking on teachers was listening outside classroom doors. Phil Williams was deputy principal and later was transferred to Thebarton.

I was put in charge of the incinerators and, in very hot weather when a garbage strike was on, a prefect brought me a note from the principal. ‘The condition of the eastern quadrangle is a disgrace and so it the western quadrangle. Clean this.’ I looked at the prefect who said, ‘There is no reply.’ I went home during a free period, borrowed a mate’s big tractor, put all the rubbish in and took it down to the dump. When Phil Williams heard about it, he repaid me the dump fees and the hire of the trailers.

I had all technical studies classes and all the lowest streams. Fred Middleton was the senior master and he had all the top streams. In 1961 Mr Hilbig was away most of the time. However, towards the end of the year he told me that I was being transferred to Thebarton because Mr Wissell thought I had outstanding ability and I was to go over there where my skills could be used. There, in 1962, I took over from George Crowe, taking the art-metal students who went to Thebarton. Martin Leditschke was the senior master and he took his share of the lower stream classes and was there early to help. The headmaster in 1962 and 1963 was Murray MacPherson. Born in New Zealand, he used to say, ‘Kids are all right on the law of averages, it’s the teachers I watch.’ The school had many scholarship winners matching the high school results.

In 1964 Mr Cannell became the headmaster and brought his Adelaide Technical High School attitudes to Thebarton. He was very much concerned with scholarships and some students were put up for scholarships who were not sufficiently able. If a student was in a lower stream he was not always given the chance he deserved but the headmaster could be brought to help. There was a Chinese boy who was working from morning to night in an uncle’s market garden. In winter his marks were in the 90s, in summer in the 70s. I took him home at weekends to give him a break. I told Mr Cannell about the impact of all this outside work on his results and he arranged for Rotary to sponsor him through a course on electrical technology.

Kids liked tactile subjects and keen students would stay after school, often until five pm, to work on models. This suited me as I taught adult night classes three times a week. Thebarton was the site of a new building for the South Road College. Teachers who were there at the time fitted out the technical workshops. The college opened in 1967 and stayed there until, in 1976, it was allied with Torrens College of Adult Education, allied to the School of Arts in North Adelaide. Later it moved to Underdale where Dr Greg Ramsay was the Director. His aim was to make this tertiary education centre equal with universities. I retired in 1980 but returned to relief teaching in 1981.

In the 1960s we were living in Wright Street, Woodville Gardens, near to Angle Park. I had to study Leaving English and wanted to enrol at Angle Park Boys Technical High School in a night class. When I went there to enrol I found that no one had come to the adult education classes offered. The principal in 1963 and 1964 at Angle Park was Norm Dowdy. He sent me to the adult education classes at Croydon Boys Technical High School where I was taught by Ron Geekie. In the Whitlam era, Angle Park was identified as the lowest socio-economic area in Australia and the first all-purpose community school was built there. Thebarton had been considered but only ‘The Parks’ was established.

Looking back, in 1960 the Education Department had the largest intake of direct entrants when about 14 people, with qualifications which satisfied the two inspectors, Mr Longbottom and Mr Wissell, were accepted. We were expected to complete our subjects in six years. Quite a number of these subjects were done in holiday times. As direct entrants we had to have Intermediate standard, and were expected to do Leaving English, also either botany, chemistry or physics. We were inducted into schools as temporary, unclassified assistants – TUAs – and, as extra subjects were gained, we were paid accordingly. The department very kindly allowed us to study in the holiday times, May, September and Christmas and these continued for three or four years.²⁶ Then some of the group were awarded a six-month scholarship on full pay to complete their studies, and some a year – six months in the office and six months for study.

The next step forward for us was the Diploma of Technical Studies which was our new title. We were no longer manual arts instructors. This brought teachers, who had trained as far back as the early 1950s, to attend courses in art metalwork or wood carving. The Education Department allowed teachers from country centres to attend during the last three weeks of the final term.

As the population increased with immigrants so did school enrolments and this meant more technical studies teachers were needed. In 1962 the enrolment of potential teachers was about 28. In 1967 the Department had built a wonderful workshop for training these student teachers. Sheet metalwork was taught by Kevin Clarke. All woodwork at Gilbert Street was under Ken Gale, Jeff Reade and Aub Lange. Welding was done at the trade school. Thebarton Boys Tech was the venue for a new building where all craft subjects could be taught. The first group to use these facilities was in 1967 and had 38 students. It was one of the best establishments of its kind I have ever seen. After travelling the world my mind has not altered.

In the late ’60s the first female joined the technical studies faculty and, if my memory serves me right, her photograph and a paragraph about her appeared in the press. However, the young girl resigned but it was a valiant effort to break into a male domain. Later, a girl named Ann Carpenter joined and acquitted herself very well. In fact, she was more competent that some of the boys. Another girl, Ms Tresize, appeared and she too was a very capable, likeable person. Both of these women now hold responsible positions in schools. After that many girls joined the faculty.

Another important change at this time was that a fourth year was awarded to special students who were paid a degree allowance. At this time lecturers were allowed a year’s sabbatical leave. In 1976 we all moved to the new Western Teachers College on Holbrooks Road, Underdale where all courses of teacher training took place. Eventually all the technical studies lecturers took advantage of the sabbatical leave.

After moving to the Underdale campus we were taking mature age students too, and eventually everyone took a fourth year. The highest enrolment was 65 but by the time entrants obtained their preferred options we finally finished up with 55 and from then on enrolments dwindled to 33 in 1978 and the course began to settle down. I retired in 1979.

This report would not be complete without relating some interesting stories because I well remember my school days in England and the respect I had for my teachers, especially my favourite. He was a returned soldier but never regaled us with his war experiences – but on certain occasions he would tell us a joke. This reminds me of some of the ex-students I taught in schools, they all remembered with respect those joke tellers – Clarry Stoude, Middleton, Charlie Hilbig, just to name a few. Children had teachers nicknamed in the first week. I met a student who had left school four years previously and he was asking about his old teachers, one he called ‘Sailor’. I replied that Mr ‘X’ had never been in the navy and he said it was because of the bell-bottomed trousers he wore. Now, we temporary unclassified assistants were on a small salary, so he bought his trousers from Trims.

Another story was about the headmaster addressing an assembly at the beginning of a new year, and telling students they must not shorten words. Maths must be mathematics, for example. He then began to sort out the groups. ‘First year course over there. Second year course to the left and Inter course stay where you are.’ Subdued laughter, even from the teachers.

Another time, at Thebarton, the principal came into my class, 2B1 – the B group was halved, one half did tech studies, the other art – and he couldn’t locate them. I suggested they might be down by the river – a boy was sent to locate them but came back saying they weren’t there. The head heard a noise from Thebarton Oval and went to investigate – it was a girls’ hockey carnival. He contacted the teacher and asked who had given him permission to go in there, to which the teacher replied, ‘The gate-keeper.’ The same principal, and I hasten to add a very good one, noticed markings on the back of the toilet doors. He soon solved that problem by removing the doors.

Another comical gentleman chastised a boy for playing with a toy lizard instead of paying attention. ‘What is your ambition in life?’ he asked the boy, who replied, ‘I want to go to university.’ The teacher said, ‘The only way you’ll go there is in formalin.’ In the same workshop there was a quarter-sized skeleton hanging by the door of the circular saw room with a note underneath. ‘This is what happened to the last student who disobeyed the rules.’

It was parents’ night in September. All the seats were filled and it was a beautiful clear night and a satellite was seen passing over. Then the superintendent took his seat and the headmaster, for the first time ever, appeared wearing his academic gown. As students watched one could hear a loudly murmured ‘Superman!’

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