Chapter 5. The Fifties

Principals of the Fifties

Mr Thomas Bryant
Mr William McKee

Some Teachers of the Fifties

Mr Morris Mrs Ethel Boundy Miss Dorothy Lord Mr Fayle Miss Breen Mrs Jones Mrs Noelene Hudson (nee Woodward) Mr Thomas Moroney

Mrs Havilah Mrs N E Bendeich Miss K Frew Mrs J Mawter Mrs M Polgaise Mr Cook Mrs Bridget Spellman Mr Myers Miss Willis

Mr Lawler Mr Salmon Mr Nasser Mr Gunner Mr Mahar Miss O'Neill Mrs M Taylor Mrs C R Smith Mrs T Druitt

LIFE IN THE 50'S FOR THE "BABY BOOMERS"

Do you remember ....

• 1952 - the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
• 1954 - the excited school children lining the main roads to catch a glimpse of the young queen on the first visit to Australia by a reigning monarch.
• 1955 - the promise of no more long blackouts as the first power was generated by the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric scheme.
• 1956 - Joern Utzon winning the prize for his design of the Sydney Opera House.
  - The Duke of Edingurgh opening the Olympic Games in Melbourne - the first ever held in the southern hemisphere.
  - Television coming to Australia and families crowding around the electrical store windows blocking the footpaths.
• 1959 - Australia's population reaching 10 million.

And at Beverly Hills ....

• Empire Day ceremonies held in the local picture theatre, followed by a half day's holiday. This was usually spent adding the final touches to the neighbourhood bonfire or admiring the range of 'flower pots', 'bungers', 'Tom Thumbs' and Catherine Wheels' purchased with carefully saved pennies.
• The school choir singing 'Gloria' and 'Whispering Hope".
• The unforgettable smell of school milk at 11 am!
• The red capes, white veils and koala badges of the Junior Red Cross members.
• The long awaited opening of the school hall by the Minister of Education, the Hon. R J Heffron.
• Listening to 'Tarzan' and "Yes What?" on the wireless of an afternoon.
• Mr Myers, the teacher, who won the lottery and traded in his old Chevrolet for a white, brand new 1955 Ford Customline - and the serious investigation held in an attempt to identify the culprit when a scratch was found down the side of it.

Enrolments at Beverly Hills School had doubled in the five years since the end of WWII. The average attendance of 697 children in 1950 grew to 996 in 1956 and declined slightly to 818 in 1960. Classes were large and some contained up to 50 students.

Mr William A McKee replaced Mr Thomas Bryant as principal in 1952 and remained at Beverly Hills Public School until 1961.

Ray Grieve who attended the school from 1950 to 1957 remembers the local area as having a smaller service station diagonally opposite the school, a milk bar and grocery store and a newsagent on the opposite side of King Georges Road, then an empty paddock. Further up King Georges Road across the little lane, a lunch shop that operated for a while, but most students bought their lunches at Mrs Pritchard's Milkbar around the corner in Stoney Creek Road. On the opposite corner where the Chinese restaurants are now were empty paddocks down to Beresford Avenue. Children from circuses and carnivals visited the school for the few days that they were in the area.

School excursions of the fifties included

• a trip to Warragamba Dam during its construction.
• watching documentary films such as 'The Climbing of Mount Everest' at the St James Theatre in Beverly Hills and visitors to the school included 'Peter Scrivener's Marionette Puppet Theatre'.
• 1953 - Parents Dismayed Over New Zoning! Feelings ran hot in 1953 when the Department of Education introduced a new administrative boundary near the Beverly Hills railway line and diverted 120 infants children to the newly established Lakemba South Public School (later called Beverly Hills North). This resulted in a flood of indignant letters expressing similar sentiments to those in Mrs R Sinton of 24 Ponyara Road's letter complaining about the heartless separation of these children from their elder brothers and sisters who were often responsible for their safety on the way to school.

For years we residents of the new estate of Beverly Hills have suffered all sorts of hardships - bad transport, no sewer etc. Our older children put up with an overcrowded and unsewered school. Finally after years of representation and hard work the Department built us a modern school which we worked very hard with fetes etc to furnish with comforts for the children. It seems hard to believe that it is now your intention to condemn our younger children to even worse conditions than our elder ones endured. That is not progress. South Lakemba Infants, as you know, is just a collection of odd rooms unsewered and a dirt playground.

This irritating boundary between the two schools was lifted at the start of the 1955 school year.

The Various Buildings of the 50's

During the fifties the Kindergarten classroom was located in its present position in the new brick building. The adjacent hall has since been converted to classrooms. On wet days the Infants children ate their lunches in the wire fronted shelter shed at the eastern end of the building.

First and Second classes were in old wooden outbuildings which have since been demolished.

All the boys Primary classes were held in the old brick building which will soon be demolished. New buildings were constructed to replace the old outbuildings formerly used by the girls classes.

All the older school buildings were painted brown with a darker trim at this time.

Mrs Noelene Hudson (nee Woodward) taught at Beverly Hills from 1956 to 1959 and remembers the high standards achieved in bookwork and the three R's under the supervision of the Mistress of the Girls' Department, Miss Lord. She also clearly recalls the boys and girls departments combining each week for folk dancing lessons to the music broadcast over the radio and the Empire Day plays depicting life in other countries of the Empire and the singing of "Rule Britannia".

However the 'greatest event' of her time at Beverly Hills was the building of the Primary Hall which was soon used for formal assemblies, for film screenings and for ceremonies to mark special occasions such as Health Week, Arbour Day and Anzac Day.

The Unique History of the School Hall

The agitation for a School Assembly Hall had begun in 1933 but when Ms McKee was appointed as principal in 1952 and Mr John Nixon was elected as president of the Beverly Hills P and C in the same year things really began to happen.

Fortunately, in private life John Nixon was a Master-Builder and in his capacity as such he learned that in some Sydney Harbour Warehouse was a seemingly long-forgotten pre-fabricated Recreation Hall, that had been transported from the USA to be erected for the use of American Troops encamped somewhere in Australia, but with the cessation of WWII hostilities this Hall (prefabricated in USA) drifted into the limbo of forgotten things. With this knowledge of the American pre-fabricated Hall built from American timber, John confided in the Headmaster and together they visualised the possibility of the conversion into a School Hall, IF ONLY? So with the full support of the Beverly Hills P & C plans were made with the Headmaster and the P & C President being empowered to proceed with the hoped-for acquisition of the Army Recreation Hall and to report back to P & C as required.

The movement for the acquisition moved ever so slowly for some months but gradually the movement accelerated to become an accumulation, a real mass of correspondence, plus many reports of interviews involving MLA's, District School Inspectors, Heads of Eduction Department, American Consul, USA Consul, American Military Authorities etc. and having personally viewed this large file of correspondence and reports, but having read but a few of the same, I now fully understand the oft-repeated joking tales 'that Government Departments only finally take action when the flood of correspondence etc. within the official file becomes too heavy to carry around.

And so it was that the action and agitation for a School Assembly Hall begun in 1933 reached its fruition when "On Saturday, 10th October, 1956, the Minister of Education, the HON. R.C. HEFFRON, officially opened, at Beverly Hills Public School, an Assembly Hall/Gymnasium building erected by Bristol Construction Pty Ltd., MacIntosh Street, Mascot. The prefabricated shower and dressing rooms has been converted for library purposes and also to provide staff facilities. In addition, extra electrical installations have been provided by the Department and a stage has been approved for immediate installation. The cost to the Department will be approximately 19,000 pounds. "During his address the Minister informed the gathering amidst acclamation, that his Department would donate a Stage Curtain and that seating accommodation would also be supplied from the Department Workshops."

by Norman J Austen
School Principal (1962 - 1967)
and Mary McPherson of the Management
Information Services of the Department of
School Education (1992).

Famous Ex-Student

Bob Graham, twice winner of the "Children's Picture Book of the Year" award, attended Beverly Hills School from 1947 to 1952. His wonderful picture books include 'Pete and Roland', 'First There Was Francis', 'Crusher is Coming' and his 20th book 'Greetings from Sandy Beach'. His comic strip "Charlotte et Henri" appears in the French publication 'Belles Histoires'. He now works from his home at Mount Dandenong in Victoria.

Beverly Hills Primary School Fondly Remembered

Don Porter was a student at Beverly Hills School from 1955 to 1958. He has used his skills as a graphic designed to illustrate his memories of those years:

Willy Fennell was Dexter Dutton on Life With Dexter, Hop Harrigan ruled the air waves with Captain Silver of the Sea Hound when radio was still wireless and television was something we were all waiting to see.

I was born on 25 April 1949. We lived at 23 Melvin Street, Beverly Hills and our telephone number was LU 5263. On that day Beverly Hills Public School was fifty seven years old exactly: it opened on the same date in 1892.

I left Mrs Fillergrand's Kindergarten at the Beverly Hills School of Arts and started school in 1955. Instead of Preps they called it Transition and about the only thing I remember was playing blocks, having a blue clear plastic pencil box, being made to have a quiet time after lunch every day; and a peculiar smell that still returns and is totally indescribable.

First Class has memories of visiting musicians, (particularly a violinist, a girl with calipers on her legs, and a girl from Latvia) seeing the Harbour Bridge from the school yard, and the wattles in the yard in August. It is also of storytime and watching the girls colour in with much more care than any of the boys, and the smell of Perkins glue paste.

Second Class was a year of investigation, of reading, writing, drawing, cutting, pasting and painting with, for the first time, a reason in my mind for all of this. I think I lost all belief in educational reasoning at the end of 1956 when all our class was kept back to repeat the year, just to fit in with a restructured education system. This stood me in good stead, for as a teacher in the Victorian system I've seen many restructures since.

I seem to remember 1957 as a year I felt lost. A useless year, - after all I'd done all this learning before. Mum would take me to school and I'd beat her home. There I would be sitting on the front step waiting for her on her return home. I remember spending a fair amount of my time doing lessons in the storeroom next to Miss Boundy's office, until one day we had a heart to heart talk and I never looked back. I don't remember what she said but it must have carried some power.

Nineteen-fifty-eight was a big year. We moved to the old building and Mr McKee's care. We also lost our constant companions and mates, the girls.

I remember Mr McKee's canes, folk dancing with the girls, singing patriotic songs in the dusty hallway around the piano with the afternoon sunlight coming in the end door, bringing library books home for mum and dad to repair, and the smell of wet days: and row after row of wet rain coats. I also remember being told we were going to Melbourne to live and wondering what it would be like.

Now, thirty-four years later, I still live in Melbourne. I am a graphic designer, photographer, married with two girls. I didn't have to go to Vietnam, I've had cancer twice and I've survived.

Here are the names in my memory:

• Doug Mathews
• Geoffery Boghurst
• Jenny Clarke
• Colleen Creamer
• Lee Archer
• Colin Mcleod
• Roslyn Ryan

It doesn't mean I've forgotten the rest of us, just their names.

The week before I left, the whole place came to life with a school fete: I had never been to one before and it has had a lasting impression on my reminiscences of my first school.

Don Porter
5 April 1992 (Melbourne)

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