MEMORY AND HISTORY

A letter written by Edith Banks, one of the original 1889 students of Princes Hill to Headmaster William Gibson, 1965.

Dear Sir, You do not know me, and I do not know you, so I had better explain. I am old now - in my 87th year, and feel somewhat ‘nostalgic’. I am one of the scholars who came to Princes Hill State School, on the opening day.

Some years back, now, there was held a re-union of old scholars in the Town Hall. I attended with my brother (Ernest) and my sisters Minnie and Lily. There was published a photo of us in the Melbourne daily paper. Of the four of us, I am the only one left.

Prior to the opening of Arnold Street school we attended Lee Street when Mr. Lewis was the Headmaster there. Our family live in Camborne Cottage 79, next door to Mona Cottage 77, in McIlwraith Street. I think the two little cottages still exist - they were there three years ago, when I had a trip to Melbourne, and was driven down McIlwraith Street. My father and mother were Cornish folk and lived in Camborne Cottage, where I was born on April 25th, 1879. The folk in Mona Cottage came from the Isle of Man. My father was Mr. W. R. J. Reynolds (Camborne) and Mr. Gawne was the gentleman next door (Mona).

They were friends and worked as ‘Fitters and Turners’ with T. Robinson’s firm, then in Franklin Street, Melbourne. There were two houses there on the Hill before our houses were built. One belonged to a lady, and the other to a Mr. Norman. There were no streets made then only Lygon and Garton Street leading down from the cemetery to Sydney Road. My mother and Mrs. Gawne would ‘fly kites’ with us, out on the open ground around us.

In due time the streets were made. My sister, a younger sister who was a baby then, has a photo of Mother looking over a paling fence of our garden watching the men at work. When the four streets, McIlwraith, Wilson, Arnold and Garton were finished, houses and terraces were quickly built much smarter than our happy little homes. A family (from Scotland) named Greig came to live in a house in a new brick terrace in Wilson Street. There were four studious sisters, Janet, Jane (twins) and Clara and Flossie. These lasses walked up and down on their balcony every day after school (studying, a la Bronte). Janet became a Doctor and was afterwards at the Melbourne Hospital, Clara (my friend) did a business course and afterwards had a business college in Collins Street and Flossie became a lawyer. I think she was the first lady admitted to the Bar in Melbourne . . .

Princes Hill soon became overcrowded, and the 5th and 6th grades (top grades) were housed in a shop in Purves Building’s in Lygon Street. The children there got a bit out of hand and one day they shouted derisively at some Chinese men. The Chinese got some carving knives and stabbed at the door of the school room. Order was soon restored but additions were built to the school proper, and we all were back in our school again. Here, I would like to pay a tribute to a 6th grade teacher named Mr. McShane. (Paddy McShane we lovingly called him.) One day a few of us in the back row upstairs saw a poor lass the worse for drink, swaggering past on the other side of the street. We ignorant carefree girls giggled. Mr. McShane came up to see what was amusing us. He saw; came back to his desk, and said ‘I’m going to read something to you.’ He opened a book and read excerpts from the ‘Lady of the Lake’ (Sir Walter Scott). We listened, fascinated, to his beautiful rich voice. The contrast between what we had seen, and what Mr. McShane read to us, left a lasting impression on our minds. It showed the kind of girls we could become. It was better than any ‘sermon’ he could have given us.

From McPherson Street we could look through the bars of the cemetery fence and watch the Chinese roasting a pig, alongside the grave of a relative. It was some kind of religious ceremony. We were too afraid to enter the cemetery lest we be made a sacrifice too! Also we were forbidden to go in alone without an adult. Our folk had a family grave there in which my grandmother was buried in 1885 and my mother’s first baby in 1875. It was opened again when my sister was buried about 1958. . .

Best wishes and great happiness to you and the ‘Old School’ from yours sincerely,

Edith Banks’ ¹

Princes Hill is about the experiences and memories of students, teachers and parents at the state schools of Princes Hill. I have used archival sources in the schools and the Public Record Office of Victoria, published works and reminiscences of people who have been involved with the schools, at different times and in different roles. I spoke with people currently involved with the schools and placed advertisements in newspapers and teachers’ journals to elicit responses from former teachers and students.

Most of those who replied to the advertisements were retired men and women who had attended Princes Hill between the 1910s and 1940s. The oldest respondent attended Princes Hill in 1902.² As well, some of the information comes from my own time as a student at Princes Hill, and from the people I knew while I was there. It is hard to recall school experiences in detail. Most of the ex-students who responded to my requests for information were remembering their primary-school years. Much that happened to them as young students remained outside their immediate realisation. Though most people can recall bits of the time -spent learning their way around alien buildings among a host of strangers, many things that loom large to an adult are taken for granted by a child: questions of education quality, ethnic mix, classroom conditions - whether it be overcrowding or wall decorations. What mattered more to children were friends, peer-group acceptance, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ teachers, interesting subjects, homework, sport and the like.

Recollecting childhood experience as an adult is a different matter. Flashes of accurate memory are there, but the memories are run through a series of filters: some incidents are embellished for public consumption, other unpleasant experiences are subconsciously repressed, school folklore recalled as fact and, in the bewildering variety of experiences then and now, many things are simply forgotten. An individual’s assessment of what is significant to the questioner will also affect memory. What adults regard as pertinent today will have been perceived differently by them as children. On many occasions, the judgements of the ‘child’ are those of the adult looking back at childhood. Even the eyewitness’s memory of an event is encased in personal experience, perception and emotion.

The question of classroom discipline is an example. One teacher’s physical size, tyrannical classroom demeanour and enigmatic character earned her an uncomplimentary nickname and a considerable degree of hatred and fear from students unfortunate enough to be placed in her high-school classes. Helen, a sixteen-year-old girl with a rebellious character, left school after form 2 as a consequence of their encounters. Other students now understand her classroom methods as those of an excellent teacher who forced students to think for themselves.

Many of my own memories were awakened listening to the experiences of others. Much of my memory of my years at the high school is a visual narrative compiled from a flittering kaleidoscope of images - faces, names, incidents, impressions, glimpses of teachers, classrooms and school-boy pranks - rather than interpretations. After going to primary school in Abbotsford, I chose Princes Hill High because I knew someone who was attending the school. My first years at the high school were filled with uncertainty about procedures and the fear of authority (and the bigger kids). As we became familiar with the school system - and learned how to circumvent it, we challenged authority and school expectations, whether it be by wagging classes and sport, not completing homework or not wearing school uniform. As we grew up, our political, social and cultural awareness was stirred. Age-old issues - individuality, authority, the existence of God - were debated; other issues closer to home, such as the conditions the ‘flats kids’ lived under, or why girls left school early hardly crossed our minds.

We were enthused by man walking on the moon, and enraged by the massacre of My Lai. One Sunday morning, the rumour came around that the school had been burnt down. The next day we assembled in the quadrangle, which was cordoned off from the remains of the building. Alleyne Sier sent us home for the rest of the day. The next day, classes began at 7.30 a.m. The school struggled on under emergency conditions, but for most students it was a wasted year. Our last day at school created another kind of mayhem, and many thick heads. It is interesting to go back now, and try to put these memories into some kind of order.

This book is divided into four parts. Each considers one facet of the history and life of the Princes Hill Schools. The first traces the vicissitudes that accompanied the building and maintaining of Princes Hill Primary School and Princes Hill Secondary College, and their relations with the central educational administration. Few schools in Victoria have had such a crowded history. The second section looks at teaching - the dominant personalities at the schools, the regime that was imposed by the Education Department and the everyday relations within the classroom. The third part considers the reciprocating roles of the Princes Hill Schools, the parents and the community. The fourth part examines the life of students: their backgrounds, life in the classroom and the playground, educational activities outside the classroom, and their personal aspirations. I have many friends, old and new, to thank for the assistance and encouragement offered me during the writing of this history. They include the History Committee of Princes Hill Primary School and Secondary College for the honour of being asked to write the history of our school; Ruth Modulin, who has co-ordinated the Princes Hill Schools Centenary celebrations; the principals and staff of both schools; my brother, James Vlahogiannis, for his generous and skilful assistance with photographs; Lawrence Burchell for his exquisite plan drawings of the Arnold Street building; the Henry Sebire Family and Mrs Lister, great-niece of Lillian Horner, for access to their families’ archives. I am also grateful to the History Department, University of Melbourne, for the facilities it provided me, and to the History office staff, who doubled as message-takers; to Geoff Burrows, Kate Darian-Smith, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Pat Grimshaw, Jenny Little and Marian Turnbull, who have read the manuscript and saved me from embarrassing mistakes; to Jenny Lee for her patient editing and for carrying most of the production; and to my long-suffering family. Finally, I wish to express my deep-felt gratitude for the many past and present students and teachers of the Princes Hill Schools who have willingly and generously shared their time and memories with me. I cannot name you all, but it is to you, and all who have created the schools of Princes Hill, that I should like to dedicate this history of Prinny Hill. 

Nicholas Vlahogiannis, 1989.