This just in from Philip Meade:
Some sad news: this afternoon Ken McLean's brother, Peter, phoned me to let me know Ken died (unexpectedly) on 3 January 2025. As you may recall, Ken married a Canadian about 25 years ago and moved to Newfoundland. He was a keen fisherman and so living in the north of Newfoundland came with its attractions! Peter McLean was also an STHS old boy, I think in the same year as Peter Coleman's brother.
The production is adapted from Stephen Edgar’s prize-winning verse novel, Eldershaw. This is breaking new ground for the Drill Hall Theatre Company. What can the audience expect?
The Unexpected. The production is such a blend of different theatrical styles that there is something for everyone.
The Chronicles of Eldershaw was adapted by the Drill Hall’s Gregory Aitken. How closely did he collaborate with Stephen Edgar?
The actor and producer, Greg Aitken, saw the dramatic possibilities for Stephen Edgar’s book Eldershaw back in 2014. Stephen encouraged Greg to explore his award-winning narrative verse novel’s dramatic possibilities. Over the past year the poet has edited or made suggestions to at least a dozen drafts of The Chronicles of Eldershaw.
The ASIO file on Katherine [sic] Ann Jennings reveals that she came to their attention via her relationship with one of the legendary figures of Australian unionism, Tas Bull of the Seamen's Union (1932-2003). From Wikipedia and.another source (https://www.portrait.gov.au/portraits/2018.116/tas-bull ) we learn that Tas grew up in Hobart and went to sea at 14 after the death of his father. He returned to Australia three years later after travelling the world and seeing much social and economic inequity. Tas was a Communist Party member right up to the 1960s, and became a leading light of the Waterside Workers Federation. His autobiography 'Life on the Waterfront' was published in 1998. On the day of his funeral, a thousand mourners followed his hearse along the Hungry Mile.
It seems from the file that Ann and Tas got together in Hobart around 1960, and two marriages were affected. Tas came from a Salvationist background, and according to the ASIO file, his mother was quite upset.
The file records Ann's attendance, with Tas, at a number of meetings of Communist Party members at no less than the Double Bay Sailing Club. (Was this an attempt to throw the spooks off the trail by meeting amongst the toffs, or a nod to Tas's seagoing predilections? Come to think of it, those eighteen footers certainly leaned to the left). Amongst other things, Ann is recorded as stating at one meeting her intention to go overseas in May 1963. She and Tas must have resumed together on her return, as the file records their relationship lasting until 1967.
At another meeting, Ann is recorded as saying that she is still teaching at 'the Bexley high school'
And for all we know, Ann and Tas are still together, in the silent black and white of an ASIO surveillance film. It’s a city footpath, seen from upstairs across the street. There’s the roof of an FJ Holden and an ad for Tooths Lager. And there are two men in white shirts with rolled up sleeves, next to an unmarked door. Then a couple arrive and greet them. There’s Tas exhaling a smoke, and Ann looking quite flash. Whatever she says makes the bigger doorman laugh. Then the door opens and they disappear. Soon, that may be all that’s left to mark their union of long ago.
The file records that in March1969 Ann Jennings' car was amongst a number of vehicles used to convey demonstrators to a vigil at Long Bay Gaol, where a number of draft resisters were then incarcerated.
The Sydney Morning Herald informs us that Friday the 14th of March 1969 was a warm fine night. The ASIO observer reports a subdued event, with placards but no disturbance. The conscientious objectors inside the gaol would have been locked in their cells well before 8pm. They included Stephen Townsend, younger brother of the more famous Simon, and Mike Jones, then a big man on campus at Sydney Uni. Those attending the vigil had forgone a rare night of television. As the vigil began, ABN 2 was showing The Avengers with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, while TEN 10 had Mission Impossible. TCN 9 were left well behind, with Bobby Limb. Perhaps some of the students had had the forethought to bring a bottle of Brandivino to pass around covertly. It would have been an uncomfortable night on the hard ground once the conversation died down. Were any of them thinking of the next ballot, and what they might do?
Also on file are two folios relating to ASIO's adverse security report on our esteemed fellow student Bruce Searle (STHS 1967). Bruce was the Jean Cocteau of his year, and like any sensible work-shy lad, he applied to join the Commonwealth Public Service. This was in 1969. Bruce needed a security clearance and, in ASIO's eyes, his past history as a young Communist weighed heavily against him.
The ASIO operative records all this, and also the fact that Bruce gave Katherine Ann Jennings as a character reference and described her as a personal friend. The ASIO operative offers the information that Ann was born in 1919 and is sceptical that someone so much older could actually be a friend. The file itself shows that the 1919 birthdate is wrong, but the spooks sometimes ignored facts if they stood in the way of pumping up moral condemnation.
But they were dead right of course. The Australian public had so much to fear from Bruce, a spindly aesthete whose sardonic social commentary was declared best essay in the STHS journal of 1967. Getting shut out of a lifetime job with the APS probably cost him a quarter of a million, but did he care? As a photographic artist now represented in our nation’s galleries, he had his mind on other things, and hopefully still has… But meanwhile, in ASIO’s very own Sydney office, a middle manager by the name of Ian George Peacock was getting quite fed up with seeing younger graduates being promoted past him. Within a few years, Mr Peacock would shake his tail feathers before the KGB and fatten his retirement fund by giving up the names of dozens of agents and informers. His betrayal, approved from Moscow by none other than Kim Philby, would remain undetected right up to his death.
Finally, the file records an ASIO blunder in identifying the Sydney radical feminist Kate Jennings as Ann's daughter Karen. The operative confidently states that no one else who could be Kate Jennings was born during the period 1945 to 1948. The possibility that the Catherine Ruth Jennings born in NSW in 1947 could actually be the Kate Jennings they were monitoring did not occur to them. As the late PM John Gorton once famously said, ASIO were 'stumblebums'..
That was the year the worst of the worst Third Form boys hurled ninja star knives at the wooden doors behind the Manual Arts block. The best of the worst had a different entertainment – humming in the Music class to annoy Lurch, and blaming the noise on machines in the metalwork room. That was also the year of Smiley Walker, driven to distraction by a rat released in his French class, and Doc Dalziel, who faced down insolence with his own inane chatter, and just didn’t care.
And then there was Ann Jennings. A greying, neatly parcelled woman in early middle age, she had a squarish face with strong but feminine features and a steady, serious expression. She kept this air of quiet control when speaking to her students. Her nickname of Ma was evidence of her success in keeping order without arousing contempt.
I first encountered Ma Jennings that year, through my role in the School Play, an eighteenth century romp directed by Chris Ellis. On the evening of the performance, Ma briskly rubbed stage makeup onto my face with a stern motherly gaze. The play was a riotous success, with risqué lines too silly to offend anyone other than Mrs Bong.
The following year we had Macbeth for Shakespeare and all classes were presented with Ma’s notes on the play. ‘Darkness, we may fairly say blackness, pervades the atmosphere of this play’. The notes told us how Shakespeare used images of disorder in the natural world to convey the evil of killing the good king, quoting such lines as ‘I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry’.
Well might she have mentioned the unnatural. For, there she was, one rainy day in the awful gloom of the canteen area, standing next to the wall, dressed in a leather skirt that showed her knees, and a red jacket, and white boots. She exhaled once, and returned our smirking gaze without blinking. And then we looked away. For there was only one boy in our year who had really had a root, and that was ‘with some slut’. The rest of us were still uneasy at the idea that girls of our own age might like sex, let alone the shocking thought that women of our mother’s age might like it as well.
Paul Feldman
... English teacher, STHS, 1965 - 1970?
This was 'Ma' Jennings on her wedding day in 1946. Feeling younger, yet?
A crack team from the STHS Special Archival Patrol Group, led by the dashing Lieutenant-Colonel 'Mick' Stewart, Class of '71, has been bravely and frequently delving, disinterring, and accumulating a dossier in re this extraordinary woman, of whose life story we at Tech saw only a glimpse; a short episode within a startling saga.
Instalments from this thrilling tale will be coming soon to a blog near you.
Though we knew it not, we were in the presence of greatness, of a kind.
This just in from Mick from STHS Class of 1971. Remember Mrs Béchard? Teacher of French? Arrived STHS 1967, I think.
We called her ‘Mrs Mauritius’, because she could speak barely a word of English.
If you misbehaved, she would point a finger and shout ‘You!’. That was the extent of her vocabulary, it seems.
Posting it so you can check that your 'Follow this Blog' or RSS Feed is working.
I’d worked for long enough; I’ve earned my rest.
The pressure got too much so I let go.
I got fed up with too much change at work.
The game had changed; I finally said no.
I don’t do much these days; I just relax.
I take a walk, lunch with a friend then snooze.
My golf and bridge keep me quite occupied.
This is my time to do the things I choose.
My work still interests me; I want to stay.
While I still have the strength, I’ll carry on.
I won’t give up while I can still give more.
Why waste the skills I’ve built up for so long?
Though most are glad when work comes to a stop,
some opt to carry on until they drop.
Recently came across these 45’s when cleaning out a box of stuff from the old family home at Bexley that I’ve had stored for years.
I seem to remember there was trading of records amongst some of the lads.
You will notice that I seem to have obtained these shall we say cult classics from messers Freestone and O’Dea respectively.
Not sure of the circumstances of the transaction but hopefully I didn’t part with Jimmy Little's Royal Telephone and Little Patti’s Stomping at Maroubra in exchange.
It might jog a few memory cells amongst the lads.
See you at the reunion.
