Mark Smith wonders...

Stephen,

Have enjoyed once again looking at the website, especially the anecdotes (about teachers). Again let me say you have done well. But I must be getting old, memories are getting more feeble. Who was the tall thin English/History teacher that some of us had (I would say 1965-1967, ie what is now called Yrs 8 to 10)? My recollection is that he sounded very English, but he instilled in me the understanding of history as thesis/antithesis/new thesis, to be followed by new antithesis: which of course has proved to be so true, or rather as situation/reaction/back to the ‘50’s. I think his name was very English too, possibly two-syllable, maybe starting with a ‘D’?. Can you or anyone help?

As to the comment on the webpage that our years were attempting to overcome the Kipling age, did you hear about Geoffrey Robinson’s recent comment that Australia was so reactionary and conservative that the 1960’s did not finally arrive here until the 1970’s?

It reminds me that when I was living in Wagga Wagga I was once waiting at the Council Chambers and started looking along the row of photographs of former City Councillors, assembled in collective yearly poses. I was looking at a number of black and white photographs of men in short back and sides haircuts, some Brylcreamed, when I realized they were photographs of the Councils of the late 1970’s. The 1960’s still hadn’t arrived there yet.

Please note my new address, as below. My email address and mobile phone number remain the same.

Cheers,
Mark Smith

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Thanks so much for your kind, and interesting mail! Now that you've joined us in the Southern Highlands (how did you survive your first Brigadoon?) I may see you now and again; we have friends in Bundanoon and other southwards places, Bree, for example. Rivendell. Mordor.

Was the English teacher Chris Ellis?  He was of the tweed jacket with leather elbows and pipe-puffing persuasion, so he must have done time in Oxford or at one of its epigones. I don't recall anyone teaching us the Hegelian dialectic of thesis + antithesis = synthesis, perhaps I wasn't paying attention, but clearly, we had a crypto-Marxist among the staff. On the other hand, he did borrow my copy of Sergeant Pepper's and read the lyrics aloud to us, with a commentary. His father was the rector (or some such) at Kelso Church; we stopped there on our way to Hill End, 1965, perhaps merely to micturate.

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Stephen

Warren "Swampy" Mellor, who had one blue suit, two pairs of diamond socks and three ties (I stared at him for 10 periods a week for 3 years

best regards

David Gaunt

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I checked "The Journal" for 1965, lucked out with your inuqiry there but the
1969 issue lists a member of the Enlish staff named Mr B Donlon. So, your
memory is not too bad; nor is mine - I quickly remembered which bookcase
contained an ancient history document.

Cheers.

Michael Kells 
(of Broken Hill since 1973 but I drove past Bundanoon Friday week ago)

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Hi Mark

I have attached a scan from the 1964 STHS Year Book.

Figured the picture of Chris Ellis may prompt a thought.

Kind regards /.. Ian

Ian R Bone

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Stephen,
Could it have been Miss Dick ?.........no..... wrong shape, wrong height, wrong gender
Jeff Matchett

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I reckon it was "swampy" Mellor...the old thesis and antithesis...he was right of course...looking forward to some antithesis to Bush and little Johnny....cheers...

Derek Lewis

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I have a host of replies which I am now making my way through. Someone might name the teacher. But he is not Ellis. He  is the 4th person from the right in the photograph, behind Brian Hodge. I’ll check the rest of my emails.

As for Brigadoon: my parents moved to Canyonleigh in 1982. My father has died, but my mother now lives in Bundanoon. I seem to have been going to Brigadoon all my life (my father` was Scottish). But I’ve only heard the massed bands play ‘Amazing Grace’ right once, as a war song that chills you, not a namby-pamby church hymn, but at least I’ve heard it once. They now play it at the Closing, and if you close your eyes the massed bands do sound impressive. It scares my small dog.

Roberston was speaking at some honoury doctoral benefaction to him in the past two weeks. He is still married to Lette. Her latest book is called ‘How To Murder Your Husband’. Perhaps he should be worried. Perhaps Sydney Uni thought it better give him the doctorate quick.

The scary thing about the Wagga Wagga Council photographs were that not all the men were old!

Mark Smith

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Let me urge you to find a copy of 'Gregory's Australian Guide to Bowls' (by Jack Pollard, n.d., published around the time we were in First Form). I have two copies, if you are unsuccessful in your search, and will send one, to give you bad dreams, or a good laugh. The frontispiece shows W.S. Kay, Oz Bowls President, and he resembles Arthur 'Cocky' Caldwell just after the shooting incident: head like a great cube of boiled pork, heavy-duty horn-rimmed glasses straddling potato nose, hair clipped militarily short save for a tiny, overcombed greasy thatch atop, skin like a ploughed paddock, vast ears like the Parkes radio telescope, droopy, crepy throat, heavy suit... he looked like every headmaster, Shire President, magistrate, RSL committee man, or ponderous uncle who haunted our younger days. The rest of the book is filled with even more terrifying photos of even more gross males, the rulers of the world of our youth. They all looked like Bing, and they all bellowed and fulminated and were certain that the world was going to hell in a handcart, we being the symptoms of its immediate descent. The Sixties couldn't arrive until they were extinct.

SDG

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Thanks Ian. Yes it was!

And now to announce the winners of the Mark Smith Asks competition, or ‘Who was That Teacher?’

The correct answer was: Mr Warren Mellor.
Yes, two syllables. But no ‘D’. Sorry about that.
Is Mellor an English name? Mellors (with the additional ‘s’ was of course Lady Chatterley’s gamekeeper: Was this what I was thinking?)
Or was it the ‘Warren’?

Like Dave Gaunt, I too had Mellor for ‘10 periods a week for 3 years’. So how was I able to then forget his name, eh?

Correct answers in time order were:
Tuesday 11 April, 2006:
1.  Ian Bosler at 1.23pm
2.  Dave Gaunt, correctly naming Warren ‘Swampy’ Mellor, at 3.49pm
3.  Eugen Molodysky at 4.55pm
4.  Ray Dean phone call at 7.04pm
5.  Ian Bone with scan photo of English staff with names, at 7.23pm
6.  Derek Lewis at 9.50pm, who remembered the thesis/antithesis theory, and also applied it to the current situation.

Special ‘You Poor Sorry Fool’ award to Jeff Matchett for naming Miss Dick.

Thanks to all who responded. Sorry about the delay in announcing the results. Easter intervened. Hope everyone else had a good Easter too.

Finally: Stephen, you were very good at announcing Mellor’s teaching as the Hegelian dialectic. I had forgotten that, if I ever knew it. Obviously you spent your time learning useful things.

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Regards to all,
Mark Smith