Lads,
A little light, lunch-hour reading for you. The STHS 1969 site attracts some interesting mail now and then. Let me share it around, and add one or two remarks.
______________________________________________________
S T A Y I N T O U C H
Firstly, thanks to everyone who keeps their contact details up to date. The database is always amended at once, but it's still shy of completeness. Have a look at:
http://stephengard.com.au/STHS/housekeeping/adbook.html
... and let me know if there's anyone you have better and further particulars about.
______________________________________________________
L E A R N I N G I T O F F P E R R E T T - F A S H I O N
This entertaining enquiry, possibly triggered by a Google search that hit on our STHS 1969 site, arrived here back in June:
Good Afternoon,
My name is Chris Lane and I work for Copyright Agency Limited (CAL).
CAL is a not-for-profit, member based Australian Rights Management company that has been appointed by the Commonwealth Attorney's General Office to collect and distribute copyright funds.
We represent authors, journalists, visual artists, photographers and publishers as their non exclusive agent to licence the copying of their works to the general community.
I need to get in contact with either Mr Ken Perritt or Mr E Whiting. I believe that they attended Sydney Technical High School back in the 60's.
I would be most grateful if you could provide me with any contact details possible as I need to discuss the possibility of copyright funds payable to these gentleman for works that they authored.
I thank you for your efforts.
Kind Regards,
Chris Lane
Copyright Agency Limited
Tel: +61 2 9394 7658
Fax: +61 2 9394 7601
Level 14, 233 Castlereagh St
Sydney NSW 2000
I have included the sender's address, in case you too, thought this letter was a hoax. After I'd decided it was genuine, and that this honest researcher had simply found the phrase 'Perrett and Whiting' at STHS '69 and drew some false conclusions, I replied:
Dear Cal,
If either Perrett or his buddy Whiting attended STHS in the 1960s, we students of the time would have heard about it, and beaten them up behind the incinerator after classes. We had their textbooks inflicted upon us when we were in primary school, so I suspect this evil pair were consenting adult text-book writers for some decades before the Sixties began, and probably were students themselves as long ago as the Forties or even the Thirties. Possibly even the Twenties - infamy knows no dawn.
My listing them on my Sydney Tech school reunion website was in the nature of a joke, as I first suspected your letter might be. You could easily track the boys via PLR or ELR if they were still grinding out their awful tomes, or at any rate copping royalties for them. Tried Dominie? Or are they defunct? Teachers may still photocopy pages from these books, but I'd be astonished if the Diabolical Duo remain above ground.
Stephen Gard
PS By the way, if there's anything unclaimed and owing to these boys, maybe I could take it off your hands? I'm already in your system as an author, so it's just a matter of creative book-keeping, isn't it?
To this, Mr Lane did not vouchsafe a reply. The matter appears to be closed, like the career of Mr Perrett, and Mr Whiting. The answers were not in the back, after all.
______________________________________________________
I M M E N S E I M A N T S
You will have followed with avidity the tracking down of Richard Hopkinson, by David Stewart, Class of 1968, but David's interesting follow-up mail needs to be shared:
Thanks a lot Stephen, look forward to seeing you at the reunion! Richard has been found alive and well in Wellington NZ by Graham Leonard! Imants will be amazed.
Deborah, could you please forward this email and the following response to Jenny for Imants when he has time. This is fantastic news.
Richard was also close to Imants over a number of years at STHS and wrote poetry and was interested in history, literature, drama, metaphysics etc. Another lost brother emerges from amongst the dark slippery rocks at the base of Mt Analogue!
My wife and I both greatly enjoyed meeting you at the exhibition last Saturday and listening to your presentation about the artworks that you have curated during the “Meet the artist” session. It is indeed a great credit to you and the gallery. So much effort and time – amazing! Your unique personal approach to the “Imants Tillers -one world many visions” exhibition has certainly revealed a lot of things that have been hidden.
But I personally don’t think Imants suddenly became an artist at any particular or defined point in time and space, but rather that it was in him gradually forming from a very early age like an embryo- probably recognizable during pre-school or earlier as a toddler.
His 1985 Mt Analogue will always be an icon for me and we have completed the jigsaw puzzle to hang in our house. The sheer enjoyment of the family doing the puzzle together as a team but using different techniques was magic! The metaphysical meaning and background of this work is obviously a core theme linking all of Imants’ other more complex work and the significance of connections across time and space are important to me at least in appreciating his later works. I hope others get as much pleasure from seeing the real thing as we did. You can’t just get this from a print.
We also had an enjoyable breakfast with the Tillers family in the gallery café the next morning. We later stood on Black Mountain afterwards on the way home and looked across the terrible Woden Valley and saw that Mt Analogue spoke to us from the distant snow covered hills beyond Lake Cotter. We also think the peace plaque at the main entrance to the tower might warrant mention.
Somehow the Anglo-Saxon god of war, who was also god of the Muse, the head god and the undertaker to the spirit world was at peace with the landscape. Like a scene from the mythic Tolkien novels or a chapter from Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”- so inextricably linked it was quite special but a bond shared by fellow hobbits. Is this not our fate as mere humans to be playthings of a higher purpose seeking a goal we can never attain, or that never ends?
Best wishes
David Stewart
Engineering Manager
David sent a .pdf attachment (available from the National Library of Australia) with the mail below, outlining Imants Tillers' career.
Stephen,
I forgot to mention that you preferably need to understand Reme Daumal’s novel about an imaginary mountain called Mt Analogue, about passing down secret knowledge etc and that Imants’ massive 7 by 3 metre painting? is made up with small detailed canvassboards as a part of his “Book of Power” and this is actually a copy of another painting in the national gallery!
The attachment also gives a clue to understanding by another unrelated artist, but you can look it up (the story behind the painting that is ) yourself on the net under an internet search of Mt Analogue. Imants on one level is playing mind games, yet serious at the same time and making an important statement that turns the art world on its head. I will reveal more later, but never everything!
I also refer you to the NGA website www.nga.gov.au/TILLERS put together by Deborah Hart in the meantime. Warning: this is addictive stuff!
Sorry about all this confusion but as I said this is normal and not unexpected, In fact, many people have said to the gallery they want to go back again and again to appreciate Imants’ art so they are asking for complimentary tickets!!
If you are in Canberra, its well worth a visit.
Best Regards
David
______________________________________________________
F A R F R O M T H E M A D D I N G A L L A W A H
Last Monday, I was sprung - and by a chick!
Howdy
Found your site when doing a google search for my brother... long story.
During the trivia quiz, you mentioned the escape route down the grassy slope into Ethel St.
I lived in Ethel St, right behind the school, from the time of my birth in 1964 until I was married in 1987. At no time was it classed as Allawah. To this day, it is Carlton. Mind you, it's close. Boundary lines run down the centre of Xenia Ave, making one side Carlton, and the other Hurstville, whilst up on Forest Road, the reservoir was the point where Bexley became Hurstville. Which meant Sydney Tech was bounded on one side by Carlton and the other by Bexley, and a literal stones throw from Hurstville.
I remember that in hot weather, we would jump the fence to swim at night, and escape from the dreaded caretaker down a hole in the corner of the fence. Sheer terror of being caught would lend wings to our heels!
My dad and four brothers all attended STH - starting in '52, '71, '72, '74 and '81( I think)
Tracey Foxcroft
Khancoban NSW
Sorry about all this confusion but as I said this is normal and not unexpected, In fact, many people have said to the gallery they want to go back again and again to appreciate Imants’ art so they are asking for complimentary tickets!!
If you are in Canberra, its well worth a visit.
Best Regards
David
______________________________________________________
F A R F R O M T H E M A D D I N G A L L A W A H
Last Monday, I was sprung - and by a chick!
Howdy
Found your site when doing a google search for my brother... long story.
During the trivia quiz, you mentioned the escape route down the grassy slope into Ethel St.
I lived in Ethel St, right behind the school, from the time of my birth in 1964 until I was married in 1987. At no time was it classed as Allawah. To this day, it is Carlton. Mind you, it's close. Boundary lines run down the centre of Xenia Ave, making one side Carlton, and the other Hurstville, whilst up on Forest Road, the reservoir was the point where Bexley became Hurstville. Which meant Sydney Tech was bounded on one side by Carlton and the other by Bexley, and a literal stones throw from Hurstville.
I remember that in hot weather, we would jump the fence to swim at night, and escape from the dreaded caretaker down a hole in the corner of the fence. Sheer terror of being caught would lend wings to our heels!
My dad and four brothers all attended STH - starting in '52, '71, '72, '74 and '81( I think)
Tracey Foxcroft
Khancoban NSW
I apologised for my sloppy map-reading, and Tracey replied:
Stephen
Feel free to share the letter. I don't mind at all. Actually, reading back, I sound like I'm telling you off! Not my intention, really.
I attended St George Girls, STH's sister school, so I had the pleasure of attending a few events at STH, the school dances being most memorable for watching boys vomiting in the driveway near the auditorium.
I have fond memories of the school, and the antics that went on there. Most of them were perpetrated by my brothers and I in out of school hours! I can remember one vividly - In the years when fireworks were still allowed, we had a massive roman candle shootout war in the grounds. We bought boxes of 10, 20 and 30 shooters and just let rip at each other. It's a wonder we didn't take an eye out!
There was a one armed WWI veteran that used to live across from us. His house backed onto the school behind the cricket nets, and he had a magnificent Mulberry tree just over his back fence. I wonder if you remember it? It stood there for a long time after the demolition of the house, and in season, we would stuff ourselves silly on the berries. His house was one of the ones bought by the Department [of Education. ed.] to create more land for the school. It was a shame to see all those houses disappear as the families moved away.
Tracey
I fixed the site accordingly. And as if this 'F' in urban geography wasn't enough, two days later, I failed spelling AND history:
______________________________________________________
I N G E N I O U S L Y O F F F O R M
Stephen,
I was bored at work and came across your STHS web-site.
There is something wrong with the following trivia question:
19. The 1964 Sixth Form muck-up day included an ingeneous prank: across the entire face of the auditorium,
celebrants had fixed a message in giant letters made entirely of cigarette packets.
What was the message?
You may realize that in 1964, there were only 5 years of students at high school
(3 Forms heading towards HSC and 2 Years heading for Leaving Certificate)
So if the final year/form/class 'mucked-up' in 1964, it would have been Fifth Year, not Sixth Form.
The second stanza of the school song reminds us of the "Leaving Certificate" that was the final external exam in Fifth Year.
Forms Years
1962 1st 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th
1963 1st, 2nd 3rd, 4th, 5th
1964 1st, 2nd, 3rd 4th, 5th
1965 Ist, 2nd, 3rd, 4th 5th
1966 Ist, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th 5th repeat ?
1967 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th
Once again I cringed, and Bruce, being one of Us, replied with those Manners That Makyth A Man:
Stephen,
Thanks for your prompt response.
I was a friend of Lawrie Yeomans (older brother of Martyn).
We were at Sydney Tech High from 1961 to 1965 - that's why I remember the Leaving Certificate.
I attended a 1965 class (40 year) reunion at Kogarah Golf Club last September.
I have, again, fixed the site. Ingeniously.
______________________________________________________
B A R E F O O T B O Y S
 |
| Can you identify these waifs? Neatest correct entry wins a pair of thongs. |
______________________________________________________
T H E G O O D S H E P H E R D
John Shepherd recently sent me a change of address notice, and added:
... any old boys feel like a drink (free) then they should drop into my bar/restaurant in Bilpin on the Bells Line of Road. I am there most weekends……behind the bar (not cooking)!!
 |
| John Shepherd's Apple Bar. |
Wonder if John is prepared for Ian Bosler's entire bikie gang to roar up and breast the bar some Sunday morning, demanding free lemonades? Ian and his crew have already invaded us here at Thirlmere a few times and blatantly consumed latte and pastries in our main street.
Which reminds me....
Was that not Phillip Meade I spied in the main street here at Thirlmere, during last weekend's Steam Museum and Crafts Fair Hoopla and Huzzah? Seated outside the Whistlestop Café, large as life, and twice as natural, and appearing to enjoy himself amidst a crowd of women? If I hadn't been so busy rushing down to Cellarbrations to stock up on Scotch for my mother-in-law's seventieth birthday party (an inescapable fixture), I'd have stopped and said 'Boomalacka' to him. What with Bosler blasting through it, Martin Yeomans flying over it, and now Meade seated steaming himself here, I'm beginning to feel a stranger in my own town.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
This occasional bulletin will appear again when I (we) have something to share. In the meantime, I'm still studying the problem of where to place the apostrophe of possession when using the words 'Imants' and 'Tillers'. Neatest correct entry wins a pair of apostrophes.
Boomlacka,
Stephen Gard, 1E.
