Graeme Sephton - Mon, 09 Feb 2004

Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 22:29:44 -0500
From: Graeme Sephton
Subject: A request
To: Stephen G

Dear    Stephen,

In the great STHS tradition of shit-stirring, I am doing my bit over here as you will see below.

For those in Aus concerned about the manipulation and effective control of American opinion via the very suckie corporate media we are submerged in over here, I would offer this somewhat grassroots opportunity to participate.

Check out my web site at www.foiac.org and consider whether you would be willing to write a blurb encouraging our current school "old-boy" network to contribute, and to further circulate this among my old compatriots.  Because of the requirement that non-profits over here are required to be non-partisan, it would be best (less constrained and probably more effective), if you are so inclined, to write the preamble yourself.

Obviously, (and unfortunately!) what happens in the US does have considerable potential for negative impact on you and the rest of the world. But you "fureners" are not allowed to participate in the political system over here, IE your favorite US political movement or candidate cannot accept money from OS. But a non-profit such as mine is allowed to.

And if/when this litigation succeeds, then it might dramatically impact the current media-as-mouthpiece of government relationships.  (The media is supposed to be the "watchdog of the government" over here.)  There are about 50 people over here who occasionally give various fairly small donations but we need more to pay decent lawyers.  (Yes, 100%, all donations go to those guys in the black capes. )

(The attached letter currently being sent out gives a little more background.)

The media itself is a weapon of mass distraction (as many wits have observed) and therefore destruction too.  The US is like a very big imbecile with dangerous weapons - not evil, just dumbed down by a very manipulated corporate media.

I will be over there this year in September, if your interested in having a beer and a chat,

Regards and best wishes for 2004,

Graeme

Michael Kells - 8 Oct 2003 11:08:26 -0000

Date: 8 Oct 2003 11:08:26 -0000
To: Stephen Gard
Subject: Thanks from an old STHS comrade
From: ""
X-Originating-IP: 203.220.136.132

Stephen,

Hi.

Thanks again for your email and update on the Class of '69 and thanks for your
continued diligence at passing on information - it is MUCH APPRECIATED! Thank
you also for you 'sick' sense of humour, I love it!

I am more than happy with living where I have for 30 years but lament that I
have missed the experience of ongoing face to face contact with those who
where part of a very significant part of my life - that is, the 6 years spent
at STHS.

Please continue to keep me posted on a possible furure reunion, I would love
to be there.

I  hope that you can follow the following experience:

My mother (who is still alive) was engaged to a fellow before she met my
father. My father died 23 years ago. A decade ago, her original fiance
contacted her on her birthday and the old friendship blossomed for a few years
until he died. His wife and daughter had pre-deceased him. My mother commented
that "Time had not been kind in the looks department but that the old
friendship was still there". I and my family made the effort to get to know
the fellow and benefited from the experience. I look forward to catching up
with some of my cohorts in the future.

Boomalacka, boomalacka, bow wow wow.
Chingalacka, chingalacka, chow chow chow.
Boomalacka, chingalacka, who are we?
STHS can'y see?
YAAAHHH! (Not sure about the last line - ago does weary them!).

Bye for now.

Michael kells

From Paul Feldman - Fri, 6 Jun 2003

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Gard [mailto:stephen@stephengard.com.au]
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 7:47 AM
To: Paul Feldman
Subject: Re: STHS Staff Anecdotes

Paul

Thank you for your delightful letter!

How much of it will you permit me to add to the web-site?

I am also delighted that someone else studied so closely those odd-balls who attempted to teach us. One of the reasons I left teaching twenty years ago was the absence of eccentrics, characters who were also scholars, in classrooms. They are now all lower-middle brow bores who play squash and talk about the footie, and the men are even worse (snob? me?). I blame Whitlam for opening the flood-gates to the academy, but then, I wouldn't have my degree if he hadn't done so. I've since denounced Hawke for the HECS I've had to pay, and Howard for his mealy-mouthed abolition of post-grad scholarships - he removed the fees, but also the living allowance. It's just as well my wife is willing to support me while I pursue yet another boutique degree.

Thanks also for adding names like 'Scrag' to the list, and other vital data like the lyricist of 'Sumpter, Sumpter'. Who coined 'Bing Must Go?' Its echoes of 'King Must Go' (headline at the time of the abdication of Edward VII, methinks) could only have occurred to a scholar, some reviled academic snob.

What have you authored since, wordfish?

Stephen Gard

From: "Paul Feldman"
To: "Stephen Gard"
Subject: RE: STHS Staff Anecdotes
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 21:37:14 +1000

Stephen

Do feel free to add as much as you like to your website.

I am fairly sure it was Geoff Kerr of my year who ran the Bing Must Go campaign, perhaps in collusion with his friend John Waite. Geoff not only had the requisite morbid fascination with Bing, I think he also had a father who owned a printing factory - remember all those stickers that appeared around the school? I often wonder what happened to Geoff - he was a talented writer. If you have the journals, take a look at his short story from 1968. He was also responsible for the placement of a toilet pedestal on top of the entrance to the auditorium on the last day of Sixth form in 1968. Immediately underneath was a banner with the line from 'All along the Watchtower': 'There are many here among us who think that life is but a joke'.

I last saw Geoff Kerr in 1970 - he'd just come out of gaol for possession of heroin. Those were the good old days when they gaoled people for being addicts. He had that in common with Bruce Searle, who was in the year ahead of mine. Searle survived to become an artist of some endeavour, but is etched in collective memory for adapting the STHS School Pledge into 'I'm on with my God, I serve our queens, I salute the fags' which continued on into (what else?) 'God save our gracious queens....'.

Bing was responsible for the only corporal punishment I ever received in high school - he belted me quite hard on the head with a copy of 'On Course Mathematics' one day in Fourth Form, for not responding to some command. Through the swirls of stars, I remember being quite impressed with the man's casual adaptation of the object he happened to have in his hand into an instrument of physical punishment. Another memory I have of him is his obsession with people banging the seat in front of them when they brought their hands down from their hearts after completing the School Pledge during the weekly assembly. One day he had about twenty of the more junior teachers deployed in the aisles of the auditorium to spot offenders. But perhaps the darkest insight into the man's character was provided on the day he addressed the assembled school in the main quadrangle, delivered a homily on misbehaviour during Scripture class, and [I swear this is true] then asked if 'any boys of the Jewish faith would line up at the bottom of the quadrangle, down near the incinerator...' (faint smile...).

John Hamilton of my year was the son of a teacher who had taught at James Cook High when Bing was Maths master there. His father told him how one day a dog entered the Maths staffroom. One of the teachers said to the dog 'Go on, make yourself useful - go and piss on George's chair' - which the dog promptly did. The dog then left the room. A minute or so later, Bing came in and sat on the chair. At that moment, the dog howled outside the window, and the room convulsed in laughter.

My attitude to modern school education has thawed significantly over the last 6 or 7 years, largely as a result of my older daughter's experience at one of the ACT's secondary colleges, and my younger daughter's progress at primary school. Both of them benefited from an imaginative curriculum, and dedicated teachers (though none who could really be compared with ours).

I'd love to say that I've written heaps of creative stuff, but unfortunately just about the only writing I have done since leaving school has been in the course of my work in the National Archives of Australia, part of the Commonwealth Public Service: memoranda (in the days when people still wrote them), policy papers and procedures. Lots of passive voice, very formulaic, heavy on the abstractions and buzzwords. Still it's paid my way through two marriages, three children and five mortgages.

That said, I have a very long period of leave beginning next month, and would certainly like to trick myself into a bit of creative writing. It will have to be a sidelong approach, to catch the inner censor off guard. My newfound interest in cooking will help, maybe also setting my ten thumbs to work on learning keyboards. Perhaps the most reliable stimulus though, is the zany banter I get into with my twelve year old. I'm reminded she's my daughter when she writes a story for school that features spider children  called Thomas and Eloise.

I'm sure I have some more anecdotes about STHS teachers from those years. When I go on leave I will work on them and send them through to you.

A few things while I think of them though.

Thing one: There was a character called Kelver Hartley who taught French part time at Sydney University in the early 1950’s. Hartley was another highly disciplined eccentric who went on to become Professor of French at Newcastle Uni. He was amongst other things a dedicated fascist who had taken part in the Action Francaise riots in Paris in the 1930’s - you can read the truly bizarre story of his life and death at www.edoz.com.au/educationaustralia/viewp/view.html  He also wrote science fiction. The point is, that Peter Rennie would have been doing his degree at Sydney Uni at the same time as Hartley was teaching there. A role model, perhaps...?

Thing two (and maybe you know this): Frannie Dransfield, who features in your STHS web page, was the sister of the late great Michael Dransfield, who (degrees of separation) was a friend of Richard Hopkinson.

Thing three: Reg Byrne, the rebel teacher from 66-68, was one of the youngest members of the fabled Sydney Push. He was a disciple of the push leader Darcy Waters, and a sometime bedmate of Germaine Greer, who apparently rated him highly. He appears in at least one of Frank Moorhouse's short stories as Reg the Punter, who frequents the Balmain laundromat.

I'll get back to you shortly, but in the meantime, may you continue to enjoy your boutique university course, and of course your understanding wife.


Paul

From Paul Feldman - Wed, 4 Jun 2003

Gday Stephen

I think my last memory of you was your electric guitar work at the school dance in 68.

Chanced across your website today when I did a Google Search on the name of Peter Rennie, who taught me French at STHS between 64 and 67. I was just wondering how he finished up and having had freakish success with Google searches on other blasts from the past, just typed in the name.

You are right, the man was a very good teacher - a highly disciplined eccentric of the sort you don't find too often these days. I don't think he used green hair cream though, I think he naturally exuded green sweat. One day he lifted his arms and the armpits of his white shirt were soaked with green stains. The other things I remember about his appearance were the black hairs dripping off his fingers, and the way he sometimes ate peppermint lifesavers and then spattered fragments of the things when he articulated French to the class.

It was a pleasure to encounter your STHS web pages, if only to confirm that I am not the only weirdo carrying all those people around in my head, 35 years later.

But now to the serious business: it was I who came up with the immortal lines 'Sumpter, Sumpter, a virgin til they jumped her...'. The place was Hill End, but the year was in fact 1965. I suggested the line to a group of about half a dozen kids. I was too chicken to sing it myself, so a big ox of a kid called Keith West sang it. The amazing thing was that all the teachers who were present laughed and sang it - Fin Cook, Bert Edmonds ('Scrag'), Chris Ellis, Brian Hodge and Allen Whitehurst. However Hodge punished the group of us by making us do the washing up. The other memorable things about that Hill End excursion as far as I was concerned were Norman Becker dragging the School Captain (a bazza mackenzie lookalike called John Coleman) into the river at Sofala, Bob Booth bitching openly to us about a range of other teachers and Fin Cook saying to Booth ' What does Pete Rennie ever do for the school except get here at ten to nine and leave at five past three?' to which my reply, from the safe distance of 38 years, is 'Well Fin, for one thing, he could actually teach French!'

Congrats on the website

Paul Feldman
(a reviled academic snob and pretentious debator, also contributor to the School Journal 63-67)

In the matter of Ian Bosler - Fri, 11 Apr 2003

and good to hear from you, too. Buddy; I hope you've had time to visit the STHS 1969 website, where a power of horrifying memories may bend your mind, or alternatively, leave you puzzled.

Everything you needed to know, and probably much you didn't wish to, about me, is on my website. I look forward to hearing about Bosler Graphics, and what ever happened to that Ford Anglia you drove over to Oatley to show off to me, around 1969 - or was it an Isuzu Bellet?

===========

Hi again, I'll sit down next week and pen a few things.

Had a quick look at the website and looks good. Web design is not in our
forte as yet. We must sit down to investigate. As to the car, I think at
that time I had either a Triumph Herald convertable, Morris Minor (+MGB
motor etc) an FX Holden or a Morris 1500. All those car were about that
time. I haven't played the guitar since those days, I had trouble then, let
alone now! And the Guineau Pigs, well, now we're older, they'd make a great
food source.

Speak to you soon,

Ian Bosler

In the Matter of John Edwards - January 2003

Stephen,
     Did you know or did not want to know a John Edwards and a Greig Thomson?
(Class photo included)
=====
Robert Ryan

=====

If it's the John Edwards I'm thinking of, yes. I did want to know him. A droll and dead-pan fellow indeed. Is this not John seated here behind the tiny  chalkboard, the amiable lad on the right, in the play-suit?

Greig who? Mists of time obscure my vision...

=====

Stephen,
     I think it is the same fellow. John was involved
in the infamous Kogarah Council Library case where he
and others were presecuted by a group of real
"witches".
      John his family and Mother still live in Hurstville.

John remembers you playing guitar at the above
establishment.  He asks did you get your Doctorate in
Applied Mathematics?
(This alludes to the fact that Gard and Edwards competed to get the lowest mark in Third Form maths. Gard won, with 13%)

=====

From Jonathan Page 9/10/02

Stephen Gard ( Dipl. Copro.) (Pres. Soc.Ataraxia)
Dear Mr Gard,
I've only just read your amusing missive of last August,indeed an appropriately named month for such a document!
I apologise for the delay,  although in sidereal time of no consequence ( unlike the letter itself, if indeed it has a self).
I do hope you're satisfied Gard, you've rendered me doubly incontinent with the sheer power of your humour!
Seriously risible ! I agree with your sagacious analysis of STHS ( Saprogenic Tenebrous Hebetudinous Sisyphean).
  Enough of this obfuscation. Schools still seem to be regimental, barriers to true learning and , even worse,
conduits for dogma, prejudice and ludicrous theology. How depressing ! Still we survived, and can still laugh (when
we're not crying ). Amusing times.
  I wish you unlimited nikhedonia,
  Jonathan

To Jonathan Page 10/8/2002

My Dear Jonathan,

Our teachers were not only steatopygous, as you so rightly point out, they were also achondroplastic, strabismic, mega dactylic, rachitic, and acutely Orwellian. There were cases of chronic anencephaly reported in the Australasian Journal of Jocosity . One English teacher was so nepheligenous, following his lunch-time visit to an adjacent hostelry, that he was unable accurately to throw chalk, and registered a dangerous 3.7 giganephrons on the school’s nephelorometer, which, as you’ll recall, was nailed to the wall outside Fin Cook’s office.

We, on the other hand, were brave and pure-hearted young Neanderthals, and I clearly recall that at least one of us at that time - was it you? - evolved a brow-ridge to keep his hair out of his eyes.

As you will remember, STHS studentry was classified, like those Kow Swamp corpses, according to the thickness of its skulls, on a continuum ranging from Gracile to Robust. Career counselling was intense and prophetic. Those who could walk into a door without injury were destined for a career in commerce, those who fell stunned were guided towards the social sciences, those who bounced off became teachers. Those who, instead, walked through the door, advanced to medicine, science, law, and of course, talk-back radio.

Every word on the STHS 1969 website is truer than true. Each anecdote has been steeped in the vats of time and rumour, a curative liquor as potent as tan-bark and bile. Only the essential truth could possibly remain. My people have checked out every fact, each jot, nay, e'en the last tittle. Gold.

It is my considered opinion (I've been considering it for the past fourteen seconds) that we STHS lads were privileged to enjoy our education balanced upon what one might call the cusp of two cultures. Our staff were gasping the last gulps of a Kiplingesque, British Public School ethos: rigorous scholarship, 'play up, and play the game', boys sternly addressed by their family name ('You're a disgrace to the school, Gard, you and everyone like you'), beatings, Boomalacka, sarcasm, prefects, the Empire, cold showers, and Rugby Blues for the chosen few. Some of teachers were still schoolboys of the old stamp themselves. Albeit all this culture was heavily Australian-accented.

It was our responsibility, as the putative young intellectual élite of the Australian community, to smuggle the Sixties into that smoky old Bexley warren, to detonate a petard beneath the pedagogical fundament, (an explosive composed of a somewhat meretricious liberalism, methinks). Nonetheless, its advent alarmed not a few of our older instructors, and I believe that their angry reaction was chiefly against the arid scepticism of that Age of Aquarius philosophy. Our questioning and disobedience of their tenets seemed to be exercised for the sake of disruption alone, rather than any quest for amelioration, despite what the lyrics of a hundred pop-songs claimed. It’s not so ironic that their rugged old Aussie egalitarianism sat so uncomfortably with our égalité. It may be that we were ignorant, or even oblivious of, the necessary ingredient of responsibility.

All of which may go to explain why, thirty years later, myself, and one or two others, still need to poke fun at our teachers. The balance of power still needs redressing. Either that, or a moiety of us never quite grew up.

Thank you for your amusing, thoughtful and encouraging letter.

Best wishes,

Stephen Gard

From Jonathan Page - Fri, 31 May 2002

Dear Stephen,

The new STHS 1969 web-site is truly magnificent and surely
to win the prestigious Brown Booth Award for "unholy,
apocryphal and totally pernicious reportage of life in a
Sydney high school ".What a concatenation of dysfunctional
misfits --- and that was just us students!!  The teachers were
clearly archetypal psychopaths and either steatopygous or
nepheligenous or both, and that's just the better ones !!
This experience certainly explains the medication I'm
obliged to give myself and the voices......who are you anyway?

You mention my swim in the pool. In fact I swam for 13 days
covering 764 km just missing the world record by 1 km
because someone emptied the pool (? Jon Konrads ).

I recall an episode with a certain Ellis D. Fogg, possibly
attempting to sabotage an interminable ceremony with
noxious miasma. You or others may have better
recollection. Possibly just another fantasy! Does everyone
else have these.

Keep up the good work ( as many a teacher would have said ).
Jonathan Page