SCOTCH IN TENTS ON THE HILL IN TERM 1 , 1921
SCOTCH BOYS AT DRILL ON THE JUNIOR SCHOOL OVAL IN TERM 1 , 1921
SCOTCH IN TENTS IN 1921
Scotch boys coped with challenges of a different kind 100 years ago
Building the Senior School was an enormous task , slowed by rain . Scotch ’ s best retrospective schooldays chronicler , Graham Campbell McInnes ( aka Thirkell , born 18.2.1912 , SC 1920-29 , died 28.2.1970 ) recalled in The Road to Gundagai ( 1965 ) the sight of workers sullenly smoking their pipes during the spring of 1920 while they sheltered from the rain . It had been intended that the Science Building ( now the site of the Lithgow Centre ) would be completed at the start of 1921 , when classes up to the level of Intermediate ( Year 10 ) were to start at Hawthorn . However , those hopes were dashed .
On 15 February 1921 the first boys – reportedly 180 of them – entered Scotch ’ s Middle School and Intermediate classes at Hawthorn . There were two problems : about 100 boys had been expected – and it was still a construction site . Five ‘ tents ’ on the Hill housed everyone instead . The floors comprised floorboards – due to be used in the Science Building – turned upside down to protect their good sides . Oil-stained No . 1 Tent – undoubtedly named for the East Melbourne campus ’ famous No . 1 classroom-cum-assembly hall – accommodated morning assemblies . It had been an aircraft hangar at Point Cook .
The wind often blew down tent poles , blackboards , cupboards and lockers , but the highlight was an afternoon storm wrecking No . 4
Tent when it was blown down on top of Form Va ( a Year 8 class ). Neighbouring tent-dwellers laughed at the sight of its members crawling out from under the wreckage . Some boys enjoyed crawling out of class under the tent flaps , but often found a teacher waiting for them . A large Moreton Bay fig received crowds of boys around its noticeboard . The boys recognised themselves as pioneers in the challenging but often comic conditions .
From Term 2 , 1921 , the boys moved into the Science Building , and the tent camp was dismantled . Its only repurposed survivor was the Form VII ( Year 10 ) tent that was re-erected south of the Science Building as a changeroom for sport .
Progress on the remainder of the Senior School remained slow , as rain continued to fall . Cinder tracks laid to tackle the mud were quickly churned up by horse-drawn carts , and boys cautiously picked their way along ‘ a slippery brick ’ or ‘ a doubtful looking plank ’. Boys wrote of traversing the ‘ Fordholm Bog ’, and of Edward Lloyd Brooke ( born 30.1.1906 , SC 1916-22 , fate after 1960 unknown ) and ‘ Johnson ’ achieving the feat of reaching school with no more than an inch ( 2.54cm ) of mud on the soles of their nice brown shoes .
The Senior School would not be completed until the opening of Memorial Hall on Anzac Day 1922 .
TERM 1 , 1921 VIEW TO REAR OF SCIENCE BUILDING FROM THE GYM ’ S ( NOW KEON- COHEN DINING HALL ) FOUNDATIONS
GYM AND QUADRANGLE FOUNDATIONS WITH MORRISON STREET AT BACK IN TERM 1 , 1921
TOP : SCIENCE BUILDING NEARING COMPLETION IN TERM 1 , 1921 . THIS PHOTO : SCIENCE BUILDING AT LEFT , WITH QUADRANGLE TAKING SHAPE LATER IN 1921
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