Great Scot September 2018 Gt Scot_154_September_online | Page 62

Development
‘Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.’
NEW DINING HALL
Keon-Cohen
Dining Hall
– exciting
centrepiece
of a new
student
precinct
1909 STUDENTS DRINKING AT THE STUDENT BAR
Mrs Luckie in the Scotch Tuckshop, circa 1969, may well have
thought Scotch boys’ behaviour was ‘perfect’, even if the prefects
on duty ‘were not much good’, and she was always ‘the last to know
anything’ — including word on the grapevine that a new tuckshop was
imminent.
Rumours circulating at the time that a new tuckshop was on its
way clearly proved to be wildly premature. However, nearly 50 years
after Satura (3 July 1969) conducted its own survey of the state of the
tuckshop, found it wanting, and concluded emphatically that ‘it appears
that no real improvement can take place in the present conditions’, a
new dining hall is indeed about to eventuate.
With construction of the Keon-Cohen Dining Hall imminent, it is a
timely reminder to us all that this building has been a long time in the
making.
The Scotch Tuckshop has ‘enjoyed’ three locations in its history: the
first, an unofficial one with the novel address of 232.5 Bourke St East, a
‘small, dingy lolly shop’ presided over by Johanna Gleeson (born circa
1830, died 20 October 1888), previously a cook at Scotch, who was
reputedly able to outmanoeuvre any flank attack with her cane, with
which she ‘kept her subjects in check’.
Following Mrs Gleeson’s demise, Scotch boys of the early
20th century relied on a man known only as ‘Hughie’ for their daily
sustenance. Operating onsite from one of the sheds in the schoolyard,
Hughie’s tuckshop — ‘a stable-like room with a counter thrown across
the front of it’ — apparently led a ‘varied and precarious existence’, and
was eventually closed in 1918 by Principal William Littlejohn. Littlejohn
evidently found the culinary offerings deficient on both dietetic and
hygienic grounds, citing ‘sausages in a bag with gravy’ as a prime
offender.
The tuckshop as we know it today was commissioned as the
‘Luncheon Room’ in 1919. In the 1950s, it was managed by Miss Topsy
Kniebusch, who was so adept in the healthy reconciliation of her balance
sheets that Principal Richard Selby Smith directed profits from the
tuckshop to help finance building projects. Even in the 1950s, the room
was criticised as being ‘far too small’ and, of such a configuration and
situation, that it was ‘impossible to extend it’.
An article penned by an ‘Anonymous 6th Former’ that appeared in
Satura in 1969 under the heading, ‘Ye Olde Tuckshoppe: What’s Really
Wrong?’ showed glimpses of clairvoyance, albeit with a somewhat
cloudy crystal ball: