Transcript of AE 1426 - The Goss: What Was High School Like in Australia? - Part 1

If I said Australian high school, what's the very first thing that pops into your head?

Blank.

Is that an Australian high school?

Yes, one Australian high school or high school in Australia?

Yeah. Choose your own adventure, Dad.

Choose your own adventure. Well, for me it's it's twofold because obviously I went to high school. Was threefold. I went to high school, I taught at high school, and then I had children at high school.

So you've got many different thoughts.

I've got various versions of what high school means.

G'day, guys. Welcome to the Aussie English podcast. Grab a cuppa, get comfy and let's have a yarn!

All right guys, welcome back to the Aussie English Podcast. So today we're talking about high school in Australia. And Dad and I will probably have similar but different perspectives on this. Every country has its own version of high school, and Australians often assume that our experience is normal. But there were so many tiny routines and traditions that made it uniquely Australian. Today we're going to rebuild what it actually felt like to go to high school here. So hopefully it'll remind Australians of their own school days and give everyone else a bit of a glimpse into growing up here in Australia. So Dad, what do you remember about the moment you arrived at school each morning?

First morning of high school is still in my memory, and that was in 1970. So there you go. That's giving away my age. I think people already know that.

650?

600- yeah, exactly. Back in those days, obviously, it was the middle of. So just the end of summer, it's early February. So it was hot. But we had to wear a blazer. So a thick woollen coat as you did when you were at school. A cap. A felt cap, woollen felt cap.

Woolen, that sounds like cricket.

I know. And in fact, it was. It was green. It was like the Australian cricket.

Yeah.

And it was. It wasn't a baseball cap. It was like a baggy green cap that the cricketers wear. Not quite as baggy, but...

They must have been phased out though. Those caps, I don't remember ever seeing...

No, no. They disappeared after a couple of years of, of my school and by the mid 70s they were gone.

Yeah.

From- certainly from my high school and most of the state high schools at the times I went to.

Not functional.

No. So I went to a state high school.

Yeah. Wow. Okay. And you had a blazer as well.

A blazer as well. Long socks. Shorts. We couldn't wear long pants until we were in third form, so.

Oh, okay.

Year nine of, of high school. And even then, you know, everybody wore shorts in summer, but. And even in winter we did. But yeah, first day of school. So marched off to school in my blazer and my long socks and my brand new pants and grey short sleeved shirt. You can take your blazer off once you got to school, but you had to wear it until you got into class. So.

Were you going with a lot of friends that you already knew from primary school?

Yeah. So, the, I went to a local primary school, which is a very large school, nearly a thousand kids.

Back then.

Back then.

Wow. Okay.

And then went to the local high school. The, we had two high schools nearby. One was a co-ed school. So boys and girls, the other one was just a purely girls school. So more than half the girls that I went to primary school with went to the girls only school. And so there are a lot more boys at our high school than there were girls. But yeah, arrived the first day. It was hot. I remember it distinctly. And we had the assembly outdoors. We didn't have a gym or an indoor stadium big enough. That was being built at the time. Actually, when the year I started, we didn't have a gym big enough to fit us all in to hold an indoor assembly. So we're standing outdoors, 200 and something kids in, you know, first form, year seven. And, then they just called out names. So, Seven A! And they went through the 40 names of the people who were in Seven A and then Seven B, and they went through the 40 names. And Seven A marched off to their, their, their room with their form teacher.

Yeah.

And I was in Seven F! The sixth out of six. So we're an hour later, we're still standing out there in the now morning sun.

Yeah.

And then went off to our, yeah, room. And I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened as soon as we got in the room.

See, it's funny for me, it's like, because I was, I went to Geelong College when I was a high school student, and I'd been sent to a school where no one from primary school went.

Yes.

And so it was like starting from scratch again. Didn't know anyone. I don't- You know what I do remember? I think it was the first day where it's hard for me to remember if it was an assembly or if it was that entrance exam, because I remember first meeting and interacting with two of my friends, Sam and Tristan.

Yeah.

When I was in year seven. And I remember the hall that it was in, but I can't remember because I know they did the exam as well, but I can't remember if it was the exam or if it was the welcome assembly and everything like that. But I remember the classroom too, mainly that I think that's where my main memories begin for high school. It was the classroom that I was in because it was such a different- looking back, it's kind of like that Harry Potter type vibe of classrooms, right? Where like in primary school, you're at these small little desks with little chairs that are kind of just your standard...

And you went to a very new primary school.

Yeah, exactly. And then when I went to high school, it was like it was one of these schools that had this old fashioned, did you say like, buildings and the desks were old. So you would go into these rooms and you're like, these feel like they're 30, 40, 50 years old and the desks are all old. There's a big blackboard in front of you. Whereas I don't remember having that same vibe from the primary school. Everything was whiteboards and texture and all that sort of stuff. But we had the same thing with the blazer, the long socks, the shorts.

Yes, I remember...

The tie was the hardest thing for me to...

You have 2 ties as well. Yeah, I remember the- we used to wear a tie at primary school.

Oh my God. Okay.

How weird is that?

I don't think there'd be any primary- besides the private schools now in Australia, there'd be. And I don't even think the primary schools...

This is in the 1960s.

The private school primary schools don't make them wear ties until Year Seven, I think.

Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah.

But yeah, so I remember classes at, you know, in that first few weeks of school very well. But that transition from the standing out in the heat in the sun to then being marched off to the room and I remember which room it was. But then whatever happened in that room at the time where, you know, it was there. Welcome to high school. And yeah...

Yeah.

I'm your English teacher or blah blah, blah. But no, I do remember the classes is pretty well from there. But yeah, it was just an interesting little process to go through. And it was a, it's a funny transition because back in the 1960s and 70s, you know, the idea of transition from one year, you know, school year to another one just didn't exist. It was just suck it up, prince and princesses, and off you go. So having had a fair degree of responsibility as a Grade Six child at that primary school to suddenly being one of the little kids and treated like little kids with no responsibility whatsoever.

Oh yeah...

And of course, you've got, you've got 17 and 18 year olds in the same school. These are adults as far as- when you're a 12 year old...

I remember I was talking to Kel about that in one of the previous episodes...

Yeah, because when you started school, you went to a middle school as your.

Yeah, first- Seven and Eight.

Seven and Eight.

And although I'd had a few of the upper primary school years...

Yeah. But it was sort of- I think it was Grade Five to Grade Eight.

Yeah.

And then you went to the high school-.

It was 9...

9 to 12 after that...

But even then, from year nine, it was still felt a bit like that. You were like, oh geez, these guys are like adults.

Yeah, exactly.

They're huge kids.

And I remember them really well. It's like these people that, you know, you think of now and you go, yeah, they're 18 years old, but you know, it's.

Just a boy. Just a girl. Yeah.

But, you know, these are men who are shaving! And...

I had that...

Girls who look like women.

I had that on the bus, though. Especially when. Because I used to have to get a bus from obviously, the school was half an hour away driving, so I had to get a bus each morning. And I remember the older kids sat on that back seat at the back of the bus.

Yeah.

And that was kind of the hierarchy thing. It was like pretty much anyone said anywhere, but the back of the bus was always the Year 12 kids. Yeah, year 11, year 12 kids. And I remember looking at those kids and just thinking, My God, they're huge, you know.

And old.

Looking back, you're like, you're only a few years away from being the same.

It's only five years.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, that was nuts. So what was the morning routine like for you?

Excuse me.

What was the morning routine like for you?

The morning, as in before school or at school?

Yeah. Well, I guess going through the- well, you got up in the morning then what happened all the way to starting school?

Yeah. Yeah. So get up in the morning. Have- well, at that time when I was, you know, just starting high school, it literally was just get up in the morning, have breakfast, go to school.

Yeah.

And school was a kilometre and a half just over that away.

So you just walked...

So it was walk or ride your bike.

Yeah.

If it was belting down with rain.

Yeah.

Every now and then mum would drive us.

I was gonna say she'd make us run.

She'd make us run. Yeah. Get there quicker!

She chased us with a stick!

And, yeah. And this is. Yeah. So. Exactly. She'd drive.

Stick out the window. Hurry up, you rats!

No! So, so was ride your bike or walk to school and, and some of the kids who lived a bit further away used to catch a bus, but it was just, there was no school bus. It was just the public, you know, buses that they would take. Because there was a, there were two bus stops right outside the school for two different bus lines that went past. And then it was you'd usually get there 15 to 30 minutes before school started. After a few weeks, you knew enough people. You'd hang around with your mates and you'd be playing a lot of down ball? Tennis.

Yeah! We call that Foursquare.

Yeah, we didn't play Foursquare. We literally- it was just a tennis ball up against the wall.

Yeah. I wonder, I wonder how much the name of that sport was related to whether or not you had like concrete blocks nearby.

Yeah.

Because they would often put those lines in them so that I guess if they broke, they broke a lot...

Yeah. We, we, we, yeah. And we invented it so that you didn't have any rules at all. It was all you needed was a wall and enough space to bounce a ball.

So sort of like squash, was it.

Yeah. But you had to, you, you had it was handball. So you're literally hitting a tennis ball with your hand into the wall. But you had to bounce it in there.

Yeah.

And so one bounce hit the wall and then the ball comes off the wall. One bounce and you're the next person has to hit it. And so you could play in twos or threes or fours. And if it was threes or fours you'd have to cycle through.

Exactly...

And so then you'd play doubles. And...

I think we had that Foursquare. So it would be you would have four squares of, of concrete usually, blocks of it. Or you would-.

Yes.

Something- even if it was bricks, you would know where the kind of crosses, the cross line is. And then I remember Dunce was the guy at the bottom. And as you won...

Yeah, you progress up the four squares...

There was like, I think it was Dunce, Jack, Queen, King or something like that. You know, like, I guess card game or something. But you had to bounce the ball in your square before it went into the other person. So you couldn't just smash it because then it wouldn't bounce...

You'd have to bounce it in yours, land in somebody else's. And then they had to do the same. So yeah. Yeah. So there was a bit of that. During the winter it was much more, you know, kicking a ball around, soccer ball or a football.

Yeah. Did that as well.

,Australian football for those who think soccer is football.

Yeah.

And that was about it really. And then you. Yeah. There was a morning assembly every morning. So you'd stand outside. So there was a morning assembly every morning.

And it was outside...

Outside. Yeah. Until we get the, the school hall got built that year. So by the end of the year there was a hall that would fit the whole school in.

So it was only outside because there was no hall.

But we didn't, it wasn't the whole school at the assembly. It was in various quadrangles. There was sort of, you know, the junior schools, you know, equivalent to what we now call seven eight and then nine, ten, 11, 12 or somewhere else. Once we got the, the whole indoor stadium thing, then we only held a school assembly once a week.

Yeah. That was...

That didn't hold the whole school assembly.

That was, that was the thing that I did when...

I remember that distinctly. It was only in that first year that I can remember it as standing outside every morning and in the rain didn't matter, you know, standing outside.

Did your blazers smell like wet dog if they got wet?

Oh yeah, it was wool!

I always remember that...

They were pure wool!

I always remember...

I still have it! I still have that blazer!

Yeah, so do I. I've got mine in my thing somewhere. So we're just going to open a beer here.

Yeah. Yours is only 20 something years old, though.

Mine's.

More than that. Well, I guess it's probably the last one...

It's getting close to 60 years old.

Yeah.

Yeah, you lost one. Thanks very much. Cheers!

Cheers!

Yeah. I remember dreading...

Typically opened a beer.

If it was raining on the way to school and you were walking, you were like, Shit!

Oh, I know!

I'm going to smell like dog for the next hour...

But not just you, everyone, but you've got to hang it up in you. Because we had two lockers. We had a coat locker.

Yeah.

And a normal locker, which you'd had your books and stuff in.

Yeah.

And then you'd hang the thing in the coat locker. And the coat lockers were shared. So.

Yeah.

You got two wet woollen blazers by the end of the day!

Especially if it heated up or something.

Yeah.

Yeah. I distinctly remember that smell of just wet dog and always just been like, this smells like- surely they have another way of making these.

And the other thing that flashes to my mind, which is no surprise given the, you know, testosterone driven 12 year old that I was at the time is that we had a you know, we had so the, the leadership in the school. The teaching leadership in the school was a principal who in this case was a man. And then we had a headmistress who was in charge of the girls. And the headmistress was a dragon. She was a horrible human being.

Aren't they always?!

I know! But there- and I've had these sort of reminiscences with people and some of the, the people, particularly people older than me who went through the school before me, who had her as an English teacher, said she was wonderful and she probably was a good English teacher. I never had her as a teacher.

Yeah. No, it's as soon as they become mistresses..

I know!

Or principals or whatever, they just turn into absolute, you know? You know what?

And she, she used to walk around with a it was a, a ruler, a yardstick. They used to call them a yard, you know, like a metre ruler.

Yeah.

For those who use the metric system, that were designed to- as blackboard rulers so that you could draw a long, you know, metre line on a blackboard. So the big handle at the front of it and you go. And she used to walk up the the girls corridor. So the boys and girls were separated into different corridors where their lockers were. And she would walk up the girls corridor, the Year Seven and Eight girls corridor, first and second form as we called at the time.

Yeah.

And with a yardstick. And she would lift their dresses, the school dresses.

Why?

To check the colour of their underwear. They had to wear regulation coloured underwear.

Good grief!

It had to be either white...

White. Yeah?

Or this horrible tan colour...

Good god!

Which was one of the school colours. Our school colours were green and brown.

That would not pass the pub test today!

There's 112 year old boys standing at the end of the corridor.

Oh my god!

And she just kept doing it every morning. It was just oh, it was it was the most blatant bullying of.

Oh, so she didn't need to do it, but she just did.

Well, does it really matter what colour underwear girls are wearing? Like.

Yeah, okay.

This is.

No, for some reason, when you were telling that story, I'm like, were they required to do that every day as a way of kind of like keeping people in place and humiliating people? Or is that just her being..

That was her. That was just her!

I don't, I don't think many other schools did underwear checks for girls. And certainly not public ones!

Was the fashion at the time. That's just how teachers behaved.

Well, there was a lot of that.

Yeah.

Teachers had- and she'd probably been teaching since the late 1940s.

You wonder if it had been...

Since the early 60s...

She had it done to her. And she's like, oh, I'm gonna pass on. So here's the trauma that I had.

Exactly.

Good grief. So if, if someone had never been to an Australian school, what tiny detail do you think would surprise them? About this sort of routine or..

The routine? ,Well, again, from the there aren't many schools left. I don't think there are any left now.

Yeah.

That post World War Two in the, by the, by the mid 1950s.

Was about when you were a teenager, right?

Yeah, something like that. There was, there was this push to, to rebuild schools, to grow, you know, to grow schools. And the state government put a lot of money into them, but they built these schools, they called them light timber construction. They were very cheaply built. And they, they had these sort of cement. You know, the cement bricks? That you get, the cement blocks?

Oh, you mean the ones you get from Bunnings now that have the big gaps in the bricks.

They used to...

What are they called?

They used to be called Besser bricks.

Cinder blocks or something?

Cinder blocks. Yeah.

They look like cinder blocks, but they actually weren't. They were tiles.

Oh okay.

And they were just hung. They had little, you know, they were cement, but they just had these little hooks on them. So the buildings were all with these timber battens on them. And these, these tiles were just hung over the side as the walls. And so.

Is that so they could be taken apart later more easily.

Yeah! It was meant, it was meant to be. They, they, they were meant to be temporary buildings. They were meant to be there for about ten years while the government got the money to rebuild the schools. You know...

The government never got the money.

I went through the school. The school was built in the late 1950s, 58, 59.

Oh okay..

In that period.

So it was pretty new, though.

It was pretty new. But, but by the time I got there, it was the. These buildings had already outlived their their use-by date. And, and they were still there. A lot of these buildings were still there 30 or 40 years later. Now they've all been replaced now. But so that was the thing that people who went to school in Victoria. In the 1970s, when LTC buildings, light timber construction, they all look the same. And they're all built on this H pattern of two long corridors with a crossover corridor in the middle.

Yeah.

And all the, and the rooms were either side of those two long corridors. So you could walk into a school. And 20 years later, I was at teaching at university and teaching education and visiting education students on their teaching placements in schools. And I'd walk into them and go, I know my way around this building. You know, 20 years ago, it's exactly the same pattern as the high school I went to. And so yeah, so that was, that was something that people who went to school when I did just knew what a high school looked like.

Yeah.

Unless you were in the inner suburbs of Melbourne and I can only talk about Victorian schools, but in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, with some of the older schools where old brick, two story buildings, and they were very different. But.

The thing that would have been classic around my era would have been the portable classroom, right?

Yeah.

They seem to be everywhere at that time. I don't know if there's still like that or if they've all been phased out...

Because there was a period in the 19- early 1990s, late 80s, early 90s was a decision made by the Education Department in Victoria to not build a high school for more than 700, or a primary school for more than 350.

Kids.

Kids.

Cause I was going to say 1000.

Yeah, no. Permanent building.

Okay.

And then as, if schools grew.

Yeah.

They would put portables in. And the idea was to make them flexible because, because populations of schools come and go.

Yeah, gotcha.

As the local population grows...

Well, that happened from my primary school, right? I remember I think probably the initial years I was at three and four, I was in the main building.

Yeah.

But then once I got to five and six, there were, I don't know, four...?

Four portable rooms. Now there's 15 portables.

How would you describe what it is, a portable classroom?

They were usually double classrooms. Again, built where they could literally ship them in on the back of a truck.

Yeah.

They split them in half.

Yeah.

And...

I guess they're like prefab building...

They're prefab buildings and they're. And.

External air conditioning, you know.

Yeah, I know. And they literally bolt them together and then, and they can take them away in a day.

Yeah. And there would be like a ramp in between the two. There would be two pairs of classrooms on either side. So it's literally like a block of four. And the ramp would go up into the classrooms in the middle, and you would just shuffle out into your.

Yes.

All the, all the bags and coats and everything would be on the outside of the classrooms and you go in. But yeah, with high school, it was completely different for me because I went to a, well, the younger high school part of it, like the middle school would have been slightly more recent.

That wasn't an old school, but...

Whereas the main school for 9 to 12...

That was the second oldest school in.

I think it's 150 years old...

It's older than that now, 170 something.

So the Brits will be laughing. But.

Yeah.

People from Britain will be like, but that's not old.

Yeah, it's old. Well, that school was created about 15 years after Geelong was settled.

Yeah.

So.

I know. Yeah. Yeah. It's nuts. So I don't know...

But I think the other thing that- sorry to interrupt you, but I think the other thing that would- shock is probably a strong word, but surprise, people, is corporal punishment.

Yeah. Yeah. We've talked about that before. But you want to explain the 'when, how, why'?

Yeah. That like- I was in an era. By the time I got to high school, I was at an era where teachers didn't dish it out themselves. But if you were being punished for misbehaviour, either in the classroom or in the schoolyard, you got sent to the deputy principal who would literally, you know.

The local sadist!

Yeah, stick your hand out. And they'd pull out a lump of wood and smack you...

What are you call it again? Ten of the best?

Ten of the best. Yeah, Exactly.

I mean, we laugh now, but I can't imagine.

I know..

Yeah, that would have been.

I know.

It's so weird to think that back then it was so normal to hit kids with wooden implements.

Yeah! And I remember, like, I remember the guys name. I won't use it.

He's dead. It's fine.

No, no...

No, he's not?

The vice principal would be.

Yeah.

But the student, not.

Ah okay.

He was he I think he left school after year 11. But.

Yeah.

Yeah. Fifth form.

Got sick of being hit.

This guy was. This guy was the toughest guy I've ever seen in my life.

Yeah.

And I remember the rumour had it. And of course, nobody else was in the room, and he was so tough that he wouldn't tell the story about himself. But rumour had it that when he got sent to the vice principal and the vice principal were, you know, was going to give him the belt over the hand, that he actually grabbed the stick and then turned around and said, now it's your turn.

You've been there...

And the punishment stopped, allegedly. Now that's a myth. And it became just broadcast across the school at the time.

That, it must have been an awkward situation where you would have had teenagers that probably got bigger than a lot of the teachers by the end of high school. And then you were like, put your hand out. And if they said, no!

No.

What are you going to do?

Well, they just expelled them from school.

Yeah. Okay.

But, but in the end, you get expelled for refusing a punishment for something that was completely trivial, like talking back to a teacher or swearing in class or hitting another kid, which, you know, schoolyard violence was, was common, but not, not extreme.

Well, yeah, because. Mention that quickly because that's probably another part of it. Did you have a lot of violence at school?

Oh, there was always the, you know, the fight behind the shelter shed.

Really?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

See, that was the kind of thing when I was at Geelong...

I'll meet you at lunchtime behind the shelter shed.

You would have been expelled..

Yeah.

Straight away.

500 kids. It was never going to be a secret. Like why behind the shelter shed? Because 500 kids would know about it within ten minutes...

No teachers to stop you. Yeah.

Exactly.

No. That was. Yeah. I never got to see any. I think I saw one fistfight once than it was after school, and it got broken up pretty quickly. And I think the teacher, I remember the teacher saying, like, you guys need to leave now, or I'm going to tell you. And you will get expelled, if I, if I mention what I just saw, you guys are fucked. Like, like you need to leave..

Go in opposite directions.

Yeah, exactly. Which was crazy. It was almost like he was more angry that they had put themselves in a position of being expelled.

Or they put him in the position to actually cover for them.

Yeah yeah yeah.

Yeah yeah.

So you had quite a few fights, did you? Because I didn't even...

I didn't, I didn't, I never got in a fight at school.

Yeah. I don't know.

I was big, I wasn't particularly aggressive. I was, believe it or not, I was actually quite shy when I was young, probably up until the age of about 14 or 15.

Yeah.

But I was big for my age. So, you know..

People didn't mess with that..

People tend not to pick on big kids.

Funny that.

Yeah. You all I, you know, one of the kids that used to get bullied- and bullied was emotional bullying, not physical bullying.

Of course. That's the best kind. Yeah. But that was what we experienced as well.

And there was a lot of that going on. Like, and there was I remember there was a kid, I will use his first name, Tim.

Because fuck him. Yeah.

And if Tim, you're listening, you'll you'll know the story. Tim had a, a growth disorder.

Okay. What, is he smaller than others?

He was, he was about the size of an eight year old when he started high school. Now, he ended up...

Pituitary gland?

Yeah. And he ended up having growth hormone and so on. And by the time he was 15, he was, you know, the same size.

There was one of those kids at our school as well, yeah.

But and he was a lovely kid. But because he was so small, you could just pick on him. And, you know, you literally lock him in a coat locker and, and, and turn it around so he couldn't get out. Where's Tim? Bang, bang bang!

Oh, Jesus.

And and, you know, there are other, you know, ridiculous things that used to go on, but, you know, bullying kids. But bullying doesn't change. It's just the method of it.

I don't think we had, at least at my school, we didn't have that kind.

Not excusing it at all.

Yeah. We didn't have that kind of overt stuff because again, I again, I think it was just punished too harshly.

Yeah.

The stuff that used to happen would be on the bus or before or after school where they could effectively be like, well, it wasn't at school.

Yeah.

Um.

Once you get your blazer off, you can do whatever you like.

Yeah. That's it. But it was never I don't know, you couldn't really get away with too much. It was usually just the emotional verbal abuse.

Funnily enough, I loved high school.

Yeah.

Absolutely loved it. And you don't think of it like that at the time. But then in hindsight, you look back and go, yeah, they were pretty good years, six years of high school. And I think a lot of it was the school. The teachers, mostly were really good. Not necessarily great teachers, but great people.

Yeah. And..

Because that often makes it, right.

It does.

I remember having at university quite a bit where you would have teachers for a certain subject, where one would switch over in the middle of the semester and you would be like, why has this subject gotten so much better or so much worse?

Interesting.

Yeah. And it would be like, oh, it's about the teachers, like, you know, enthusiasm or connection...

Ability to tell a story. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah.

Or just being human. Yeah. Yeah. And...

Who was your favourite teacher then, at school? And why?

My favourite teacher was an art teacher and I, I enjoyed art, but art was, I was an academic. I used to enjoy maths and science and.

Yeah.

That's what I intended to do.

Yeah.

All the way through school, but so art was, I enjoyed doing art, but I never took it seriously.

Yeah.

But there was an art teacher, a young American guy. And that was one of the other things. In the early 1970s, there was an extreme shortage of teachers in the state of Victoria.

Yeah.

And so the Victorian government, the Education Department, were importing young teachers from Europe, Britain in particular, and America. And so we had a lot of first year art teachers, like 22, 23 year olds who had come from America or Britain, or we actually had one Egyptian guy who was hysterical. Because he almost didn't speak English. He probably spoke perfect English, but he was completely unintelligible. His accent was so thick.

Yeah.

But- and this guy was an American, and, you know, he's a young guy. Like he probably, you know, by the time I, I, I think I was in sort of Third Form, so 14 or 15, and he was like 22.

Yeah. Isn't that weird?

So he's, he just turned to be one of your mates.

It's so weird. I had one of my friends through high school the same year as me. I remember we finished. We went to uni together. He ended up working in the drama department of a high school, an all girls high school from 21 on, and I was just like, are you crazy?

Yeah.

Are you wanting to go to jail?

Yeah.

Like these girls, like you're teaching year 12 students or you're helping, you're you're an aide, you're working with them. They're, they're three years younger than you, dude. You are looking for trouble.

Yeah.

Like.

I know. And another flashback to, again, testosterone driven. Although at this time I was probably I might have been Sixth Form, like, you know, 17, 18 years old and the school was every year they'd put on a play or a musical production or whatever. And the the play they were doing this time was The Diary of Anne Frank. So a very serious..

It's morbid!

Yeah, morbid sort of thing. But.

Yeah.

And, and one of my friends was, was in it a female friend.

Was she Anne?

No, she was a sister.

Yeah. Okay.

And so bit part in it.

Yeah.

But there was a, a quick costume change that was required in it. And I, I wasn't in the, the cast, but I was in the back crew, you know, doing the stage and all that sort of hoo ha. And, and this young lady, an extremely attractive young woman said, Ian, I need help getting out of my costume. Can you help?

Oh, for fuck's sake...

Because there were no, no girls on the on the backstage crew.

I trust you.

And I trust you. You're a friend. You're a friend of my boyfriend, you know, and and the female teacher who was, sort of supervising the background. I'll- she is no longer alive, so I can call her Olivia Howard, her name was. Granny Howard. And granny. She was, she was in her 60s by the time we started.

Isn't that fucked up to think you're in the 60s now and you're like I'm not that old.

I know exactly, but. And and I remember this young lady undressing and me unzipping her and helping her with her clothes off. And she's standing there in her underwear, just bra and knickers in her underwear, and I'm handing her clothes.

Yeah.

And Mrs. Howard, who was one of my favourite teachers, and I was one of her teacher's pet when I was started the school because I was good at maths. She was a maths teacher. She was absolutely mortified. She says, she said and this young.

And you're just like, Would you say no?

I'm just here. Put your clothes on...

Yeah yeah, yeah. And...

Ah so she thought you guys had gotten down to it or...

No, I don't think I think she knew what was going on, but it was the fact that I was there doing it. I said, 'You can help, you do it!'...

But someone think of the children!

I know, I know, she was just mortified and.

Yeah.

And we used to laugh. She and I, the the young lady, not the teacher, used to laugh about that for ages afterwards.

Good grief.

I think we've given poor old Granny Howard a heart attack. But.

So once you got into school and you've gotten ready and gone to class, how would the class- how were the days sort of structured the day? What was it like?

Well, it changed from when I first when I first arrived, we had eight, 40 minute periods a day.

Okay. So these. And what's a period?

A period is a class. So yeah, an English class. An English class would last 40 minutes.

You had eight of them? Good grief.

I know. So, you'd have two.

Yep.

And then morning break.

Yep.

Then two, then lunch break, then two, then the afternoon break, then two. And then go home.

Good grief. That sounds like...

I know.

Stacked.

I know, but the real challenge was that for for some things, like the specialist subjects like art, phys ed in particular, they were double periods.

Phys ed, physical education...

You can't do sport, physical education. You can't have 40 minutes.

Quick! Change!

Or go get changed, right? Go out there. Here's a football right now. Get back in. Have a shower. Get changed. You're done.

I hope you enjoyed your five minutes of play!

Exactly. And, and so yeah, but everything else was single 40 minute periods and so you'd end up with all right, I'm in English here and then I've got maths next period, but it's five minutes walk away.

Ahuh.

And you sort of run to the next class and then, you know, line up outside the room and go in...

How much do they sit down and think about that?

And then we by the time I was in, I think it was probably fourth year, 10, 11, they changed it to five one hour periods.

Yeah. That was more like what I remember.

Which was a bit of overkill because it's hard to break five into having three breaks during the day.

Yeah, okay.

So they only did two breaks.

Yeah.

They had a morning break, then a late lunch and then you were done. After that...

I think that's how it was for me too. I think it was...

Our period was a long time.

Yeah.

And, and then a double period was fantastic, you know, for art. You spent half the day doing art or sport or whatever that was. That was really good. And so, you know, it's always a mixture of those things, but yeah, the, the fact and having gone from primary school where you sit in the same class with the same teacher for everything, except you might go to the...

Language class or physics...

Sport, or sport, or art or in a separate room, but everything else was in the same room with the same teacher. And of course, you understand that high school is structured differently, but then when you've actually got to cope with the what room are we in? We're in room eight, where's room eight?

And you have to have...

That was room eight last year, it's now room six this year.

You kept having to go back and forth to your locker getting different- and it was.

Oh, that was always the circus. It was the instruction came out about once a week for years of take two periods worth of books with you. You don't have time to go to your locker between. And then they would have the locker police, the teachers marching up and down the lockers in between period one and 2 or 3 and four going. Don't go in your locker. Get on it. But I haven't got my books, I don't care. Get back to class. But I'm just going to be sent out, I don't care. Move on. So, yeah.

I missed that. I actually really liked getting. When you got your your next year's set of books that you were going to learn.

Oh, yeah!

And it was like, it was a very condensed, kind of like, here's all the information you're going to get...

Here's everything you're going to need for a year.

Yeah, that was fun, wasn't it? Getting those. I loved getting your, your books and your all of your stationery and everything.

I know. I'm still a stationery addict.

Yeah.

I walk through Officeworks, you know, which is. Yeah.

Ink, paper, paper. So what was recess like? So you went to your classes or whatever in the morning, and then the bell would go...

The bell. Oh yeah. Bells. When you got 8 40-minute periods, the bells are running literally ringing all the time.

And the ones only just stopped before it starts...

And then they had warning bells before school. You'd have a warning bell of, you know, 15 minutes before class and then right on class start time. And then at recess, you'd have a five minute warning and then the bill, and then at lunchtime you'd have the 15 minute warning and then the bill, then after. So bells are going all the bloody time. And must have driven people who lived near the school nuts.

Yeah. I know. Yeah. You didn't really think about that, did you? The fact that there were houses across the road from all these schools and that the bells were going all the time.

All day.

Yeah. During semester.

Yeah. So you'd, you'd grab your books from your locker and you'd go off to class and you'd do your 40 minutes and then you'd run off to wherever the next class was. And.

But what was recess like? What did you do for recess usually? How long was it?

Off the top of my head. 15 or 20 minutes.

Yeah. I think that...

Lunchtime was an hour.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which is a long time. And then another 15. So it was an hour and a half break I think. So.

Yeah.

15, 60 and 15. And then, and so 15 minutes wasn't long enough to do much.

I know you pretty much just eat something and be like, well the bell's about to go. Yeah.

But mostly it wasn't eat for us. It was just get out. And either that or it was queue up the canteen to buy something.

That was always lunchtime where that...

It took 12 minutes of your 15 minutes...

I know. Yeah, exactly.

And then. And then you'd be off to class again.

What were the items you were getting at the canteen, typically?

Oh the best, the best- winter was the best. Because our, our school. I don't know who invented it. I could lay claim to the, to the increase in, in the item, but at one stage, somebody in the canteen, one of the canteen women, whether it was a parent or the woman who ran it decided that over winter they would put bread rolls in the pie heaters. So they get extra pie heaters.

Heat them up.

So you could have a hot bread roll. And then you could have a hot bread roll with a sausage roll inside it.

Jesus.

And chips.

Inside it as well with...

Not hot potato chips. But a packet of crisps.

Oh, gotcha.

So you'd buy a you and your mates, you'd buy a packet of a small packet of chips between about four of you. You buy a bread roll and a sausage roll, and you put the chips in there and then you'd eat that. It was just complete and utter carb overload.

Yeah.

But.

It's funny that we had that...

.. had to run it off by ten minutes later.

The sausage rolls and...

Sausage roll roll.

Everyone always, not the roll but the sausage roll itself. We always got. They were in little plastic bags at the time that got little holes in...

Plastic hadn't been invented.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we, the sausage roll roll. And then the chip edition was...

Did you have canteen orders as well where you...

Yeah, lunch orders.

Like you'd get like a little paper bag. Write your order on it with your name. Put your money in it. The coins usually maybe a $5 note and then have. That wouldn't have been for you, but for me it would have been. Yeah, that would have gotten you, you know, all of the canteens food.

Exactly, buy the canteen for $5 in 1970. Yeah, we did. And I can't remember like at primary school, it was easy when you were doing it because it just came to your class.

Yeah.

And they, you know, it was Ian, you're on canteen duty this week. You go and you buy this big, you go and pick up this big metal crate.

Yeah.

And two of you would struggle to carry this thing back to the.

I wonder if it was at high school. You had to take it yourself and recess or something.

Yeah. High school, I think you had. Yeah. But then you had to go and pick it up from the canteen.

Yeah, exactly. You had to go get it yourself. Yeah.

Yeah. So there was no delivery to the rooms or anything.

I know. Those soft primary school kids.

Primary school kids...

What about every lunch? What would you do when you had a bit more time?

Sport.

Yeah. Pretty much. Sport. Soccer, footy?

Sport. Girls. Sport. Girls. Sport with the girls.

Yeah.

Sport, sport. Mostly.

I spent a lot of time in the library. Looking back, funnily enough, it was with the nerdy kids. I ended up sort of falling in with them. We would play soccer on the main oval and or play chess and watch like Family Guy on our laptops because we had laptops back then. This was, you know, some of the early years of bringing laptops into the high school. And it was weird because I think we got them from Year Eight. And looking back, God, they were these Toshiba bricks. We had these huge computers and they had we were amazed. We were like, whoa, three gigabytes of data, 64MB of RAM. And you would be like, whoa! And what else we had, like, we would, at the time, everyone was torrenting, pirating. In fact, we wouldn't have had torrents. It would have been wares back then.

Yeah, just pirating.

And using websites to get our music. Music and videos. Movies. Yeah. So getting things like American Pie. And you would have to download it in two sections.

Yeah. Two is...

And it would be an awful, awful, like..

Resolution, 180 pixels wide.

It was terrible. And we would. Oh, the funny thing was that back then we had like the ability to burn CDs. We didn't have. It was before DVDs.

Yeah.

And this was when you would. The computers could burn CDs.

Oh, you could just copy the music off a CD.

Yeah. And so what we would, we would download all this stuff and often just copy the files onto a, onto a CD, and then people would just share it around. So everyone had the latest music and everything. And yeah, it was, it was a funny time.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, sport was the thing. And it was soccer mostly.

Yeah.

Because soccer was easy.

Yeah.

Where because...

And more people probably wanted to play it.

Yeah.

AFL is a bit more technical...

And at lunchtime the first year- I don't think it happened much, but after that we had a, a teacher. He was a Saint Kilda footballer. VFL, at the time, which became the AFL, and he had the genius idea that you could lend out sporting equipment at lunchtime. So it used to be the race to the, you know, the sports.

There's only one of everything.

Yeah. Oh, I want a football. I want a soccer ball. I want a cricket ball and stumps and a bat or I want. And then over winter he used to open up the gym, the, the, the stadium which had, you know, volleyball courts and table tennis and badminton was the thing because you could fit six badminton courts on this thing.

Yeah.

And it was before basketball became a thing. It was really weird. Like..

Basketball wasn't popular here?

No, it really wasn't. And the trouble with basketball is it takes up a lot of room.

The court?

Yeah. Whereas badminton you could play doubles. And so we'd play a lot of badminton during winter.

Yeah. We would always have those basketball courts where you would have like three different sports worth of lines.

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a tennis court, a netball court.

Badminton courts.

Foursquare all over the place.

Yeah, you would just be like, good grief. What are we...

I know.

What am I looking at?

Where are the yellow lines?

Did you have 'No Hat, No Play'? Did you have no-

No. No.

No hat, no play?

No no no. Which is why I've got skin cancer, you know.

Yeah. Good.

No, none of that. No hat, no play.

I guess that came in when I was in primary school, didn't it? I remember I...

Basically came in around the time you started primary school.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wide brimmed hats, no hat, no play. And we had to have sunscreen on, I think, too.

Yeah.

And the school provided the sunscreen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What was the sports carnival days like? Did you enjoy those?

I loved it because I was good at it. Yeah,

Yeah. I remember. I've got a, I've got a story for you. Sorry. There was this guy I went to school with called Nick, and it was always really funny because he hated sport. He was this typical, really intelligent, you know. Nick. You remember Nick?

Nick. Yeah.

And read like he. I remember going to his house one day. I think it must have been when Harry Potter came out and it was that day and he's like, oh, I finished it this morning. And I'm like, what the fuck do you mean you finished it this morning? He's like, well, just read it.

Just read it. Done nothing else.

I'm like, what do you mean you read the whole book, you know? And these were the chunkier ones, like 4 or 5, right? Harry Potter 4 or 5. And he's like, yeah, just smashed it out in three hours. And I'm like, that'll take me a week. Like he was an animal, but he would always, he always...

He did a hamstring injury the day the athletic sport.

He did trumpet for Year Seven and Eight. And it was so funny for, for all of high school. I thought he did trumpet because he would always be each week he would, he would bring to school his trumpet. In his little trumpet case. He stopped trumpet in Year Eight, but he kept bringing it to school.

So he could do music practice instead of sport.

No. Well, he always used it to get out of classes he didn't like, or out of sport.

Oh, I've got a trumpet.

Yeah. And I was always like, where did you go? And he's just like, the toilets. But he used to use that. He used to somehow use trumpet or something to get out of all of the sports carnival training.

So we had, we had because you had Saturday sport. Private schools have Saturday compulsory Saturday.

Yeah, to train two days a week before school or after school. And then on weekends you compete against other schools.

And whereas we didn't have that, our sport, our inter-school sport was Wednesday afternoons.

Yeah.

And so if you're in a school sports team, you and they were fairly selective. So there was a junior team and a senior team in most sports. So it wasn't every year level, but yeah. And so I played soccer most of the time. And so soccer team from Year Eight onwards. Second Form onwards. And, and so you'd go off and either another school soccer team would come to your school and play, or you'd go off to their school and play and be bused off and do it every Wednesday afternoon. Now, if you weren't playing in those sports, seasons were quite short because you're only played within the closed zone. So you weren't travelling. Unlike you, you weren't travelling.

Oh my God.

From Geelong to East Melbourne.

Exactly. Yeah. It'd be like a whole Saturday...

So we would only play like five other teams. So you'd play for five weeks and you were done. So the rest of the time, Wednesday afternoon was organised sport so you could pick a sport. Alright, we're playing golf. So we, you know, we lived in Beaumaris, so we're across the road from some of the best golf courses in Australia. So you'd go off to Sandringham Golf Course and play golf, or you'd play basketball or badminton or table tennis or something in the gym. You'd just play or squash. You'd go down to the local squash courts and play. So that was sort of Wednesday afternoons. But then we had swimming and athletics as well. So the swimming sports were in first term. Athletic sports were in fourth term. And so the we had houses at school for teams at school.

We had eight. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we, you know, we'd have our house sports. And then the winners of those would go on and represent the school at the local sports. And then there would be regional and then all state sports. So, fortunately I was good enough in both. So swimming and athletics that I made the all state every year. And so that was, you know, summer and tail end of summer and the beginning of summer was, was swimming in athletics. So, and that was great fun. I still really enjoyed because I was doing athletics outside of school as well. Stopped doing swimming when I was about 12. So I didn't get to high school to do swimming.

Yeah.

Outside of school, but still did it at school.

Yeah, yeah. We had a swimming pool at school. Used to have to do that. I can't remember how often we had a swimming lesson or something once a week, or if it was once every couple of weeks. I remember we did try...

Our swimming training was an outdoor pool at either Moorabbin or Clayton. So you had to be there at 7:00 in the morning.

Oh, wow. Okay, brutal.

Do an hour of training and then get showered and dressed and back to school.

Would you get dropped off or..?

You had to be parents to drop you off and then drop you back? It wasn't there was no.

You organise it.

Yeah, exactly.

So school is obviously more than just buildings and classes. Who are some of the, the characters that you remember from school.

Well funnily enough. Day is it today? Thursday, two nights ago, I had I booked tickets to see Colin Hay, the lead singer from the band Men at Work in the 80s, who.

I come from a land Down Under.

And I didn't go because I was sick. But, you know, I bought your mum and her brother went and he was at school for years ahead of me at school.

Yeah.

So, so he was a character then, you know, everybody knew Colin.

Yeah.

Because he A, he was Scottish, which was unusual. B, he was a very good football soccer player. C, he was a musician and he was an extremely good musician. So whenever there was a school thing on and you know, there was an assembly with performances and stuff. Colin would be up singing and doing stuff, and I remember to this day, just sitting here going, this guy's incredible. He's going to do something. And...

Yeah.

You know, the age of 72 or 3. His birthday was the other day too. He's still travelling the world playing music. So he was one of the major characters. We also had a couple of other highly, you know, who was just trying to think when he was probably a couple of years before I got to the school. We had the world's best squash player.

Yeah.

Like two years after he left school, he was the world champion.

Jeez.

And, and so actually, one of the, one of my favourite stories about him is, not about him, but about his sister. And I've given away the punchline already. But, I was doing squash one Wednesday, you know, one term of school, we were playing squash and there were four of us that used to go and play down at the local squash court. So every Wednesday lunchtime we'd get on our bikes and ride 3 or 4km down to the local squash court. And the. One of the young female art teachers was the teacher designated to supervise us. Her supervision was. She would drive her car down there and make sure we were there, and then hang around and then leave...

What, they have a cigarette in the car?

She was good. But then one day, one of the one of the four of us was sick and couldn't go. Wasn't at school and she just said, oh, I've got my gear in the car. I'll fill in.

Yeah.

And I drew the short straw and had to play her.

Yeah.

And back in those days squash scoring is a bit different now. But back in those days, she just said, oh you can serve. That was the last time I had the ball in my hand.

Jeez.

She beat me nine-love, nine-love...

She was just that good at it. Yeah.

Yeah. And I went. You've played this before, haven't you? Because I thought I was good. I was not a great squash player, but I thought I was all right. And she said, yeah, my brother taught me. And I see your names. You know Mrs.. She's probably in her mid 20s. You're married? What's your name? She said, Hunt. You are kidding me. Jeff Hunt? She said, Yep.

Yeah. So he was a famous player back then?

Yeah. And he was the best player in the world. And he, he had a squash centre nearby and she just said, Yeah, that's all right. I'll, I'll pay you back for this though. She said, you come down Saturday morning to Jeff's thing and I'll get him to give you a lesson.

Wow.

So, I had a lesson from the world champion. Didn't make me any better, but I understood what I had to do. I just wasn't capable of doing it.

It's funny, I remember when I was doing fencing, I had a lesson once from the Commonwealth champion and she couldn't teach for shit. It was amazing that she was so good. But when like. Because I think she was just there and the coach was like, oh, do you want to give Pete a lesson in sabre? You know, teach him some stuff. And she's like, yeah, no worries. And I remember.

She just thrashed you.

Well, she just didn't know how to explain what she she was just like, I just do it.

I just do it.

And I'm like, well, that doesn't really help me. I'm gonna need a bit of an explanation.

Yeah, well, the one thing, the one thing Jeff told me, which stuck with me forever, is that he said, squash has got nothing to do with how well you hit the ball. It's controlling the court.

Yeah.

He said, you need to get back to the centre of the court.

At all costs.

At all costs.

So you're, you're not hitting the ball so that your opponent can't get to it. You're hitting the ball so that you can get back to the centre to hit the next shot.

Yeah.

So that you're only ever two steps away from, from it. So if you get stranded away from the centre, you're done.

Yeah. Gotcha.

All right guys, this episode actually ended up being quite long. I think we ended up talking for over an hour and a half. So I've decided to sort of chop it here. And I will include the second half of this episode as a bonus episode for premium podcast members.

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