Ballarat Grammar speak

Some words commonly used in the 1960s at Grammar:


bog
This was a useful and much-used word with no real equivalent that I can think of.

verb,
to satisfyingly prove an over-confident person wrong:
He swore black and blue that I Wanna Be Your Man wasn't a Beatles song, but I bogged him when I showed him the LP.

noun,
an indisputable refutation, especially of an over-confident person's argument:
Here's the evidence, so that's a big bog on you
Also just Bog on you! or (often) Bog!




Bog for you I knew Ian Carmichael, of course I did.
Ernie Gray on a point of British film trivia, from a letter, early 1965.


faff
I've come across faff in British books or scripts, but rarely in everyday Australian usage since I left Grammar.

verb,
to mess around, waste time:
I tried to finish my assignment but I faffed around all day.

noun,
an unproductive activity:
That pottery workshop was a real faff.


rev

verb,
to tease or torment someone:
We revved him mercilessly about that Clarendon girl he went out with.

Rehearsing "Oedipus Rex" at Queens, 1966

Gerry Almond was a new teacher at Queens who decided to put on a production of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in the winter of 1966.

He asked Grammar for some boys to join the cast, but Mr Dart needed the school's senior actors from Matric for Grammar's annual production.

Instead, boys from the Leaving year were asked to volunteer for Oedipus.

What Gerry Almond got was a rag-tag bunch of slightly younger lads who had no experience in acting but were up for a bit of a lark around the lake at the girls' school. No auditions: everyone who turned up scored a role.

What the audience got was a stunning production that, entered in the Melbourne Sun's school theatre competition, won Best Production and - for Ernie Gray as Oedipus - Actor of the Year.

The scene where Oedipus puts out his own eyes was not for the squeamish: I don't think anyone in the audience actually fainted, but it was shocking and realistic, with bright red blood. (Rumour had it that it was real blood obtained from the hospital, but Ernie Gray tells me he doubts that story: he believes they used sachets of stage blood.)

Ernie Gray went on to study at NIDA, and became a professional actor and playwright. He has worked mainly on the stage, but has also been seen in many Australian films, TV shows and commercials, most recently in ABC-TV's The Librarians: see his filmography at IMDb. He now teaches drama at Trinity College at the University of Melbourne.

Top, middle: Ernie Gray as Oedipus.
Bottom: Two later recruits to the cast for non-speaking roles: Alan Hickman (l.) and Stephen Renwick.

See also: Program for Oedipus Rex, 1966

Corner of Forest & Hewitt, 1968

This photo and the seven below were taken around the school at the end of 1968.

Quadrangle

This was taken from somewhere between the chaplain's residence to the left and the new dining hall (the shadow) to the right.

This is the transformed site of "Lake Vernon": see the photo from 1964 for contrast.

The laying of brick paving (just visible in the foreground) was a big project carried out by students in their spare time, led by the Art master, John Jones. It was typical of the way physical labour and self-sufficiency were valued at the school, something that came from the philosophy of Mr Dart the Headmaster.

Eastern wall

The car belongs to the Bursar, Mr Allen. The newer brick building partly seen at the right was the school office.

Most of the rooms behind these windows in the old building were dormitories.

I once jumped out of one of those ground floor windows to avoid my parents and the Headmaster who - an informant told me - were fast approaching from the new classroom block. I had a feeling a stern talking-to was on their minds. This was partly because it was a week-day afternoon, and I assumed they had already looked for me in the classroom where I should have been at that time.

Tennis court, chapel, Manifold Hall

I think that's (Peter?) Saunders in the foreground.

This looks across into the quadrangle, past the old chapel on the left and Manifold Hall on the right.

Across the quadrangle, at the end of the wing, is the residence of the Chaplain, Rodney Oliver. The Rinds and the Winklers lived along there too.

Sheds and woodheap

Looking south from the western end of the school grounds. To me, this view captures the semi-rural atmosphere of parts of the old Grammar.

The chook yards are over there somewhere. The little shed on the right could be a chook-house.

The shed on the left is where I found the old sign.

Mr Dart's vege garden is around here, too, perhaps over to the right somewhere.

That looks like a portable scoreboard, perhaps awaiting repair, over to the left.

Looking south across the oval

From left to right: the Junior School, the gymnasium, the new classroom block (Kinsman?).

The Forest? The Plantation?

One of my fondest memories of Grammar is lazing around here on a sunny Sunday morning in 1965, listening to The Easybeats and their contemporaries on the radio. In later years we'd smoke a pipe there.

This was at the northern end of the school grounds.

To The HEAD MASTER'S STUDY (c.1930s-1940s)

The sign I rescued in two pieces from a pile of scrap timber in Ted Flint's shed in 1968.

91cm X 30cm (3' X 1')

Now returned to Grammar (late 2009), restored and - I am told - once again pointing the way to the headmaster.

Ah, Lake Wendouree!

I loved being down by the lake, on my way somewhere, maybe trundling past on a tram, wandering around, sitting about, having a smoke in the later years. This photo from 1968 says it all for me, even though I never went fishing with the missus...

Chook Club, c. 1965

Ernie Gray at the door of one of the chook sheds.

Chook Club was popular with kids in my year. You were excused from morning prep while you fed the chooks and collected the eggs.

Highlight of Boat Race, 1964

Flour bombs! (I'm told Grammar won the actual race that year.)

That's Dennis Lindsay in the top picture (Lindsay III? IV?). In the background is a suave Form 6 boy who seemed more like an adult to me (I was only 13, after all), with a girl who used to hang out with that group of senior students. She always wore a duffel coat. To me, she looked too old to be a student but she could have been from Queens or Clarendon.

On the far left in the bottom photo is Wettenhall, near Chris Money.

The building program, 1964

Gymnasium.

Lake Vernon, 1964

Early 1964: the remains of the old dining room, with the new hall at the back.

After it rained and a "lake" formed, some wags from the senior forms uncharitably signposted it as "Lake Vernon", after the school's architect.

For a later view of how this was transformed see here.

Chairs, 1965

Waddell (Graham?), Rat Porter, Ernie Gray. Taken outside the new Kinsman Wing classrooms, near the oval.

This looks like the cover for their debut LP.

Tommy & Phil, 1966

Seated is one of my closest friends at Grammar, Phil "Rat" Porter. We arranged to meet up in Brisbane a few years ago but he got lost and never turned up.

The clothing (tie, sports jacket) suggests that this was a Saturday morning. Rat & Tom look as if they're off to town or just back.

Ernie Gray takes to his sick bed, 1966

Visited by Michael Boyle, Waddell, Charlie Abrams, "Rocker" Davis (at the radio), John Teschendorf.
I notice that Waddell pops up in a lot of my photos, like Woody Allen in Zelig or Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump.

Rocker Davis did a lucrative trade in cutting hair until the Boss, noticing that the school barber's trade was falling off, investigated and closed him down. He was a true rocker who was scornful of the Beatles and long hair, but he knew how to cut our hair so that it was just long enough to be within regulation length.

Ernie's radio seems to be a plug-in mantel model. (Is that the aerial trailing out the window?) Most of the boys' radios were transistors of various sizes. One or two had home-made crystal sets which would pick up only 3BA, the local station, and had no speaker. In fact, I think Ernie had one of those at some stage.

This was a downstairs dorm of Leaving kids (Year 11 in today's terms) with prefect Graham Clark (back from exchange in the US), opposite the old Masters' Study, by this time a prefects' study.

Ian Brown inspects the Form 4 dorm, 1965

Poor quality, but understandable: the inspector would not have been amused.

Swinging the leg, 1965

Waddell and Nuttall on sick call, same dormitory as the Ian Brown inspection, first up the stairs on the way to Jones's and Boyle's studies, full of Intermediate (now Year 10) students.
It was always just "swinging" at Grammar: the full term was never used. Even if you were genuinely sick it was assumed, for jocular purposes, that you were swinging.

Boyle's desk, 1964

Jones's study, 1965

Mail call, 1966

Taken from Jack Jones's study.

Prefects and Probationers, 1965

Click on the image to enlarge it.