Nonagenarian contributor Len Payne of Malabar has more folklore on World War II Lancaster pilot-come-Sydney pro golfer Dan Cullen (C8): “A great bloke and good company. After a pro event in Germany, he was asked by a local representative if he had ever been to Germany before, Dan replied ‘never in the daytime’.”
Jeff Wall of Thirroul knows all about creative school designations (C8): “In the 1960s, weekends on the beach saw us all equal but to match our female school friends who attended ‘St Mary’s Star of the Sea’ us young males from Bulli High preferred the scholastic heights available to all at the ‘The Ursula Road Academy’.”
“Nice to see another Granny Souffer (C8) in Mark (Rooey) Roufeil and one familiar with my childhood home,” declares Suzanne Saunders of Wadeville. “Never forget the school motto, ‘Sick it, Alice’ (sicut aliis) and the emblem, a dingo (named Alice) on a rock.”
Geoff Maynard of Paddington leans into the prefab classroom discussion. “Speaking of Shacktown, my year three (1971) classroom at Pennant Hills High was one of a pair of ‘temporary’ aluminium demountables from sometime in the 1950s. It was an oven in summer and fridge in winter (no aircon, fans or heaters unlike today’s wusses). If it rained we had to do reading or art because we couldn’t hear the teacher. When, for the first time in many years, I passed the school recently, the ‘temporary’ classrooms were still there, at least 70-years-old, and there were two more ‘temporary’ classrooms.”
Dermot Perry of Mount Keira was reading the package his coffee beans came in while grinding them: “The label said ‘apricot, caramel, peach, toffee with a long milk chocolate finish’. It just tasted like coffee and reminded me of Graham Kerr, ‘the Galloping Gourmet’ who used to make fun of the flavour descriptions on Australian wines.”
The brainy Andrew Mowat of Beecroft found clinging to one’s bushie beginnings (C8), a learning experience: “I have to admit to going to a sandstone uni and living in an adjacent sandstone college. I got there thanks to a cadetship and was looked upon with some bemusement. Their first question was often ‘what does your father do?’ and when told he was a station master, followed up with ‘how many head?’ As a far north Queensland railway employee’s son, I was quickly learning how the world worked in the big smoke.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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