ZEROING IN - 1955 and 1956

It seems that the protracted cold referred to in my last post in July, last year(!!) froze my processes of recollection! In the last few days, a blast of heat reminiscent of my childhood years in 1944 and 1945, has however administered a jolt to the memory and summoned up the will ( it has also started the alleged "Global Warming" fanatics lifting their heads out of the long grass) .

So where was I , before I froze? Doesn't matter - I choose to resume by peering back to 1955 and 1956, come with me and see the cast of student characters assembled at Marist Brothers' Darlinghurst that was.

Marist Brothers Darlinghurst which was soon to be converted into expensive Apartments and a Town House

1955 4TH YEAR CLASS
ZEROING IN 1955 - MY BEST FRIEND AND FUTURE BROTHER-IN - LAW TONY HANNON EXTREME LEFT BACK ROW 

ZEROING IN 1956 TONY HAS MOVED TO THE RIGHT A LITTLE IN THE BACK ROW, WHILST YOUR SCRIBE HAS MOVED DOWN TO THE FOURTH ROW DOWN THIRD FROM THE RIGHT - AND HAS OBVIOUSLY BEEN WATCHING TOO MUCH LENI RIEFENSTAHL!

The photos above are now 57 and 56 years old respectively. It is interesting that what they do in my mind is summon up a series of brief thumb-nail sketches of a remarkably diverse range of rapidly forming personalities.  I can't share them all in full and one or two might be deemed libelous in any case, so I shall confine myself to a very few.

 It needs to be borne in mind, that the majority of the Class were longtime students of "Darlo"as it was affectionately known, but in the year I transferred in on my own, a group of boys from Marist Brothers Bondi, which had closed in an Archdiocesan Schools rationalisation, came to Darlo. I think about 10 of them were in our class, including Tony Hannon (now my Brother-in-Law). Tony and I  shared many interests in common, but especially History and movies and Goon Show humour. We frequently went to the movies together and bushwalking, and in later years each had a bewildering succession of cameras and cars. Zany humor was the order of the day and the Goon Show was the ideal grist for our mental mills. Here was a friendship that was to last through the decades and I would anytime trust my life to Tony.

I guess I was rather reserved with most people in those days , so I did not form close friendships with  students other than Tony - living 12-14 miles away to the West didn't help in that regard. I was always coming from, or going to, a different place to everyone else.

 I got to know a little and to like, the irrepressible Roger Constable, an engaging fellow, who delighted in projecting himself as a daring sort of rogue. He was a good guy with no harm in him that I saw. We ended up together in both Class Photographs above( he standing to my right as we look at the photo) and in 1955 the slight inclination of the head and my slightly contorted mouth show that he had just muttered one of his gags and I was trying to repress a laugh. By 1956 my Leni Riefenstahl training had overcome any such risk!

Considering the diverse make-up of Australian society to-day we can see  a very few indications of what was developing. The few Chinese students were affable fellows, super whizzes at Maths. The last of their number to arrive spoke almost no English and certainly had a very hard time as he began his 4^th and 5^th Year Studies!!He was very popular because of the way in which he struggled on in the face of this impossible adversity, and was always treated kindly in a jocular fashion becoming known as “ Curly” in that perverse type of Aussie humor!

An interesting phenomenon which I only realise now, as I write, was the fact that the subjects we took and the formal activities we engaged in, began to determine the possibilities of forming friendships, much more so than in earlier years of schooling. Thus school began to provide a foretaste of life in tertiary institutions and, indeed, life itself.

As I look on the photos now, I see those who went on to become a Solicitor – mover and shaker, a Barrister, a Doctor, a Dentist, several Teachers, and a briefly famous Merchant Banker. Strangely enough in all my years since school, apart from Tony Hannon for obvious reasons, I have only ever met two of those former fellow students. Considering the variety of circles in which I have moved, in The Commonwealth Bank, in the French Bank, in the Australian – American Association, in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve and in the Church in various places, that seems to me to be very unusual, and quite surprising.  But out of all of us, as far as I am aware, there was not one Priest, though I know at least 5 had considered the possibility, and I was briefly in the Minor Seminary in 1956. I often wonder what became of them all.

All too soon real life was to take us “cogs” up in its gearbox, and schooldays and their concerns and joys and pains would swiftly disappear in the rear vision mirror, as life moved into Top Gear whirring us away all over the place.