Becoming a person - at NEUC, and then with UNE

Abstract

Arrival in 1953: To be a "fresher" at NEUC in 1953 - it was like entering Heaven. I had spent the previous six years as a boarder at the Presbyterian Boys' Hostel in Tamworth, enjoying a hybrid education that combined the good academic quality of a state High School with a sort of watered down version of Arnold's Rugby - with a hint of 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' thrown in. The Hostel was a kind of half-way house between the state system and a GPS School. Some boys went on to the Presbyterian Scots' College in Sydney, or sometimes TAS in Armidale; others who had enjoyed expulsion from these or similar schools returned. There was a dormitory with 42 beds in it, awful food, compulsory sport every afternoon, 'prep' in the evening, a gymnasium and tennis courts, and a storm-water channel that led into Anzac Park and punishable freedom in one direction and, in the other, to the Church of England Girls' School further up the hill, policed at that end by a posse of indignantly vigilant mistresses. School holidays were spent in the usual way for boys in the farming community: lots of hard physical work, no money, and virtually no social life. We were, after all, still in the after-shock of World War II and the "swinging sixties" were a long way off. So, to pass the Leaving Certificate and qualify for a Commonwealth Scholarship that would pay my University fees, and then, unbelievably, to be offered a Teachers' College Scholarship that would also give me an actual living allowance of £11 a fortnight was an impossible dream come true after pocket money of £1 per term. (And, remember, in those days there were only three terms a year!)