We wish to register a complaint. Surely this is unusual, for it is the custom of editorials to review complacently the year's academic and sporting achievements of the School. Our disapproval is directed at the low standards of culture within the School and the lack of real interest in associations at present static or moribund. Halt, ye unruly horde that rush each afternoon towards the gates! This School is more than the place where you spend twenty-five hours a week, learning your passage into higher forms of education.
The Headmaster had occasion this year to visit the Geelong Grammar School. While there he was both surprised and favourably impressed by the divers extra-curricular activities flourishing within the School. For example, the boys ran their own printing press, enjoyed the mellifluity of an all-the-year-round, large, enthusiastic choir, and conducted innumerable clubs such as the Music Club (in our School, R.I.P.), the Philatelic Society (hundreds of members), and various non-denominational religious groups (which, we admit, exist in our School, but with only a handful of members). During the dinner breaks the majority of Grammar boys wander in shiftless, aimless groups that bespeak an insincerity of purpose. The Headmaster is only too glad to give approval and impetus to any sane scheme proposed to him by some responsible member of the School.
What are the contributing factors to this inactivity? To begin, the Sixth Form should realise that they are the Voices of the School, and not merely lax disciplinarians. Only a minute fraction of the Sixth has taken any interest in the cultural and academic side of the School since our stay at Grammar. However, there are a few institutions that deserve the applause of the School-at-large. The Debating Club, which is now languishing, was last year and part of this year a force, while the Gardening Squad has accomplished much.
There are no yardsticks of culture and there is no interest in the finer arts at Grammar. Everybody should be initiated while at school into the "Eleusinian Mysteries" of Bach and Beethoven, of Verdi and Bizet. The Music Club, if it had the support of the whole School, could do much to promote interest in the superb finesse of truly great music. The War Memorial Library contains many great works of general and educational value (there is even the final touch, an Encyclopaedia Britannica). The Memorial Library is so little used that not once have the prefects been requested to open it.
Academically, the School has no peer, but otherwise affairs are less enviable. This need not be so. May this modest philippic stir up at least a little interest! The School this year has lost one of the bulwarks of its greatness, Mr. A. J. Mason, who for so long urged that Grammar should turn boys into "gentlemen," who for so long urged the very thing that this editorial is urging. However, the School is numerically the greatest it has ever been, while in last year's Open Scholarship List the B.G.S. secured four places, including second and third.
Last year, President "Jim" Steele gave you a message of cheer and encouragement. He forecast a year of progress and indeed that promise was fulfilled. Never has this Association been so virile. The number of financial members of our Association is very heartening, but we have nowhere nearly approached our objective — every Old Boy a member of this Association. There are still many who have not yet joined with us in repaying in some small way the debt of gratitude each owes to our Alma Mater.
Centenary Building Fund Appeal. Next Foundation Day marks the 90th Anniversary of the School's Foundation. Only ten more years to reach the Centenary! Upon such premises, your Association, in co-operation with the Trustees, staff and the Parents and Friends' Association, has decided to launch on 1st March 1958 a Centenary Building Fund Appeal. This has as its objective a sum of £50,000 to construct a Library and Arts Building, which it hopes to have completed, clear of debt, and ready to be officially opened on Foundation Day 1968. The Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, Alderman T. R. Groom (1919), is chairman of the Appeal Committee. Gentlemen, I do ask for your very active support in this worthy cause.
Norman Gordon Ward, B.E., M.I.E. (Aust.), was at the B.G.S. from 1919 to 1924, in which year he was a Prefect and Captain of the Duncalfe Cup Life-saving Team and won Colours for Swimming. In his last year, too, the H. F. Plant Memorial Medal for Physics and Chemistry was awarded to him. He graduated in Civil Engineering in 1928 and has since practised his profession in various municipal and semi-governmental activities both in North Queensland and in Brisbane. From 1938 to 1947 he held the position of City Engineer at Mackay, and from 1947 to 1951 was Construction Engineer in the Water Supply and Sewerage Department of the Brisbane City Council. After five years with private engineering organisations, he returned last year to the Brisbane City Council as Engineer for Subdivisional Development.
To him as to many others the B.G.S. is a family school: two of his uncles, Charles and James Ward, were foundation scholars in 1869. His brothers, Kenneth John (16) and Alan Victor (22), as well as his two sons, Julian Peter (51) and Melvyn Keith (56), have all attended the B.G.S.
After four years at the B.G.S. from 1943 onwards, Ronald Alfred Dore entered the world of commerce in Brisbane and graduated as a Bachelor of Commerce of the University of Queensland. At School he held the office of Prefect and was in the First XV (winning the prize for the best forward). At present he is Assistant Secretary of the Brisbane Chamber of Commerce.
Old Boys' Association (Founded 1898).
Subscription — Annual: 15/-, due 1st July. Boys joining immediately on leaving school, 5/- to 30th June. Life Membership: £15. Badge: 5/-.
Held in the Great Hall on 12th September 1957, attendance forty-six members. This time the younger Old Boys are well represented on the Council, for there are three members — John Berry, John Walker jun. and Neil Jensen — whose years at the School fall within the period 1951 to 1956.
Old Boys' Tie: After considerable research by "Jim" Steele, with the assistance of Mr. and Mrs. Tom Bain, a design for an Old Boys' Tie was approved by the Council; the design incorporates the two sporting blues as well as stripes of the academic colours, maroon and gold. The Grammar Ball (17th May, moved this year to the City Hall) returned a net profit of £181/12/7, the OBA's half-share donated to the OBA Rowing Club.
Reginald Heber Roe Scholarship — Founded by the O.B.A. in memory of R. H. Roe, M.A., Headmaster of the School 1876–1909.
1957 Roe Scholarship: T. E. Lindenmayer, who was Captain of the School last year (1956); son of E. H. Lindenmayer (27) of Mackay, brother of R. E. Lindenmayer (51).
J. G. Nowlan Bursary — Founded by the O.B.A., to the boy entering the School with the highest pass in the State Scholarship Examination who receives no other assistance than the State Scholarship subsidy.
1957 Nowlan Bursary (two awarded, equal marks in the 1956 State Scholarship Exam.): Ian Colbert (son of S. W. Colbert '27) and David Hewitt.
(The 1957 issue also reprinted the awards presented at Foundation Day 1956: Reginald Heber Roe Bursary — C. P. Hildebrand; A. J. Mason Scholarship — B. Gibson-Wilde and R. J. Stephenson; J. G. Nowlan Bursary — M. K. Ward [Melvyn Keith Ward, son of incoming President N. G. Ward; later the 1960 Roe Scholar]; Joseph Evans Bursary — R. C. L. Rogers.)
O.B.A. Prizes (presented at the 1956 Speech Night) — Essay: Senior, P. M. Darvall; Junior, J. B. Douglas.
The 1957 issue carries Old Boys' Births / Marriages / Deaths registers and a long "Personal Column" of Old Boy news (by entry year), not reproduced here.
Source: The Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, December 1957. Notation: Bracketed "(year)" after a name = year of ENTRY to the School. School Captain 1957: D. T. Maddern.
In this era, an Old Boy's year designation was the year he entered Grammar; the convention today is the year he finished. A boy who started in 1993 and finished in 1997 was (93) but is now '97.
Brisbane Grammar School Old Boys' Association · Old Boys History. Part of the OBA Knowledge Project.
Draft site for committee review. Spot an error or hold a missing piece? Tell the OBA