Ask Grammar Old Boys from the era 1935 to 1975 about a Master named Ollie Bell and their face goes to a broad grin. Over forty years Ollie taught countless boys; before that he was a Boy at the School (1924–1929), giving him personal experience of seven of the School's first ten Headmasters.
His earliest memory of the School was being visited in hospital (across the road) by a Sixth Former named Wood, "all sewn up inside… but I had a marvellous time." Offered a choice by his father (Head Teacher at Eagle Junction State School) between BGS and the BBC (then on the site now occupied by Clayfield College), Ollie chose "Bousfield's School… I've heard such a lot about it."
On the masters: "The staff made you feel you were a young man. They dropped all Christian names — you were Bell or so-and-so." Bousfield "tolerated no interference," insisted boys call masters 'Sir', and once slammed his fist on the table: "This is a School run by men for young men. I won't have a skirt about the place!" On discipline: Bousfield "would cane you first and then ask why you were sent"; Stephenson "used the stick pretty thoroughly"; Carson-Cooling "used a jockey's whip with a lash on the end." (Cooling once told a boy pleading a bad heart, "Bend over, I'm not caning you on the heart.")
On why Grammar excels: "It attracts the best boys." Among the brightest he taught, Ollie named the "intellectually smart" — "Doherty, now Professor Doherty" [Peter Doherty, later Nobel laureate] and Bernie Backstrom — and Robert Newell; and among the all-rounders Miles Moody, the Professor of Geology at Armidale (Wilkinson), and John Pearn.
Ollie coached the First Eleven for over thirty years (a member of the First XI himself 1926–1929); his MBE was awarded for services to Cricket and Education in 1976. He arranged the first post-war Cricket Tour of the Firsts in 1954, when the First XI captained by Ian Callinan (52) went to Sydney and "played very well indeed." He recounts the "Alan Jones Episode" at Toowoomba Grammar (dismissed for about 113 on a wet wicket). On the game: "Cricket teaches concentration and self-discipline… you had to learn to take your beatings as well as your winnings, and take it in the right spirit."
Source: Old School Ties 1995 Vol 1 No 3. Read the full edition