Visiting Wesley College, Water Water Everywhere
Yes, this is backdated, since I'll keep this to what happened the first two days of the week.
First: Monday:
Nice and early wake up, took a quick breakfast omelette-inna-bun in the busport before hopping on the bus to South Perth. Took the long way (since there was nothing that got me in close-but-not-late), this meant the bus going along Mill Point Road. When I was a small child we lived on this road, but the old house is hidden behind a fence though. A couple of blocks further up is a store called Bowen's Deli. I mention this because during the 1940s this store was where my great-grandparents lived and worked - I remember being told that it used to be in our family way back when, but not who or any idea when until I found out recently.
With a few minutes to spare, I had a look around Angelo Street after jumping off. One of the buildings I remember was one of the banks (not mine where I got some extra cash out of to kill time). I would've been about eleven or twelve, and while my parents were doing something in there I avoided the boredom by sitting out in the ute reading Bridge to Terebithia (a year before being given it in high school).
Anyway, I'm not that good at waiting around, so I crossed the street into Wesley College and found the office. I had a couple of minutes to wait in the main reception. This is in part of the building where the Headmaster's family used to live back in the early days, and the waiting area hasn't been re-designed that much, it still feels like a living room. On the walls are portraits of Mr Ward and his successors, and on one wall is a display cabinet with artefacts and photos of various Wesleyans gone on to greatness, and in the bottom of the case is the sword.
This is the detail of the dress sword presented by King George V to Hugo Throssell, presented by his son Ric to the College in thanks for their support after his father's death. Interestingly, the sword has been blunted - Ric was a pacifist, and had the sword blunted as a message of
peace.
I was then met by the College Archivist, Barbara Van Bronswijk, and taken through to a nearby building which houses the archives/everything rooms and the Old Collegians offices upstairs. Spent the next couple of hours with the talking (since I could also fill in some of the gaps, like who was related to who) and looking through the collection of relevant articles. Even though much is gone, they still have the original student registers, and just as they say, first student, Carl T. Klem, so now I know where he and #77 (Berwick) were before. Also held from the early days were the Marriage Certificates for weddings performed in the chapel. Nicely surprised that the certificates from before the Wesley College Chapel was officially "recognised" were in there too, since the very first of those was the wedding of my grandparents.
Also saw the cup Carl H. Klem presented to the school for their inter-house sports days, which is still awarded today (borrowed from the head of the current holding-house). Bringing the cup in also showed Mrs Van Bronswijk that the cup is actually of Sterling Silver, not silver plating like was previously thought. To go with this was were the programmes of the first two sports days (when Grandpa was a student - he won the Locke Cup for best athlete on the day).
Two more paper records talked about Dad's years as the Commanding Officer of the Wesley Cadet Unit (ironically, he was there for the end of the unit started up by his father-in-law), but no pictures of the officers, just the cadets. There was a picture of Berwick I hadn't seen before however; it was part of a series of three in identical frames, one of whom was of Roger Rossiter (son of the Headmaster of the day), Wesley's first Rhodes Scholar, so it's thought the picture dates from about 1935-8.
From there we went upstairs to the Old Wesley Collegians offices. When I got to the top I was told to turn around. There above the stairwell was the official portrait of Berwick, the one that was used to show him in various publications in his later years (including the programme for his thanksgiving service a couple of days after his funeral). Of course I'd seen this picture a lot - Grandpa kept his copy with him even when moving into nursing homes, but this one was easily twice as large. I then met the current Director of the OWCA (with more filling in of family connections - hey, I was there as "Berwick's Grandson"), and then went across to another office across the way, on whose walls hang three small paintings by my Grandmother, Dorothy Hanton.
Ok, one was obviously commissioned, the other two I don't know if they were donated to the College or how they got them or when. I'm assuming the second would be a painting from the Darlington/Greenmount area - they lived up there for a while in the 1950s, and even before then Greenmount was well known as an artist's retreat.
Leaving there, and going through the original school building, the next stop was the Flagpole Lawn as it's known, also called the Memorial Garden, which was created at the time the new Chapel was built in the early 1960s. One of the seats in this garden is dedicated to Great-Uncle Carl, along the southern edge of the garden. The seats in the garden are named for Old Boys who died at the time the garden was made - a couple in car accidents, a current student who died of illness, one who was killed by serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke (the last person to be executed in Western Australia), and Uncle Carl, who died of a stroke.
Last stop in Wesley, down in the Primary School section is a quadrangle named for Berwick, as he was the master in charge of the Prep School for many years until he left the school. The Hanton Quadrangle is also the site of the first power generator in South Perth. On this spot stands a belltower.
This was the end of my tour of Wesley College, so from here I just started walking to Mends Street and the City of South Perth's local history collection at Heritage House, a little under half an hour away. Part of this walk was along the longest side of Perth Zoo along Mill Point Road, so at least there was interesting and old trees to walk beneath. I remember making the same walk from our house at the other end of Mill Point Road as a very young child - somehow I remember the fences being far higher. I had been hoping they'd be able to tell me about the store now called Bowen's Deli, and maybe even have pictures of the place in the 1940s. Unfortunately no pictures, and according to the list of heritage buildings in the city, the store was actually owned by the Public Trustee at the time, so Claude and Amelia Stubbs were just managing it then.
What was mentioned though was that there may be plans to restore the store to an old-style deli with the old counters, getting away from the modern pre-packaged foods. I remarked to Mum later that maybe they'd have to make their own icecream and all, and Mum told me that her Grandmother actually did that! They had a machine for making icecream in the store, available in little buckets or cones (which, I am reliably informed, were better value, especially since you could eat the cone too - unless you timed it wrong, then you lost the lot.)
After that I decided to head back home (via the city), so I caught the ferry back, watched at one end by a cormorant totally used to people walking past on his jetty, and watched another at the other jetty chasing a school of fish looking for lunch, before getting my own lunch of noodles at the busport while waiting for my bus back to normal foodshopping and home.
Tuesday brought good news - at long last, once more we have hot water! :D The plumbers came a day earlier than planned. The first guy came just after lunch, had a load of funny gadgets to find where the problem was, dug a little hole and there it was - a burst pipe. The hole wasn't even a centimetre across, and yet it was enough to de-hotwaterify us. Anyway, he left, and just after sundown a couple more blokes came by to fix it. It was stubborn but eventually got sealed over after melting about a tank's worth of metal over it (ok, maybe not that much). So now, hot water - cost? A couple of shiny plastic notes from the landlord, and a sprinkler one of the guys tripped over.
Oh, and one of the plumbers gets added to the list of "people who are confused by my accent". :D
More or meme next post.
First: Monday:
Nice and early wake up, took a quick breakfast omelette-inna-bun in the busport before hopping on the bus to South Perth. Took the long way (since there was nothing that got me in close-but-not-late), this meant the bus going along Mill Point Road. When I was a small child we lived on this road, but the old house is hidden behind a fence though. A couple of blocks further up is a store called Bowen's Deli. I mention this because during the 1940s this store was where my great-grandparents lived and worked - I remember being told that it used to be in our family way back when, but not who or any idea when until I found out recently.
With a few minutes to spare, I had a look around Angelo Street after jumping off. One of the buildings I remember was one of the banks (not mine where I got some extra cash out of to kill time). I would've been about eleven or twelve, and while my parents were doing something in there I avoided the boredom by sitting out in the ute reading Bridge to Terebithia (a year before being given it in high school).
Anyway, I'm not that good at waiting around, so I crossed the street into Wesley College and found the office. I had a couple of minutes to wait in the main reception. This is in part of the building where the Headmaster's family used to live back in the early days, and the waiting area hasn't been re-designed that much, it still feels like a living room. On the walls are portraits of Mr Ward and his successors, and on one wall is a display cabinet with artefacts and photos of various Wesleyans gone on to greatness, and in the bottom of the case is the sword.
This is the detail of the dress sword presented by King George V to Hugo Throssell, presented by his son Ric to the College in thanks for their support after his father's death. Interestingly, the sword has been blunted - Ric was a pacifist, and had the sword blunted as a message of
peace.
I was then met by the College Archivist, Barbara Van Bronswijk, and taken through to a nearby building which houses the archives/everything rooms and the Old Collegians offices upstairs. Spent the next couple of hours with the talking (since I could also fill in some of the gaps, like who was related to who) and looking through the collection of relevant articles. Even though much is gone, they still have the original student registers, and just as they say, first student, Carl T. Klem, so now I know where he and #77 (Berwick) were before. Also held from the early days were the Marriage Certificates for weddings performed in the chapel. Nicely surprised that the certificates from before the Wesley College Chapel was officially "recognised" were in there too, since the very first of those was the wedding of my grandparents.
Also saw the cup Carl H. Klem presented to the school for their inter-house sports days, which is still awarded today (borrowed from the head of the current holding-house). Bringing the cup in also showed Mrs Van Bronswijk that the cup is actually of Sterling Silver, not silver plating like was previously thought. To go with this was were the programmes of the first two sports days (when Grandpa was a student - he won the Locke Cup for best athlete on the day).
Two more paper records talked about Dad's years as the Commanding Officer of the Wesley Cadet Unit (ironically, he was there for the end of the unit started up by his father-in-law), but no pictures of the officers, just the cadets. There was a picture of Berwick I hadn't seen before however; it was part of a series of three in identical frames, one of whom was of Roger Rossiter (son of the Headmaster of the day), Wesley's first Rhodes Scholar, so it's thought the picture dates from about 1935-8.
From there we went upstairs to the Old Wesley Collegians offices. When I got to the top I was told to turn around. There above the stairwell was the official portrait of Berwick, the one that was used to show him in various publications in his later years (including the programme for his thanksgiving service a couple of days after his funeral). Of course I'd seen this picture a lot - Grandpa kept his copy with him even when moving into nursing homes, but this one was easily twice as large. I then met the current Director of the OWCA (with more filling in of family connections - hey, I was there as "Berwick's Grandson"), and then went across to another office across the way, on whose walls hang three small paintings by my Grandmother, Dorothy Hanton.
Ok, one was obviously commissioned, the other two I don't know if they were donated to the College or how they got them or when. I'm assuming the second would be a painting from the Darlington/Greenmount area - they lived up there for a while in the 1950s, and even before then Greenmount was well known as an artist's retreat.
Leaving there, and going through the original school building, the next stop was the Flagpole Lawn as it's known, also called the Memorial Garden, which was created at the time the new Chapel was built in the early 1960s. One of the seats in this garden is dedicated to Great-Uncle Carl, along the southern edge of the garden. The seats in the garden are named for Old Boys who died at the time the garden was made - a couple in car accidents, a current student who died of illness, one who was killed by serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke (the last person to be executed in Western Australia), and Uncle Carl, who died of a stroke.
Last stop in Wesley, down in the Primary School section is a quadrangle named for Berwick, as he was the master in charge of the Prep School for many years until he left the school. The Hanton Quadrangle is also the site of the first power generator in South Perth. On this spot stands a belltower.
This was the end of my tour of Wesley College, so from here I just started walking to Mends Street and the City of South Perth's local history collection at Heritage House, a little under half an hour away. Part of this walk was along the longest side of Perth Zoo along Mill Point Road, so at least there was interesting and old trees to walk beneath. I remember making the same walk from our house at the other end of Mill Point Road as a very young child - somehow I remember the fences being far higher. I had been hoping they'd be able to tell me about the store now called Bowen's Deli, and maybe even have pictures of the place in the 1940s. Unfortunately no pictures, and according to the list of heritage buildings in the city, the store was actually owned by the Public Trustee at the time, so Claude and Amelia Stubbs were just managing it then.
What was mentioned though was that there may be plans to restore the store to an old-style deli with the old counters, getting away from the modern pre-packaged foods. I remarked to Mum later that maybe they'd have to make their own icecream and all, and Mum told me that her Grandmother actually did that! They had a machine for making icecream in the store, available in little buckets or cones (which, I am reliably informed, were better value, especially since you could eat the cone too - unless you timed it wrong, then you lost the lot.)
After that I decided to head back home (via the city), so I caught the ferry back, watched at one end by a cormorant totally used to people walking past on his jetty, and watched another at the other jetty chasing a school of fish looking for lunch, before getting my own lunch of noodles at the busport while waiting for my bus back to normal foodshopping and home.
Tuesday brought good news - at long last, once more we have hot water! :D The plumbers came a day earlier than planned. The first guy came just after lunch, had a load of funny gadgets to find where the problem was, dug a little hole and there it was - a burst pipe. The hole wasn't even a centimetre across, and yet it was enough to de-hotwaterify us. Anyway, he left, and just after sundown a couple more blokes came by to fix it. It was stubborn but eventually got sealed over after melting about a tank's worth of metal over it (ok, maybe not that much). So now, hot water - cost? A couple of shiny plastic notes from the landlord, and a sprinkler one of the guys tripped over.
Oh, and one of the plumbers gets added to the list of "people who are confused by my accent". :D
More or meme next post.