1945 and The Yarralumlan

Were you in Canberra in 1945?  Here is a description of the city on 16 August, after the end of the second world war was announced, when shops and schools were closed for the day:

Peaceful Canberra has never known such scenes as were witnessed immediately after the announcement of peace and throughout the night.
The climax came the last night when revellers converged on Manuka Oval and the Albert Hall where the great throng for a time blocked communication between the north and south sides of the city.  
When the announcement by the British Prime Minister (Mr. Atlee) came through, shops has just opened, offices had begun thier day's work and school children were on their way to school.
Immediately, the news spread, shops shut their doors, office workers "downed tools" and the children made for the shopping centre.
By 10:30, Civic Centre presented a scene of jubilation never before witnessed in Canberra.
One reveller had gone all around the shops and painted yellow "V" signs on the windows, while salvage baskets were uprooted and papers showered on the roadway and people singing and yelling everywhere.
Cars, everywhere were held up by the happy throng, many of whole packed on the cares and loaded them without regard for capacity. There were no mishaps.
Most vehicles had a yellow "V" painted across them and no one cared so long as it was for victory.

The Canberra Times sourced from Trove at the National Library of Australia

Last week I was lucky enough to see one of the oldest items in the Canberra High School Archive collection.  The Yarralumlan - the school year book - from 1945.

The Yarralumlan was produced most years up until the end of 1976, when the new College system was introduced and Canberra High went from teaching Forms 1-6 to Years 7-10.

The earliest edition of the Yarralumlan in the Archives is from 1945, so if you have an earlier edition we would really love to get a copy.

The 1945 edition has a directory of the staff and sports team captains, and it was full of articles on sports days, creative writing pieces, poems and documentary pieces.  It was Andrew Watson's last year as head master, and of course there were photos of staff and prefects, as well as an aerial shot of Canberra High.

 

Headmaster Andrew Watson with Prefects 1945

In 1945 Canberra High was surrounded by playing fields and paddocks. The white building in the background, now housing the National Film and Sound Archive, was the Australian Institute of Anatomy, which was completed in 1930. This was one of the last major projects of the Federal Capital Commission and it was built to house the anatomy collection of Professor Sir Colin MacKenzie. The site was formally gazetted in 1924 as the National Museum of Australian Zoology, and architectural plans show that zoological gardens were intended for the grounds.

Canberra High School 1945

Profiling Andrew Watson: CHS Headmaster 1938 - 1945

Did you know that Andrew Watson was the first principal of Canberra High School?  Watson was a distinguished scientist and was part of the team that Mawson led to Antarctica.


Andrew Dougald Watson (1885-1962) was born at New Lambton, near Newcastle in New South Wales.  He was the fourth son of nine children, of Scottish-born parents William Watson, miner, and his wife Jane, née Thomson.

After attending primary school at Newcastle, Andrew attended Maitland Boys' High School. He was a pupil-teacher at Hamilton (1901) and New Lambton (1902), and was awarded a teacher's scholarship to Fort Street Training School, Sydney, in 1905. Following several teaching appointments, he received a scholarship, initially in arts, to the University of Sydney (B.Sc., 1913) in 1908, where he studied geology, chemistry and biology.


An accomplished sportsman, Watson represented New South Wales at baseball in 1907-11, and in 1914 when he played against visiting teams from the United States of America. He was a first-grade cricketer for the University in 1910-11 and North Sydney in 1918-19.


Watson joined (Sir) Douglas Mawson's 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition as a geologist and photographer. He spent almost a year in 1912-13 in the group of eight led by Frank Wild, at the Queen Mary Land or Western Base. There he trained the party's dogs and dug a shaft to study the glacial ice. He also studied glacial effects on the landscape and accessible rock such as the Hippo Nunatak. In the summer expeditions, Wild, A. L. Kennedy, C. T. Harrisson and Watson explored to the east, but broken ice hindered their mapping of the coast. A promontory on David Island was named Watson Bluff. In December Watson was rescued from a crevasse: 'in an instant I found myself dangling at rope's end, fully fifteen feet, into a yawning chasm, with sheer walls'.


Watson married Esther Enid Godfrey, to whom he had become engaged before leaving for the Antarctic, in May 1913 at St Stephen's Presbyterian Church, Sydney. He lectured in geology at the University of Adelaide in 1913, then returned to the New South Wales Department of Public Instruction the next year as a science teacher at Sydney Boys' High School. A long period followed at North Sydney Boys' High School, first as science master and then as deputy-headmaster. He was headmaster at Glen Innes (1933-35), Bowral (1935-37), Canberra (1938-45) and Homebush Boys' (1946-49) high schools.

Respected by staff and students, Watson set the tone in his schools. About 6 ft (183 cm) tall and of solid build, he wore spectacles and an academic gown at school. He was 'a very dignified man', courteous and quietly spoken but aloof and austere. A Canberra High School colleague commented, 'Andy went southward ho with Mawson and he hasn't thawed out yet'. Watson died on 9 January 1962 at Cremorne, Sydney. His wife and son survived him.

Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography.  (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/watson-andrew-dougald-13237)