Join us at the Cocktail Party to celebrate the 75th Anniversary

You are invited to join us at the 75th Anniversary Cocktail Party, at the Refectory at the University of Canberra.  CLICK HERE for a map.

To register, please click on the cocktail glasses to the right of this article, or on the second tab under the banner at the top of this page.

We will be setting up the room in different decades, so you can mingle with your former classmates and teachers.

You will be welcomed with a drink and there will be a range of finger foods throughout the evening.  A bar will be open for you to purchase other drinks through the evening.

You will be entertained with music from all the eras of Canberra High, the 30s through to the present day.  And there will be videos and photos displays for you to look at.

Please note that registrations and payments should be submitted by 11 October as we need to let the caterers know the numbers that we are expecting.  Dress is smart casual.

You will be able to collect your tickets for the Cocktail Party with your registration pack when you attend the Canberra High Open Day on Saturday 2 November between 10am and 2pm, or at the Cocktail Party itself.

CHS75: Who is coming?

As the 2nd of November draws nearer, we have started to look at who is coming and where people are coming from, based on those who have registered their interest.

At the moment we have people registering from around the world. From San Jose in California, Epernay in France, Jönköping in Sweden, and Pieks in Finland. 

Most people are coming from Canberra and Sydney.  With others from farther away including Perth, Adelaide, Claremont, Richmond, Wauchope and New Farm.

The vast majority of registrations are from former students with some 25 former or current teachers also registering.

The graduation year with the most registrations is 1968 - with 10% of all registrations.  Followed closely by 1976 - which as you may recall was a "double year" with Form 6 and Form 4 graduating with the transition to the ACT College System.

We know that many people haven't registered their interest yet so please encourage them to do so if you can.  This will let us contact them directly by email and also give us some insight into who is coming.

Connect with your Year Group

We are delighted to have former alumni volunteer to co-ordinate an extra event for year groups on the weekend of 2 November 2013. We don't have year co-ordinators for all the years, so if you are interested in being a Year Co-ordinator please let us know.


Those of you who have registered will know that we have asked for information about when you started and finished at Canberra High School.  We have tentatively assumed that your graduate year is when you finished - although it won't be the same for every on because some left before graduating.

If you have registered your interest, and you finished in a year with a year co-ordinator (as below), then your year co-ordinator may be making contact with you soon.  If this doesn't happen then please let us know if you would like us to put you in contact with these people.

We are also happy to act as a link for former teachers who may want to get together.

(Please note: To protect these volunteers private email addresses from the risk of being spammed, we can act as a go-between until you have made contact.)

Our Year Co-ordinators are:

1989: Rachel Wilkinson

1986: Alisoun Garrard

1976: Jacqui Lines and Julie Hopkinson

1975: Kathy Vicol

1974: Trevor Dowling

1970: Lachlan Kennedy

1968: David Holmesby, Marianne Johnson, Robert McKeon and

         Michael Edwards    

1967: Ross Kingsland

                    1964: Jenny Moore

1960: Pamela Murray

1959: Margo Hodge

1958: Susan Nancarrow

1957: Ian Spencer

          1956: Ron Fraser

          1950: Graeme Kelleher 

Profiling Frederick Charles Wootten: Principal 1946 - 1948

Frederick Charles Wootten was appointed as principal to Canberra High School in 1946.

Born in Lismore in 1895, Wootten was one of six children. He went to Sydney University to study modern languages between 1913 and 1915, and concurrently completed his Diploma of Education in 1915 at the Sydney Teachers College.

In 1915 he joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and was assigned to the 55th Battalion, bound for the Western Front. Wootten was recently married and left his wife behind in Marrickville to board the HMAT Star of England on the 10th of September 1915. He was an acting corporal when he left.

When Wootten returned to Sydney after the war he joined the staff at Sydney Boys High and resumed his studies, obtaining a Masters Degree in Modern Languages in 1922. He worked in both country schools and Fort St Boys High before being appointed Principal of Grafton High in 1935. Over the next 10 years he was principal at several schools including Mudgee, Broken Hill and Goulburn. Appointed as principal to Canberra High in 1946 he was also instrumental in establishing Alliance Francaise in Canberra. Leaving Canberra High in 1948, Wootten worked at Gosford, Paramatta and Enmore High Schools. He died suddenly in Sydney in 1955, survived by his wife and two children.

Now, please allow me to take a tangent and share with you a brief history of the 55th Battalion, which Wootten lived through  ...... it is both heroic and terrible.

The 55th Battalion was raised in Egypt in February 1916 as part of the “doubling” of the AIF. It was made up of Gallipoli veterans fresh reinforcements from Australia, including Wootten. The 55th arrived in France at the end of June 1916, and entered the trenches on the Western Front for the first time in early July. The first major battle was fought at Fromelles a week later. The battle was a disaster. There were heavy casualties across the division. Despite its grievous losses the 55th Division continued to man the front in the Fromelles sector for a further two months.

Some of the German machine guns captured by the
55th Battalion in the Battle of Polygon Wood on
26 September 1917. [AWM C01085]
Source: Australian War Memorial  https://www.ww1westernfront.gov.au

After a freezing winter manning trenches in the Somme Valley, in early 1917 the 55th Battalion joined with the advance
that followed the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line. It defended gains made during the second battle of Bullecourt. Later in the year, the AIF’s focus of operations switched to the Ypres sector in Belgium, and the 55th’s major battle here was at Polygon Wood in late September 1917.

When Russia collapsed in October 1917, a major German offensive on the Western Front was expected in early 1918. This came in late March and the 55th Division moved to defend the sector around Corbie. When the German offensive was defeated, the Allies launched their own offensive in August 1918. The 55th fought its last major battle of the war, St Quentin Canal, between 29 September and 2 October 1918. One of Wootten's fellow soldiers, Private John Ryan, was awarded the Victoria Cross for his valour during this action.

Ryan was 28 years old, from Tumut.  During the 55th's attack near Bellicourt on 30 September 1918, Ryan went forward with others under heavy fire and bombing, and was one of the first to reach the enemy trench. There was a fierce German counter attack and the Germans drove the Australians back.  Ryan organised and led a party to attack the Germans with bayonets.  Under heavy bombing only three men reached the the position, and then proceeded to kill three Germans.  Ryan alone rushed the remainder and drove them back across no man's land. He fell wounded in the shoulder, and his action enabled the trench to be retaken.

The battalion was resting out of the line with the rest of the Australian Corps when the Armistice was declared on 11 November 1918. Shortly afterwards, demobilisation began and slowly men were repatriated back to Australia. During its active service, the 55th Battalion suffered 1,835 casualties of which 507 were killed. 

Plans for the Anniversary Celebration are taking shape

The enthusiastic members of the CHS 75th Anniversary Organising Committee are starting to finalise the events of the 2nd of November.

We have tried to offer choices for all those who wish to participate, with plenty of time for people to catchup with former schoolmates and teachers.

The day will start at the Old Canberra High School. The ANU School of Art has kindly agreed to open the premises between 9am to 11am for you to have a look around the premises and remember what it was like when it was Canberra High School.

The Canberra High School, Bindubi Street, will be open between 10am and 2pm.  Archive material and memorabilia will be displayed by decade in classrooms for you to look at. There will be a range of materials available and we encourage you to help us identify people in photographs and so on.  donations will be gratefully received.  A formal opening of the school will be arranged for around mid-day, with the timing to be confirmed.  You will also be able to view a range of art and technology exhibitions created by current students, some of which will be themed around the 75th anniversary.

The cocktail party will be held at Canberra University between 5pm and 8pm.  It will be an opportunity for you to mingle with your former schoolmates.  There will be a brief formal ceremony during the evening to acknowledge the contributions that Canberra High School students and teachers have made to our community. A range of canapes will be provided through the evening and a drink will be offered on arrival.  Seats will be available for those who wish to sit down for the event.  The cost of this event will be $42 per person.

We will be forwarding a registration form to those of you who are registered an expression of interest within the next 6 weeks.

Hope to see you there!

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)