News Archive

Playing as a child in the University grounds, shaking the Prime Minister’s hand at graduation and holding an academic’s legs as he leaned out of a plane are among winning memories of UWA.

Six months ago, a call went out to Share a UWA Memory, to compile some personal stories of ordinary people and the influence the University had on them, to help celebrate the Centenary.

The competition was won by Loreley Morling, whose father Douglas White was professor of organic chemistry from 1943 to 1964.

“My relationship with UWA began in 1948 when my parents moved into a new university house in Myers Street,” she wrote.

An edited version of the story continues: “Along with other offspring of lecturers, administrative and garden staff I grew up in the grounds of ‘the uni’. We ‘uni children’ delighted in playing in the laneway between the houses and the tennis courts – where the ‘new’ chemistry building was constructed in the 1960s.

“Eventually the whole uni grounds became our playground. Many a time we would wander across the oval, greeting George Munns, the gardener, and his offsider Jack Davey. We befriended Laddie, the horse who pulled the roller which kept the lawns in order. If we were late home Dad called us or, if he spied one of the gardeners, asked if they’d seen us.

“My friend Wendy and I sometimes visited her father’s office behind the clock in Winthrop Hall tower. It was fun to climb the narrow stairs leading up to the small room. Then we’d romp through the Sunken Garden pretending we were performing.

“We spent countless hours getting covered in mud while catching tadpoles in the swamp in front of Shenton House.

“My student days at UWA were confined to attending the small kindergarten in the psychology department. Although we moved from Myers Street in the mid-50s we remained close to the uni and I continued to think of it as my backyard.

“Fast forward to the 1960s when I worked in the Reid Library: a stimulating time to be associated with the campus. Apart from demonstrations against the Vietnam War there were often plays and musical events held over the lunch hour.

“Amongst the characters I remember is Dr Mike Gilmartin, an eccentric maths lecturer, who was always determined to be the last person out of the library when we closed.”

Mrs Morling won a $150 voucher for dinner at the University Club and a first edition of the soon-to-be-published Centenary History.

Zoology graduate Dr Shelley Barker recalls vividly her PhD supervisor Bert Main in the late 1950s. They were researching Rottnest Island quokkas and she remembers flying to Rottnest with Professor Main in an Auster aircraft with windows that opened.

“While the pilot circled around the West End of Rottnest, Bert hung out of the window with an aerial camera taking photographs while Ted Walsh, the departmental photographer, and I hung on to his legs to stop him falling out! Quite a hair-raising experience for me but Bert was completely unfazed,” Dr Barker wrote.

Tony Gallagher, an arts graduate from the 1960s, remembers shaking the hand of Prime Minister Robert Menzies who conferred the degrees at his graduation ceremony in 1964.

Mr Gallagher, who went on to become a teacher, recalls: “At the beginning of 1963, my final undergraduate academic year, I remember thinking to myself: Dad works in Chamberlain’s tractor factory in Welshpool, so why am I studying Shakespeare? I had no idea, beyond knowing that majoring in English gave me a ticket off the bottom rung.

“(But)I was luckier than I realised. For me, the English Department was inspirational … One of my classmates was Dorothy Hewett, a novelist, feminist and, by then, a disenchanted Communist. Dorothy fiercely supported Australian writing and writers. So, during tutorials, she tilted fearlessly at the snootiness of the English Department. I loved that.

“Our Drama tutor, senior lecturer Jeana Bradley nudged me, way, way beyond myself … the English Department gave me something much, much better than just a ticket off the bottom rung.” UWAnews will publish more excerpts from these stories next year.

Published in UWA News , 17 September 2012