Riverview's Places: Gorman Field

The Flu Epidemic. 100 Years Ago

12th February: Riverview's Birthday

The Parliament. The Church.

Rhetoric and Jesuit Education

Rediscovering Rhetoric | Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP

Two books: JJ Gleeson and RCA Higgins (eds), Rediscovering Rhetoric: Law, Language and The Practice of Persuasion (The Federation Press, 2008) and Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP, Speech: The Mirror of the Soul, originally in St Ignatius’ Centennial 1980, when the current Archbishop was recently graduated from Riverview (OR1977) and when he was an undergraduate in Arts/Law at the University of Sydney.

Anthony Fisher argues that the development of debating and public speaking at Riverview can only be understood and appreciated by taking into account the distinctive approach of the Society of Jesus to education. A golden thread connects the ancient Greeks to the Jesuits through the explicit teaching of argument, rhetoric, public speaking and debating.

Gleeson and Higgins, in the introduction to their invaluable book, tell the story of the birth of rhetoric: Around 463BC, following the expulsion of the tyrants from Sicily, Corax and his pupil Tisias established the first rule-based methods for handling legal disputes which involved a systematic use of rhetoric in Syracuse. Just over 2000 years later and 470 years ago this year, in Messina in Sicily, about 160 kilometres from Syracuse, the Jesuits began what is known as their first college. Back to the story of Tisias and Corax:  Tisias agreed to pay his master’s fees only when he won his first case. When he failed to pay, Corax took him to court. Tisias argued that if he persuaded the jury that Corax should not be paid, he should be excused payment. Then he argued that if he failed to persuade the jury, then again he should be excused, as Corax’s teaching had clearly failed.

This is not a good example to follow, however, as it relies on casuistry (for which Jesuits were subsequently erroneously condemned). Tisias taught simple rhetorical techniques which were later collected into handbooks used to teach in the Greek city states. Gleeson and Higgins’ book brings the great classical rhetoricians back to life: from Plato to Aristotle to Cicero to Quintilian to Hermogenes.

Jesuit education imparted, firstly, training in the humanities “to develop a ready skill to communicate ideas by writing or speaking… and the art of effective and polished self-expression or eloquence.” Ignatius emphasised in the Constitutiones “adeptness in academic debate and theological disputation but also desired that his students be able to speak in a simple and popular manner for all the people at large.” Then the Ratio Studiorum of 1599 ordered the superiors of Jesuit colleges to encourage the study and practice of rhetoric while enjoining students to be moderate and kindly, to be honest and to insist on quality rather than quantity in illustration.

Father Frank Dennett SJ, Riverview’s Debating Master in the 1940s and later the Jesuit Province Archivist wrote, “The Jesuit approval of debating stems from the conviction that the essential basis and the necessary condition for intellectual growth is the command of language.” And Father John Murphy SJ, Prefect of Studies from 1891 until 1897, argued that debating was “of greater educational instance than sport or even public exams.” Riverview debating and public speaking was to “train critical thinkers, to cultivate the ability to discern right from wrong and to embody the vir eloquens.”

Embedded in the educational practices of the Greeks and Romans, through the ‘juvenile orators’ who first debated at Riverview in the 1880s, to the confident and eloquent speakers of the twenty first century, Riverview has enjoyed success and continued excellence. Riverview’s speakers have continued to seek the truth, to persuade with logic, evidence and graciousness, to carry that torch that burns brightly over this most worthy part of their Jesuit education.

What I’ve Read This Year

A selection of the books that I’ve read (some of them reviewed in previous editions of Viewpoint) in the hope that you might find one or two in your Christmas stockings:

• Cardinal Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise (Ignatius, 2017)
• William McIntyre, Present Tense (Sandstone Press, 2016)
• Brenda Walker, Reading by Moonlight (Penguin, 2010)
• Meg and Tom Keneally, The Soldier’s Curse (Vintage/Random House, 2016)
• Robert Goddard, The Ways of the World (Bantam, 2013)
• John Pearson, All the Money in the World (Motion Picture Artwork, 2017)
• Ryan O’Neill, Their Brilliant Careers (2016)
• James Patterson and Bill Clinton, The President Has Vanished (2018)
• Margaret Silf, Just Call Me Lopez: Getting to the Heart of Ignatius Loyola (2012)
• Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (Knopf, 2005)
• Gabbie Stroud, Teacher (Allen and Unwin, 2017)

A much blessed Christmas!
And many happy reading hours!

Powers’ debut novel was ‘The Yellow Birds’ about the Iraq War which Power fought in. That novel won acclaim. It was winner ofThe Guardian’s book award for 2012.

This novel is set in Virginia where Powers was born and it has two alternating strands of narrative. One is set in the 1860s at the time of the American Civil War. The war’s savagery and legacy are explored. The second is set in 1956.

Rawls is a slave who is owned by Lucy and Bob and who sets out to find Nurse who has been sold.

In 1956, George Seldom, 90 years old, meditates on the changes he has seen, armed with ‘The Negro Traveller’s Green Book’, a suitcase and faded memories.

The two strands of time explore the ideal of loving kindness in the face of inhumanity.

It’s ‘…a daring voyage into and out of the darkest era in American history.’

The Australian political landscape over the past few weeks has resembled a Shakespearean drama with its sweeping rhythms and its wide range of personality types and its great themes of power, pride, ambition, ascension and fall.

Put your own contemporary politicians to Shakespeare’s characters but when we remember in Julius Caesar that Marc Antony intones to himself, “mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt”, there seems to be a relevance with contemporary events. Brutus, an “honourable man”, was not quite aware of what he was doing. Cassius is a suspect: “Seldom he smiles …he has a lean and hungry look.”

A contender outsmarts his opponents to come through the centre and seize power, repulsing a great revolt.

The dramatis personae in our current events include Old Ignatians in the Federal Parliament: former Prime Minister Tony Abbott (OR1975), former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce (OR1986) and Coalition backbenchers Jason Falinski (OR1988) and Dr David Gillespie (OR1975); and others who were Jesuit educated including Bill Shorten (Xavier College), Christopher Pyne (Saint Ignatius Adelaide), Mathias Cormann (Catholic University of Namur, Brussels), Kevin Andrews (Newman College, Melbourne) and Dan Tehan (Xavier College).

And behind the scenes was the Liberal Party’s Federal President, Nick Greiner OR1963.

Troy Bramston, in an article in June this year, remembered the early days of Nick Greiner’s Premiership in NSW:

Thirty years ago [in March 1988], Nick Greiner was the newly elected Premier of NSW… implementing a radical agenda… with a Harvard MBA… he ran the State like a business. It was dubbed ‘Greinerism’.

… Greiner broke the mould for a Liberal leader. He was born in Hungary, son of refugees and a Catholic… He was elected to the NSW Parliament in September 1980. When he became Opposition Leader in March 1983, he faced the redoubtable Neville Wran in the parliamentary ‘bear pit’.

A formidable debater at Riverview and winner of the prestigious Lawrence Campbell Oratory Trophy in 1963, Nick Greiner has subsequently imported the rationality and logic of debating and business into governmental decision-making. And now, an Old Ignatian is in charge of the Liberal Party in Australia at a time when steady hands are needed after the political maelstrom of the last few weeks.

Let Shakespeare have the last word. We need someone who “hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been so clear in his great office …”

     24 AUGUST 2018     

The Lysicrates monument in the Royal Botanical Garden

We’ve been teaching the classical languages – Latin and Classical Greek – at Riverview continuously since 1880. They are part of a rich Jesuit tradition that treasures a liberal humanist Catholic education for our young men.

Reminders of the ancient Greeks appear in unusual places in Sydney.

The Lysicrates Prize, inaugurated in 2015, is decided upon by 500 people voting for one of three new plays of 20 minutes duration each, without scenery or props. The winner takes home a substantial $12,000 and the opportunity to turn the short play into a professional production. Where does the name ‘Lysicrates’ come from? There’s a monument in Sydney’s Royal Botanical Garden, a reproduction of the one that stood just near the Acropolis in Athens from 334BC, commemorating Lysicrates, a patron of the arts and donor of a prize in the ancient dramatic festival. A 19th century Premier of NSW, Sir James Martin (1820-1885), a lawyer and lover of the Classics, had the monument erected at his residence (incidentally, Martin Place in Sydney is named after Sir James Martin). During World War II, Dr H.V. Evatt transferred the statue to the Botanic Garden “because he thought it should belong to the people and inspire them in a time of struggle.”

Peter Craven has written: “The Lysicrates Prize is a reminder that one of the greatest Greek flames, one that perhaps burns even brighter than the Olympic spirit, is central to our heritage.”

The flame burns brightly at Riverview and, if you look hard enough, evidence is here in Sydney.
 

Jesuits Who Mapped the World and Beyond

Since the 17th century, as the known world has opened up, it is the Jesuits who have been at the forefront of expanding our knowledge.

Athanasius Kircher SJ (1602-1680) (after whom our collection of Year 12 Bodies of Work, published each year, is named) was a prolific scholar. He relied on the earlier work of Jesuit missionaries to China when he produced his epic 17th century atlas of China. He was followed in producing detailed maps of China by Ferdinand Verbiest SJ (1623-1688). Then as the ‘new world’ gradually opened up, Eusebio Francisco Kino (1645-1711) pioneered the work of plotting the features of the Americas, including proof that California was not an island.

While the earth was still being explored, the Jesuits, like Ignatius, looked to the stars. Maps of the Moon, drawn by Francesco Grimaldi SJ (1618-1663) are still in use. When we commemorated 49 years since the first moon landing last month, we remember that the ‘Sea of Tranquility’ where the Apollo II landed in July 1969, was named by Giovanni Riccioli SJ (1598-1671). 35 lunar craters are named for Jesuit astronomers (including one named for Kircher and another for Ricci, one of the patrons of our Houses).

The Jesuits stand for scholarship, research, curiosity, spirituality and their legacy helps us, centuries later, to understand God’s universe.

Families of Riverview

THE COOLICANS: THREE GENERATIONS OF RUGBY INTERNATIONALS

 

In the 15A Rugby team this year, I’m fortunate to be coaching with two international Rugby players, Tom Coolican (OR2006) and Toby L’Estrange. Tom has the enviable distinction of being the third generation of the family to play Test Rugby. What makes the Coolicans unique, however, is that the three of them have played for three different countries.

Tom’s grandfather, Dr Teddy Coolican, was born in England but went to the Jesuit school near Dublin, Clongowes Wood, and then studied Medicine at Trinity College. From there, he was selected for Ireland in what was called a ‘Victory Test’ played in 1946 against Wales. When Teddy emigrated to Australia, he sent his two sons, John (OR1972) and Myles (OR1973) to the Jesuits at Riverview. John played in the 1972 Riverview 1st XV Premiership side and then for Gordon and Sydney University before winning 28 caps for the Waratahs as an uncompromising front rower who made his debut with the Wallabies against the All Blacks in 1982, the first of his four Tests for Australia. Since then, he has served a term as President of the Australian Rugby Union.

John’s brother, Myles, now an orthopedic surgeon with a distinguished involvement in Rugby, sent his two sons, James (OR2002) and Tom (OR2006), to Riverview. Tom, born in Cleveland Ohio is thus qualified to represent USA. At Riverview, he was in the 1st XV Premiership side of 2006 and then studied at and played for Sydney University before doing a Masters of Law in New York. Since 2014, Tom has played in 8 Tests for the USA Eagles, the most memorable in front of 65,000 against the All Blacks.

John and Tom both played in Premiership sides here.
John is the son of an international.
Tom is the nephew and grandson of internationals.
Three Rugby internationals from the same family have represented three different countries.

Unique!

RIVERVIEW’S POLITICAL FAMILY

 
It’s 40 years since Amelia Rygate sat in the NSW Legislative Council. Who? Amelia Rygate (1898-1988) was the wife of Gerald Blake Rygate (OR1914, 1895-1960). So?

Gerald Rygate is one of only five Old Ignatians to represent the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in any of the Australian parliaments. Riverview has produced 28 parliamentarians, representatives of the people, from Thomas Bartholomew Curran (OR1886) who sat in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons from 1892 until 1900, to Dr David Gillespie (OR1975) who is currently in the Australian Federal Parliament with three other Old Ignatians, Tony Abbott (OR1975), Barnaby Joyce (OR1985) and Jason Falinski (OR1988). There are also three currently in the NSW Parliament: Jonathan O’Dea (OR1983), Anthony Roberts (OR1988) and Matt Kean (OR1999), but only five have ever represented the ALP.

Gerald and his brother Harold (OR1913) came to Riverview from Grenfell. When Gerald graduated from Riverview, he enrolled in Medicine at Sydney University but the clarion call to enlist in the 1st AIF came strongly. He abandoned his studies, served in Egypt and France, was wounded in action and mentioned in despatches. He returned to Australia and worked a property near Canowindra. A member of the ALP for 48 years, he was a curiosity among Old Ignatians. During the 1920s at Riverview there were strong, individual instances of opposition to the Labor side of politics, especially when Jack Lang was in office. Fr Frank Connell SJ made his feelings against Mr Lang quite clear. Fr Paddy Dalton SJ promised that if Lang was ever invited to Riverview, he (Dalton) would be waiting with intent! Mick Lee, one of the few lay masters of the time, was a well-known Labor supporter but he was used to keeping his political opinions to himself.

Meanwhile, Gerald Rygate continued the struggle, eventually securing a seat in the NSW Legislative Council in 1952 until his death in 1960. He attracted much criticism within the ALP, however, for his continued support for the Council which the ALP had, in accordance with Party policy, vowed to abolish and he was expelled from the ALP in 1959. He continued to sit, associated with the Independent Labor Group. His wife, Amelia (Millie) then served until the Council became a fully elected body in 1978.

The Rygates provide one of the few examples of husband and wife Members of Parliament in NSW and Gerald is one of only five Old Ignatian ALP Members of Parliament. The others? Robert O’Halloran (OR1908), Charlie Morgan (OR1914), his son Kevin Morgan (OR1939) and Harry Woods (OR1963).

Watergate – 46 Years Ago this Week

My Mentor Group recently enjoyed a pizza/movie night. The movie the boys chose was Forrest Gump. At one stage, Forrest looks out of his window in the Watergate Hotel, Washington, and sees burglars breaking into the next building. One of the senior boys in the Mentor Group asked me what that was about. “Watergate,” I replied. Incomprehension. I attempted to explain but the movie moved on.

So, on 17 June 1972, 46 years ago this week, five burglars were caught trying to plant a bug in the Democratic National Committee offices. One of the burglars was James McCord (still alive at 93) who was also the security co-ordinator for the ‘Campaign to Re Elect the President’ (Richard Nixon). There were also other connections with the White House. The FBI investigated but the break-in did not initially become a big story, dismissed by Nixon’s press secretary as a “third rate burglary”. Only the ‘Washington Post’ persisted with the story and on 7 November 1972, Nixon was re-elected with the biggest landslide in American history, winning 49 out of 50 States.

But in February 1973, the US Senate decided to investigate further. At his trial for the burglary, McCord alleged that there had been “political pressure” placed on him to carry out the break-in. The Judge was John Sirica and here comes the Jesuit connection! Sirica had graduated from Georgetown Law School, the first law school run by a Jesuit-affiliated University (Georgetown) in the United States. Jesuits have been associated with Georgetown since 1805.

You probably know the rest of the story. Nixon initially denied any knowledge but the fall-out was immense and during 1973 and 1974 little else seemed to engage the energies of the White House.

On 9 August 1974, President Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, resigned in the midst of the impeachment process.

Forest Gump. Watergate. Judge John Sirica. The Jesuits!

Fr Charles McDonald SJ Cup

Two significant Riverview events in three weeks are superficially unrelated… except that they are part of the rich tapestry of this school.

On 6 June in our Charles McDonald Theatrette, the annual debate between Riverview and St Aloysius’ College was held for the Fr Charles McDonald SJ Cup. In the program for the night was this brief tribute to Father McDonald:

Charles McDonald was a priest of graciousness, scholarship and attention to meticulous detail. Among his many other duties in the schools he was renowned as a debating coach.

At Riverview, in particular his record is unparalleled. He was debating master and coach of the Firsts side for 17 years, during which his teams won 14 GPS Premierships and he coached ten of the Lawrence Campbell Oratory Competitions winners.

Father McDonald developed an approach to debating that was firmly underpinned by his Jesuit training. The principle of ‘eloquentia perfecta’ meant that debaters should be able to express themselves effectively, logically and rigorously. He taught all his debaters to speak with sincerity and to be courteously persuasive.

He wrote of the importance that ‘debating plays in helping a young man to understand and find himself, and to mature with the true fullness of his personality, in a way that helps him to help and influence others…. to see quickly where he is wrong and to understand another’s point of view.’

The trophy that the debaters from St Aloysius and St Ignatius contest annually is named in his honour.

Next Friday at the SCG, is the OIU Rugby lunch which has been advertised in Viewpoint throughout this Term.

This is an excerpt from the program…. a brief history of Rugby at Riverview!

2018… the 139th season… or the 128th… or the 127th…. or the 112th? Some form of football has been played at Riverview every year since 1880.

From 1880, and for the next 11 years, however, the College played Australian Rules exclusively against the local club sides. Fr Joseph Dalton SJ, the founding Rector, knew enough of the Rugby game to decide that it was much too rough for schoolboys, referring to it in  immortal words as ‘that horrid Rugby rule’.

Pressure from the boys gradually mounted until on Saturday 22 August 1891, a Riverview 2nd Division (under 15) side played the College’s first Rugby game against the city-based Jesuit College, St Aloysius. Then the 1st XV played eleven games in 1892, the first against Hunters Hill Club on Queen Victoria’s birthday holiday in May 1892. Jack Davidson, a mighty Australian Rules kicker, scored Riverview’s initial 1st XV points when he raised the flags with a goal from a free kick. Frank Dynon unwittingly scored Riverview’s first try a few weeks later when he ran behind the posts, stood nonplussed for a moment and then, placing the ball on the ground, sat on it!

Although the AAGPS was formed in 1892 and although Riverview was a founding member, the College did not join the GPS Competition until 1907.

Until the 1960s, however, Riverview’s numerical size militated against consistent challenge in the GPS competitions. The undefeated 1964 side memorably broke the drought during a year dubbed ‘the year of the trophies’ and gave impetus and inspiration until the legendary Les Kirkpatrick coached an unprecedented three 1st XV Premierships in eight years, 1972, 1975 and 1980. When another undefeated side emerged in 1996 this was the first of six GPS Premierships in 15 years (and another five 2nd XV Premierships). In 2017, Jack Dempsey became the seventeenth Riverview old boy since Iggy O’Donnell in 1899, to represent the Wallabies, the first since his uncle Tony Dempsey in 1994. Thirty-three Riverview old boys have played 1st class Rugby in Australia and  there are now four currently playing in Super Rugby teams.

Riverview’s contribution to Rugby in Australia is now quite significant.

The Jesuits and Shakespeare

This term, our Year 9 English classes are studying Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this play, first performed in 1606, Shakespeare explores the instability of the social order, especially when Macbeth murders King Duncan and has himself crowned as King of Scotland, plunging the country into terror and chaos.

Gerard Windsor (OR1962) has written that the Jesuits “are embalmed in European literature.” In particular, there are the writings of Joyce, Donne, Waugh, Pascal. But Shakespeare?

In Macbeth, the drunken porter who pretends to be the keeper of Hell’s gate, pretends to admit those deserving of Hell. He welcomes “those who committed treason enough for God’s sake yet could not equivocate to Heaven”. In Shakespearean times, the word ‘equivocator’ was synonymous with the word ‘Jesuit’, an order only formed some 72 years previously by St Ignatius of Loyola. So the Jacobean audiences who first saw Shakespeare’s play would have understood his contemporary comment. The audience would have been well aware of the notorious ‘Gunpowder Plot’ of 1605 when a small group, urged on by at least one Jesuit, came close to blowing up King James himself, his heir, the courts and the parliament. Sometimes this plot was termed ‘the Jesuit treason’. Jesuits were widely believed to be in concert with the Devil and were hunted down and executed.

The details of the Gunpowder Plot were allegedly known by Fr Henry Garnet SJ (1555-1606) who had previously advised one of the conspirators, Robert Catesby. Father Garnet was accused of ‘equivocation’ among other crimes, sentenced and executed on 3 May 1606, about the time thatMacbeth was first performed. His severed head was then set on London Bridge as an example for all of the punishment for treason or falsehoods or ‘equivocation’.

Macbeth, Shakespeare and Ignatius all joined together!

Old Ignatian Boer War Veterans and Descendants

Yesterday, 31 May, was the 116th anniversary of the signing of the treaty that ended the Boer War (the South African War). But what connects:
a) one of the 18 Old Ignatians who went off to the Boer War with
b) a past Lawrence Campbell competitor,
c) the current Prime Minister and
d) the 2016 Dux of the College?

A little about the Boer War first.

When Henry Reynolds published Unnecessary Wars (NewSouth, 2016), he argued that Australian governments have seen the Boer War (1899-1902) as a paradigm by which they could commit to participating in subsequent wars in return for the promise of security from the ‘great powers’. The Boer War, which ended with the signing of the peace treaty of Vereeniging 116 years ago, 31 May 1902, was Britain’s response to the Dutch Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Reynolds writes:

“It was an extraordinary achievement of British diplomacy to receive the military support of the six Australian colonies… The Australians and New Zealanders competed with one another to display their loyalty… Supporters of imperial federation were ecstatic.”

Australia’s patriotism was exemplary but losses were severe. Of the 20,000 Australian men and nurses who served, 1000 were killed or died of sickness. Of the 18 Old Ignatians who served, two died. Peace was secured by conceding to the Boer demands that black South Africans would be treated as equals. Realities were often hidden. A trooper’s diary recorded:

“All Dutch houses were looted… it was a very amusing sight to see our troops returning to camp with all kinds of loot… a large number of women and children may be counted in our list of captures. We burnt all their houses.”

But much was censored back home.

One of the Old Ignatians was Charles Hilton Cecil (known as Hilton) Goold (OR1893). He outlived most of his contemporaries and most of the Boer War veterans when he died in 1976 aged 97. He came from Cobar to Riverview in 1890 and stayed until he was 15 years of age. He won prizes for studies and he threw the cricket ball a considerable distance in that event at the 1891 Annual Sports. Aged 22, he went off to South Africa. Trooper Hilton Goold, regimental number 3335, was in the 3rd NSW Mounted Rifles and was considered an accurate rifle shot. 116 years ago this week, he left Capetown and returned to Australia and to civilian life until the clarion call of another war moved him to enlist in July 1918, aged 39. His brother, Arthur Goold (OR1893), had been killed in action at Gallipoli on 29 April 1915. But Hilton was not to see action this time as the Armistice to end the Great War on 11 November caused his boat to turn around and to proceed back to Australia. For the next 58 years, Hilton Goold lived contentedly and peacefully, running a general store at Drummoyne, a veteran of two wars but virtually lost to memory at Riverview although his son, John Hilton Goold, was here for one year in 1945, and other relations, the O’Neills and the Rotherys, were also here.

Hilton’s great nephew, Ric Davidson (OR1972) wrote: “I knew Hilton. He lived to 97 and my mother and I used to visit him in his home in Chatswood near Boundary Rd… my (great) aunt said she’d never heard my story about Hilton being in the Boer War.”

Like so many, he simply didn’t say much about his war service even to his own family. Ric Davidson was a gifted debater and public speaker, a member of the Australian Schools’ Debating side in 1972. He was also Riverview’s contestant in the Lawrence Campbell Oratory competition held at Sydney Grammar School in July 1972. There, he ran up against one of the best and was placed second, speaking exceptionally on the proverb, ‘The peacock hath fair feathers but foul feet’. But the winner chose the quotation from Antony and Cleopatra. When Agrippa hears of Antony’s death, he says: “And strange it is / That nature must compel us to lament / Our most persisted deeds.”

The winner? Malcolm Turnbull of Sydney Grammar. Of course, since then, MB Turnbull has served as the 29th Prime Minister of Australia.

Hilton Goold’s connections continue. The 2016 Dux of Riverview, Mark Rothery, is Hilton’s great great nephew through his grandmother’s line.

CHC Goold – the last of the 18 Old Ignatian Boer War veterans. Spare a thought for him on the 116th anniversary of the end of the Boer War.

John Dominic Augustine Halloran (OR1910): The Centenary of a Brave Death

100 years ago next Thursday, 31 May, Private John (Jack) Halloran, aged 23, was killed by a shell while he was sheltering behind the front line in Strazeele in France.

He is little known at Riverview. As far as we know, there were no other relatives of his who went to Riverview. His younger brother, Thomas Michael (Tommy) Halloran, was educated in Queensland and he, also, was killed in The Great War, at Passchendaele in Belgium on 12 October 1917, aged 22. The brothers came from faraway Tolga in North Queensland, 45 kilometres south west of Cairns, where the Yidini people first lived and where their parents ran the Railway Hotel at a time when Tolga had only about 600 residents. Halloran’s Hill on the Atherton Tableland is named after the pioneering Irish family and to this day there is a Halloran Street in Tolga.

Jack made the arduous journey south to Riverview in 1909 with Bert Lynch (OR1910). They were two of the five young men born in this small town to enlist in the AIF. Of the five, three were killed.

Jack enlisted in February 1916 having worked as a sugar cane cutter since leaving Riverview. He survived in France for two years, but on Friday 31 May at 9am he was killed by the same shell that also killed his Company Commander, Captain Duncan Mulholland, who had been serving since Gallipoli. They are both buried at La Kreule Military Cemetery. 76 other Australians are buried in that cemetery including another Riverview old boy, Captain Bertie Stuart-Mason (OR1906) who was killed in July 1918.
The cemetery is just east of the village of Saint Omer where the ‘English Jesuit College of St Omer’ was founded in 1593 when Catholics were being hunted down all over England. In 1795, the school transferred to England on the site where it still exists now under the name ‘Stonyhurst College’.

Like many other relatives of those killed in the Great War, Mrs Catherine Halloran made attempts to visit the graves of her sons as a type of pilgrimage in 1923.
The pilgrimage was to bring a mother close once again to her two sons, her only boys, sacrificed on the fields of Europe, and we remember the older son, Jack, especially next week, 100 years after his death.

What I’ve Been Reading

Firstly, consider this comment on books, written in 2009 by Melinda Harvey, lecturer in Literature Studies at the University of Melbourne”

“Books are becoming things of the past, still hanging around but superceded. We continue to read, but books make up a diminishing proportion of the material we run our eyes over…Librarians, ‘digitising’ and ‘deaccessioning’ spend their time taking books off shelves.”

I read this book, however, borrowed from Riverview’s Library, where our Librarians are invariably most helpful, by turning the pages! The Soldier’s Curse by Meg and Tom Keneally, Vintage Australia, 2016. This is the first in a series of three so far, known as the Monsarrat series. It is about a gentleman-convict turned detective, set in 1825 in Port Macquarie, a penal station in colonial New South Wales. Tom Keneally, Booker prize winning author of 40 books, and his daughter, Meg, have combined to tell this story.

Meg says of the father-daughter project, “I felt like I was finger-painting over a Da Vinci.”

Tom says, “Let Meg’s voice carry.”

It’s hard to tell who wrote what, so seamless is the narrative. Port Macquarie was established to deal with second-time offenders and the novel traverses the times of Hugh Monsarrat, originally transported to NSW for forgery, impersonating a barrister in England. The Major’s wife dies. A murder has been committed. The murderer is revealed. It’s fast-paced, gripping.

“The real pleasure lies in the re-creation of the past and the sensibilities of those who inhabit it,” comments Sue Turnbull in The Sydney Morning Herald review in February 2016.

If you are drawn to this, then read the second and third of the series: The Unmourned (2017) and The Power Game (2018). They are all on the shelves of our Christopher Brennan Library.

118 Years of Mothers’ Day

The ancient Greeks honoured Cybele, a mother goddess. The Romans celebrated The Hilaria. In the Catholic Church we reverence Mary the mother of God.

In May 1914, the United States’ President, Woodrow Wilson, signed the first presidential proclamation calling on all United States’ citizens to honour mothers on the second Sunday in May. And that’s where our celebration of Mother’s Day began.

But it was Anna Jarvis who organised the first Mother’s Day services on 10 May 1910 in West Virginia when she asked all children to visit or write letters to their mothers “for the blessing that mothers are”.

Sometimes since, it’s become a commercial proposition, an expensive gift day. But if we are ruled by our hearts, we’ll honour and love all our mothers especially on this Sunday.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Anzac Day Ceremony

We marked Anzac Day this week on Wednesday 2 May. One of the most solemn moments of our commemoration occurred when 120 of our current boys stood as the names and photos of the 120 Old Ignatians who died in the wars of the 20th century appear on the screens in the Ramsay Hall. We honour and remember them.

During the ceremony, Douglas Oxenham of Year 12 read the story of his great great uncle, Gordon Oxenham, killed 100 years ago.

GORDON OXENHAM

Gordon Oxenham was one of five brothers who were at Riverview in the early 20th century and he was my great great uncle. He was an enthusiastic rower and winner of a silver medal at the 1909 regatta.
When war broke out, Gordon was a grazier and he joined the Australian Flying Corps with the rank of Flight Lieutenant.

In February 1918, he wrote to his brother, Humphrey: “You will be pleased to know that in my first aerial combat, I brought down an enemy two-seater. Clive Conrick, who was at Riverview with me, is up here also and we are going to call the plane ‘The Riverview.’”

On 27 June 1918, almost 100 years ago, Gordon chased a German plane as far as the Dead Sea across the desert. During the flight, Gordon was shot through the head and killed as his plane crash landed in Palestine. Gordon’s body was recovered but he has no known grave. When all his back pay was eventually sent home to his family, his parents donated it to Riverview to be used for a prize (the Gordon Oxenham Prize) which has been awarded ever since for excellence and for distinguished character. This has been the major award for boarders for over 60 years.

The Oxenham family’s name has continued for over 120 years at Riverview and I am proud to be among the fourth generation of Oxenhams to attend Riverview.

And Henry Ryan of Year 11, who lives in New Zealand, read the story of a New Zealander who went to Riverview and who was killed 100 years ago.

GEORGE DOMINIC HILL

George Hill was one of a number of boys from New Zealand who went to Riverview in the early 20th century. He was the son of a farmer from Christchurch and he was at Riverview for just one year, 1914. He was born in 1899 on a date that would later become famous as a day of remembrance for all Australians and New Zealanders, 25 April, later commemorated as Anzac Day.

At Riverview, George was a keen athlete and in September 1914, he came third in the Under 16 half-mile event at the GPS Athletics. George tried to enlist, aged 17, but he was rejected because he was too young. In the following year, 1917, he was successful and he was sent to the Western Front.

Two weeks ago, on 19 April, we marked the hundredth anniversary of George Hill’s death. He was hit by a sniper while helping another soldier lying in open ground. The bullet lodged in his spine and he died a few hours later just short of his nineteenth birthday, the youngest of any of the Old Ignatians killed in World War I. He is buried in a cemetery in Belgium and today we remember him: George Hill, a brave New Zealander and a brave Old Ignatian.

Finally, we ended with this prayer, read by Father Joe Dooley SJ.

“God of Love,
You called your wounded servant Ignatius to your son, Jesus, to a life of service away from the search for honours and power.
May we too be open to Jesus so that we may discern the ways of peace for our school and for our world with hearts and minds that yearn for what is good and just and true.
We make our prayer through Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, our brother and Our Lord. 

An Addition to the List of Riverview Boys’ Fathers who Played 1st Grade Rugby League:

How could I have forgotten! Jimmy Gillon played 1st Grade for North Sydney from 1952 until 1957. He was the father of Murray (OR1978).

CHERISH OUR EDUCATION

Sometimes we take our education for granted until we hear stories like this. Just before Easter, Boko Haram extremists returned 104 Nigerian Muslim girls who had been kidnapped from a boarding school in Northern Nigeria in February. The extremists delivered the girls apparently unharmed but with the chilling message to villagers: Don’t ever put your daughters into school again.

Boko Haram means ‘western education is forbidden’ and the extremist group is allied to Islamic State. Nearly four years ago, 270 girls were similarly kidnapped from a school in Chibok. 100 are still missing. Places where education for girls is strictly prohibited are almost unimaginable to us in 21st century Australia where education is compulsory and expected.

Then, on Holy Thursday, the Nobel peace laureate, Malala Yousafzai, returned to Pakistan for the first time in six years since being shot by Taliban militants infuriated by her campaign to extend education to women. Imagine young women deprived of basic education and of the influence of teachers such as those described by Alberto Manguel in this 2015 book Curiosity: “Students can discover unknown territories… but above all, the teacher establishes a place in which students can exercise their imagination and curiosity, a place where they can be free to think…”

Freedom… and Education. Don’t take them for granted.

A SECOND AUSTRALIAN SAINT?

When Mary Mackillop was being considered for canonisation as a Saint of the Church, the postulator was Father Paul Gardiner SJ who had taught at Riverview in a few stints. The postulator guides the cause of a candidate for canonisation through the Church’s processes for formally recognising and declaring saints which usually involves proof of two miracles.

Now, the cause of another Australian, Eileen O’Connor, is in the hands of Old Ignatian Father Anthony Robbie (OR1985). Eileen Rosaline O’Connor (1892-1921) lived most of her 28 years in acute pain after her spine was broken when she was three. In 1913 in Sydney, she founded a group of nurses, known as Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor. They cared for the sick and dying who could not afford to go to hospital, often walking long distances to the homes of the poor to be with those whose need was greatest. Although she was unable to do the work of the nurses herself, Eileen used her left arm (which she was able to move) to make phone calls. She was an inspirational figure in early 20th century Sydney and her cause is now in the best of hands with Father Robbie’s guidance.

Untangling the Mysteries of Graham Mareo (OR1934)

Graham Mareo (OR1934) in the 4th XI, Our Alma Mater 1933

A few weeks ago in Viewpoint, I began the circuitous story of Graham Mareo, one of our 55 Old Ignatians killed in World War II. Layer upon layer of mystery seemed to block every bit of apparent illumination.

Briefly, he was difficult to trace mainly because of multiple changes in surname by his family. His father, Eric, had used at least eight surnames in his life. His mother’s identity was not clear. She was probably Dorothy Brown or Gray (she was married to Dr Gray) and Graham was born in England in 1917, out of wedlock. Where he was educated before coming to Sydney with his father and sister (Mrs Gray had died by this time) in 1931 was also not clear. Some of the schools he was said to have attended either did not exist or had no record of him. His relationship to one of the early distinguished music teachers at Riverview, his grandfather, Raimund Pechotsch (Eric Mareo’s father) may not have been realized when Graham was at Riverview in 1933 and 1934. Then, there was the matter of Eric Mareo’s conviction for murder of another of his wives in New Zealand.

So, after his father’s imprisonment, Graham returned to England in 1938 and married Margaret Mahoney in 1939. Graham and Margaret had two sons, Michael born in 1940 and Peter born in 1943. It was Peter whom I finally tracked down in 2014 to learn more of this previously opaque story and to see photos of Peter’s father, Graham, and of his grave. But Peter’s surname was Ellis! A comparison of photos of Graham Mareo at Riverview and of Graham Ellis in military uniform resulted in the conclusion that they were the same person.

Graham had been called up for service at the outbreak of the war in 1939. By then, he was using the surname Ellis, perhaps to distance himself from his father’s crime. It was as Graham Ellis that he attended Sandhurst in 1941 to train as an officer and to serve with the rank of Acting Captain. While holding that rank, he was awarded the Military Cross for considerable courage in taking a French village on 19 August 1944. There is no doubt that Riverview’s Graham Mareo, whatever surname he used, was a brave soldier.

But, what happened to him then? How did he come to die during the War? And why is he buried in Holland and why do his British Army records claim that he was born in Holland? More mysteries!

I’ll untangle them in Viewpoint in a few weeks.

The Ramsay Legacy

Fr John Ramsay SJ and Paul Ramsay AO

The Ramsay Hall at Riverview. Our school assembly hall, named in honour of one of the great Riverview families. The Boathouse on the foreshore. Funded largely by the beneficence of Paul Ramsay, and the most appropriate location for the victorious Rowing dinner held last Saturday evening.

Why ‘most appropriate’?

Well, Father John Ramsay SJ was the coach of the last Riverview 1st VIII crew to win the Head of the River. John Ramsay was one of Paul Ramsay’s brothers. As most would now know, this rowing triumph took place in 1975, a distant 43 years ago, and most of that distinguished crew are now men in their early sixties. It is pleasant to imagine that John Ramsay was smiling gently down on an ecstatic gathering that was celebrating victory after so many years of toil.
It’s tempting to also reflect that the spirit of John’s brother, Paul, was also beaming down on the gathering in the Boathouse.

It was a coincidence (or a portent?) that during the week leading up to the Head of the River, a letter appeared in The Australian from the former Prime Minister, John Howard, who is now Chairman of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. The Ramsay Centre, funded by the extraordinary generosity and philanthropy and vision of Paul Ramsay AO, was launched in November last year at a function which I attended. Mr Howard’s letter championed the Centre as a legacy of Paul Ramsay “who wanted us to better understand our Western inheritance” through a study of “the civilisation which has overwhelmingly shaped Australia.” The Ramsay Centre is an academic centre with connections to Universities in Australia to revive the liberal arts and humanities and to proclaim the West’s literary, philosophical, theological and artistic heritage.

We stand on the shoulders of two of the giants of Riverview, John and Paul Ramsay, as we honour their memory.

A Tangled Web: The Elusive Graham Mareo (OR1934)

In the 1946 edition of ‘Our Alma Mater’ (OAM), there are eight pages devoted to the Riverview Honour Roll – a list of Old Boys who served during World War II. The list had been “widely circulated during the year in the hope of securing necessary corrections… before the proposed Memorial takes concrete shape…”

50 Old Boys are listed as having lost their lives during the War. In 1951, when the list was set in concrete on the outside wall of the College’s Memorial Hall on a plaque honouring those Old Boys killed in the War, the number had grown to 52. In 2017, there are 55 as the stories of three more Old Boys have come to light in recent years.

Among the names of those who died, all in gold lettering, is ‘MAREO, G.’ This is Graham Eric Mareo who was at Riverview as a student from July 1933 until August 1934. But his name was not among the 50 listed in the 1946 OAM. So, between 1946 and 1951, someone must have informed the College authorities that Graham Mareo had been killed in the War. Who was this informant? The bare details are correct. Graham Mareo was a Riverview Old Boy. He did die in the War. But just about everything else about him is tangled in mystery. So who was he?

When he enrolled at the College, he was listed in the Register of Students as a ‘bursary boy’, on reduced fees, having previously been at Cranbrook School in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. There are brief mentions in the 1933 OAM: he was a member of the 6th XV Rugby side, the 4th XI cricket team and also a member of the 2nd Division Debating Society, making up a formidable team with Frank McDermott and Dominic Cummings. Dominic was a member of Riverview’s initial GPS Debating side of 1935 and won the Lawrence Campbell Oratory Competition for Riverview in 1936. But by this stage, Graham had left Riverview.

Most of Graham’s school fees were still unpaid when he left. There was just over 25 pounds owing in 1933 and then a further 29 pounds unpaid for 1934. The notation in Riverview’s ledger of expenditure, kept by the Minister, Fr Colin McKillop SJ (a cousin of Saint Mary McKillop) reads: “A/cs left unsatisfactorily – could not collect from father”. Fr McKillop had a reputation for business acumen and efficient keeping of accounts, and was one of those at Riverview who, during the Depression, lifted the school from its considerable financial difficulties. But even he had to write off what was owing for Mareo’s education. And that’s about where it stood. The was no obituary in OAM. Searches among the lists of Australian troops drew a blank. There seemed to be no known relatives.

It was only during the course of writing a book of biographies of those Old Boys killed in World War II, Dare To Do So Much, published in 2012, that I came across a book published in New Zealand in 2002, written by Dr Charles Ferrall and Rebecca Ellis (since elevated to the New Zealand Supreme Court). This book, The Trials of Eric Mareo, examined the sensational story of Graham’s father, Eric, who had been convicted of the murder of his wife in Auckland. Some of the gaps in Graham Mareo’s life started to close. Graham was born, apparently out of wedlock, on 2 October 1917 at Aldershot, Hampshire in England, son of Eric Joachim Mareo (formerly known as Pechotsch) and Dorothy Jane Gray (nee Brown). Where Graham went to school before arriving at Riverview in 1933, aged nearly 16, is a matter of speculation. According to Ferrall and Ellis, Graham was educated, until 1930, at the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, a private Catholic school founded in London in 1914. Correspondence with that school has since revealed that there is no record of Graham’s having been a student there under any combination of surnames including Mareo or Gray. Nor is he listed under any recognisable or plausible name on the school’s honour list of those 39 Old Boys killed in World War II, on the wall of Addison Hall in the school. Nigel Barker, who did much of the subsequent research work that I used to try to track down Mareo, concluded, “…the name of the school must have been given to conceal the real identity of Graham’s education. Perhaps fees were owing at the time he came to Australia.”

When Graham accompanied his father and his sister, Betty, to Sydney in 1931, he was enrolled as a day boy at Cranbrook School. His previous school, however, is listed in the Cranbrook records as ‘RC [Roman Catholic] Dowling H [High School] Westfield on Sea, Essex.’ Extensive searches have since revealed that no such school ever existed.

This is only one of many inconsistencies in the various versions of Graham’s story. Ferrall and Ellis’ book reveals much about Graham’s talented father’s dissolute and duplicitous life; his trials and their aftermath. Eric Mareo was convicted of murder on 17 June 1936 and twice sentenced to death by hanging, a sentence that was later commuted on appeal to life imprisonment in Mount Eden jail. In May 1948, he was released from prison and almost immediately married Gladys Ethel Andrea who had been his physiotherapist in jail. By this time, he had changed his name to Eric Curtis, one of the nine surnames he used during his life of 69 years. But what of Graham?

After his father’s trial (at which Graham had to give evidence) and appeal, Graham returned with his sister to England where Betty died in 1939. Relying on information in The Trials of Eric Mareo, I wrote:

“Graham, now married, enlisted in the British forces. He took part in the Normandy invasion and received the Military Cross for bravery but, while off duty, he was shot and killed by an unknown person in a French town. Unfortunately, or perhaps predictably, given his father’s example, despite his marriage and two children, Graham Mareo had been having a lengthy affair with another woman. His murder may have been related to that fact.”

And that was that as far as Graham Mareo was concerned. I wrote the biography, with acknowledgement to Ferrall and Ellis and to Janet Howse, the Archivist at Cranbrrok School, and published the book. There was enough material for three pages and the photo of him in the Riverview 6th XV of 1933. But many questions kept gnawing away.

After publication, I realised that there had been an earlier Riverview connection. Raimund Leo Pechotsch, Graham’s grandfather, came to Australia in 1880 and had taught Music at Riverview from 1893 until 1895. He then returned in 1919 and taught as a visiting music master until 1927. Raimund had married a widow, Elizabeth Mary Curtis, in 1885. Mrs Curtis had two sons by her first marriage, one of whom, William (Billy), had sent his son, Peter to Riverview in 1939. Then Peter’s son, Nicholas, also went to Riverview, as did Nicholas’ son, Oliver. My curiosity about this intriguing family was aroused. The vague facts of the story were enticing. So various lines of enquiry began.

Cathy Hobbs, Riverview’s Archivist, and Janet Howse at Cranbrook were particularly helpful. The information in Ferrall and Ellis’ book was of great assistance, although some of it just seemed to throw up more questions. Then I was introduced to Nigel Barker. Nigel’s forensic and meticulous research turned up many coherent facts which helped put the story together. His patience in tracking down the surname, Ellis, that Graham used after 1939, was crucial. The most surprising fact that Nigel found was that Graham’s two sons, Michael and Peter Ellis, were still alive in 2014, living in England. Emails and telephone conversations with Peter Ellis were illuminating.

There’s more to come!

Prolific Cricketers

Mark Taylor and Percy McDonnell, Australian Test Cricket Captains and Past Parents

Last week’s article about the Rugby League players who sent their sons to Riverview provided opportunities for comment and questions: “I didn’t realise that Rugby League was played at Riverview.” “Why did so many of the legends of the 1980s send their sons here?”

The article finished with a question: Who are the two Australian Test cricket captains who sent their sons to Riverview?

• Mark Taylor, who played 104 Tests and captained Australia in 50 of them, is most likely better known than the other.
• Percy McDonnell captained Australia six times in the 1880s. He was a Jesuit educated scholar who could read the Greek classics in the original language. After his early death, his two sons went to Riverview and the younger, Stanley McDonnell, was Dux of the College in 1911.

Then there are four other Test cricketers who sent their sons here.

• Gordon Rorke (4 Tests) had three sons and four grandsons at Riverview.
• Reggie Duff (who scored centuries in his first and last Tests) had a son, Hilton, who was an outstanding cricketer and Rugby player here in the 1920s.
• Peter Toohey played 15 Tests and his son, Oliver, finished here in 2017.
• Bill Playle, who represented New Zealand in Test cricket and then Western Australia before settling in Sydney and helping with our 1st XI, had two sons here.

Five others who played 1st class cricket were fathers of sons who then went to Riverview:

• Eric McElhone went to St Aloysius and then played for NSW with the legendary Victor Trumper in the early 20th century. He had a son, grandsons and great grandsons at Riverview.
• Selby Burt played twice for NSW with Don Bradman 1928-30.
• John Gray played for Warwickshire in England.
• Denis Hickey played 57 games for Victoria, South Australia and Glamorgan.
• John Skilbeck opened the bowling for NSW nine times.

Another trivia question to finish: Who are the two first class players whose sons have taught at Riverview?

Hint…one is still here.

Riverview, Rugby League, Relations

Rugby League. Not much to write about here? But with the NRL season beginning this coming week, I thought that another minor footnote in Riverview’s history might need some exploration.

What is not much remembered is that Riverview actually had a Rugby League side that played in the local competition in 2003. Riverview, already strong in Rugby, Australian Rules and Football, played four codes during those seasons. Then, how many Riverview Old Boys have played in the NRL? Not many. Charlie Rorke (OR2017) is the most recent of a small number (he’s just been signed by the Canberra Raiders) and Michael Fenn (OR2016) played in the Manly Under 20s Premiers last season.

How many Riverview teachers have played in the NRL? A small few. But, a more fruitful search reveals that at least eleven NRL players have sent their sons to Riverview.

• Dennis Cubis played for North Sydney from 1962 to 1970 and one game for NSW. His sons and grandsons have gone to Riverview.
• John Gray played for Wigan, North Sydney and Manly and played 11 Tests for England and Great Britain.
• Steve Gearin played 177 1st Grade games for Canterbury, St George and Manly from 1975-86 and scored an incredible 1388 points.
• Chris Luckman represented North Sydney in 102 1st Grade games from 1977-84.
• Ben Elias played 234 games for Balmain, 22 for NSW and 14 for Australia from 1982-94.
• Steve Roach from 1982-92 played 186 games for Balmain, 17 for NSW and 19 for Australia.
• Paul Langmack played 309 1st Grade games and also coached Souths.
• Bruce Walker played 226 1st Grade games with Norths and Manly from 1982-94 and one game for each of NSW and Queensland.
• Jason Austin played two games, one for Norths and one for Wests in 1992 and 1996.
• Simon Gillies played 161 games for Canterbury Bankstown and 29 for Warrington.
• And Brian and Michael Dempsey, as well as playing NRL, produced sons who represented.

That’s all very well. But how many 1st class cricketers have then sent their sons to Riverview? There are only nine but two were Australian captains… next time!

Athletics at Riverview: 1885-1892

23rd February 2018

The 1st XI in 1887: G Barry, P Cosgrove, T Cussen, M Dalton, J O’Keefe, Peter Clifford, G Mason, J Fitzsimons, F Lawler, L Clifford, J Mooney, R Hyndes, F Mason, W H Sheridan

Let’s begin with some relevant dates. The annual Riverview ‘athletic sports’ contests began in 1885. Riverview became one of the first GPS schools from the beginning of the AAGPS in 1892. It was not until 1914, however, that Riverview competed at the GPS Athletics carnival which had begun in 1895. Why was Riverview so eager to join the AAGPS in 1892 but remained apart from some of its major sporting contests for so long (Riverview finally entered the Rugby competition in 1907 and the cricket competition as well as the Athletics in 1914)? Three simple reasons seem compelling:

• Riverview was a relatively small school. In 1892, there were fewer than 100 students, whereas Sydney Grammar had four times as many. Grammar won 24 of the first 27 Athletics premierships. Whatever talent there was at Riverview was spread thinly.
• The College authorities were most reluctant to allow sporting teams to miss Saturday morning classes and Riverview’s distance from some of the other schools meant that travelling to other grounds to fulfil ‘away’ fixtures was prohibitive. For its first 34 years, Riverview played very few games of any sport away from the College.
• The grounds at Riverview in any case were irregularly levelled and stones were dangerous obstacles

THE ORIGINS OF THE AAGPS 1892

When a meeting was held at Gunsler’s Café at 175 Pitt Street in Sydney on 31 March 1892, the portents were mixed. It was a wet and stormy night but representatives of six schools gathered to consider a proposal to form an association of schools, the AAGPS. Four of the current nine GPS schools sent representatives: Kings, Shore, St Joseph’s and Riverview. The initially appointed secretary was John Laurence Mooney (OR1889, part of the team pictured above) but he was unable to take up the position and was replaced before the Association could be formed. Riverview’s other delegate to this first meeting was John de Lacy O’Reilly who was a Master at Riverview from 1883 until 1893. Lea-Scarlett comments that although Riverview was a founding member of the AAGPS, “…during the early years representatives were not normally sent to meetings”. Father Dalton in his diary makes no mention of the initial meeting on 31 March 1892. Furthermore, “While the official presence of O’Reilly and Mooney said something about the status of lay masters and ex-students, it indicated also a lack of appreciation by the Jesuits of the importance of such an occasion.” (page 156)

O’Reilly, much respected by the early students at Riverview, left teaching in 1893 to practise as a barrister but then died of typhoid aged 28 on Christmas Eve 1894. The monument erected over his grave at Rookwood Cemetery was a gift from his grateful former students.

Strangely, Mooney took no further part in the AAGPS after this first meeting even though he lived for another 58 years. His sporting successes came early in life. At Riverview, he was a renowned cricketer, a left hand slow bowler whose 9-19 against All Saints’ Bathurst in 1887 still stands as the best figures in an innings by a Riverview 1st XI cricketer. His obituary in the 1950 Alma Mater unfortunately confuses him with another John Mooney from Goulburn who played against the touring English cricketers in November 1886. JL Mooney raised a family, worked in the Tramways Department and served his local parish at Rockdale with exemplary fidelity. JL Mooney was at the birth of two significant organisations that still exist: in addition to the first meeting of the AAGPS, Mooney was at a dinner at Riverview in 1889 during which he proposed the formation of an Old Boys’ Union, the forerunner of the OIU, which came into existence in 1897.

SPORTS AT RIVERVIEW

Almost from the first days, Riverview boys participated in games of cricket, Australian Football, handball, tennis, rifle shooting and athletics. Games were mostly internally organised and occasionally interspersed with the eagerly-awaited visits of other schools or clubs.

Despite the small numbers in the school, some undoubted sporting champions emerged. The first of these was John Henry (Jack) Fagan (OR1886, pictured left) who had come from Carcoar to Riverview in 1881. In 1886, he was the champion runner, Colour Sergeant in the rifle club, captain of the 1st XI (and scorer of two rare centuries that season), honorary secretary of the football club. “Our champion runner, JH Fagan still maintains his place as champion short distance school runner of NSW-The Carcoar Deerfoot” (OAM 1886 p. 34). Fagan represented Riverview at the all schools races at Newington that year and he received a handsome trophy from Cardinal Moran at the 1886 Speech Day. The editor of the 1886 OAM was even moved to quote from Vergil book 5 to compare Fagan with the mythical runner, Nisus, who was swifter than the winds. After school, Fagan played Rugby for the Randwick Club, studied architecture but did not practise and then returned to the Carcoar area as a grazier, cattle breeder and horse owner.

One champion was regularly followed by another until the GPS Athletics signalled the end of Riverview’s isolation.
(There will be more in the next few months on Aths at Riverview.)

A footnote on last week’s column:

Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s Great Supporter and a Riverview Brush with Fame

You may remember that last week I told the story of Brendan Bracken, one of Winston Churchill’s closest advisors during World War II. He once applied to teach at Riverview but was refused because he had exaggerated his background, claiming to have been at Clongowes, the Jesuit school just outside Dublin. There is certainly no record of his ever having been at Clongowes. A previously unknown Jesuit priest who had come from Clongowes to Riverview was said to have informed the Rector that Bracken had never been at Clongowes and so that Bracken’s request for a position at Riverview was not accepted. Fr Michael Head SJ, the Province Archivist, has given us the clue as to the priest’s identity. In all likelihood, this was Fr William O’Keeffe SJ (1873-1944), an Irish Jesuit who had taught at Clongowes from 1911 until 1916 and then at Riverview from 1916 until 1930. A minor mystery appears to have been solved!

Anniversaries

During the last week of the holidays, we marked Australia Day, a day that’s recently been the cause of some controversy. 230 years ago, on 26 January 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip and his ships containing around 750 convicts from Great Britain arrived at Port Jackson and landed at a place they called Sydney Cove, named after the British Home Secretary, Viscount Sydney.

Next Monday, 12 February, we’ll mark the 138th anniversary of Riverview’s first day as a school. On that day in 1880, Fr Joseph Dalton SJ, Riverview’s founding Rector, on his 63rd birthday, welcomed the brothers, Arthur and Thomas Moore, “with an escort of mother and aunts” to the cottage which served as the school and which stood where the Eastern side of the Rose Garden is now situated.

If you want to stretch the similarities between these two events, then read on!

Firstly, the first person to set foot ashore at Port Jackson was said to have been the 26 year old Able Seaman, Owen Cavanough, who jumped off to secure the longboat carrying Captain Phillip. One of Cavanough’s descendants, eight generations on, is currently at Riverview.

Secondly, the weather played a significant part in delaying both events. Gale force winds on 24 January 1788 delayed the First Fleet’s moving from Botany Bay to Sydney Cove until the morning of 26 January. In February 1880, heavy rain delayed the arrival of the Moore brothers for a few days. Father Dalton had expected them to walk up from the ferry wharf a few days previous, before 12 February.

Thirdly, Phillip claimed the land for Great Britain and King George III. But 182 years before that, on 14 May 1606, Captain Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, a Portuguese explorer in the service of Spain, had landed on an island, part of what is now called Vanuatu, and claimed the land “in the name of Jesus” while erecting a crucifix calling the land the southern land of the Holy Spirit. When Fr Dalton (an Irishman of the Society of Jesus whose founder, Saint Ignatius, was Spanish and whose Society’s symbol was the crucifix), bought the property on the Lane Cove River in 1878, there is no record of how exactly he claimed the land. But something that combined Jesus, the crucifix and the Holy Spirit couldn’t have been too far from his mind.

A footnote:
Why was the name ‘Australia’ chosen?
Why was the school called ‘Riverview’?

In Memory of Patrick Rodgers (OR2011)

In place of Mr James Rodgers’ (OR1971) regular column, we honour the memory of his son…

Patrick James Rodgers (OR2011), 1994-2017.

This picture shows Patrick with some of the children in Cambodia during his first visit to the country on his immersion in Year 11, 2010.

‘This Immortal Diamond’ (Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ)

Left: The father of Jihad Darwiche. Right: Chris Parker

In all the tragedy, hopelessness and despair of the nightly news or the morning’s papers came two inspirational stories that caught my eye this year. The ‘immortal diamonds’ appear when least expected. These two stories contain glowing moments of the largeness of the human spirit; consolation when we may have cause to despair.

Firstly, just a few weeks ago: “As he prepared to bury his son, the father of Jihad Darwiche, who was killed when a car ploughed into a Year 3 classroom in Southwestern Sydney, pushed through his grief to offer forgiveness to the driver and declare the tragedy an honest mistake. “She (the driver) is welcome to come and sit with my family, have a meal and talk…””

And then in May this year, Chris Parker, a homeless man, was in the foyer of the Manchester Arena when a bomb detonated killing 22 people who were leaving the Ariana Grande concert. He ran into the venue, cradled a dying woman in his arms and helped a little girl who had lost her legs. This is selflessness, admirable heroism, service. It’s a bright light shining in the darkness and terror.

Another immortal diamond amidst the dross. Another story that underscores the joy inherent in Christmas. And it took a homeless man and a Moslem father to bring it home to us.

May you and your families be much blessed at Christmas.

I Was Hungry and You Gave

The Gospel reading for last Sunday’s Mass was that famous passage from Matthew (25:31-46) where “the Son of Man comes in his glory, escorted by his angels”. He then separates those who have deserved life everlasting. They are those who, amongst other generous acts, “gave me food when I was hungry”. For, we are told, “whenever you did this to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me.”

We are encouraged to do good to others rather than to do nothing; to be generous rather than indifferent. The Latin version of this Gospel passage forms the basis of the motto of one of our Houses here, Claver House. ‘Esurivi et dedistis’ – “I was hungry and you gave.”

Why is that motto applicable to Claver House? Firstly, some historical context. When the pastoral care Houses were first introduced here in 1983, there were eight Houses, all named after those whose lives could inspire young men here. The great Jesuit Saints were chosen: Campion, Claver, Owen, Ricci, Southwell and Xavier. And Saint Thomas More and Leonard Cheshire (who was still living in 1983).

When I became Housemaster of Claver House, late in 1987, I realised that it was one of the few Houses not to have a motto. That’s how ‘esurivi et dedistis’ came to define the House from 1989 onwards. Why did I choose those words from Matthew’s gospel for Claver? When Peter Claver SJ (1580-1654) was canonised by Pope Leo XIII in 1888, the Pope expressed an extraordinary personal opinion: “No life, except the life of Christ, has so moved me as that of Peter Claver.”

Claver was ordained as a Jesuit in 1616 in Cartegena (in modern-day Colombia). It was there that a lucrative slave trade had been flourishing for a century. Claver was appointed to minister to the black slaves and he came to be known as the ‘servus servorum’ – ‘the slave of the slaves’. During the next 30 years, Claver was their champion. He washed them, embraced them, fed them, clothed them, welcomed them, tended to them, visited them in their putrid prisons, baptised them and taught them. He convinced the slave owners that their slaves were true Christians, to be treated as brothers.

Here was an inspiring example of one who had lived Matthew’s gospel quite literally. “The sick, the poor, the despised, the ill-treated, were living images of Christ in His passion.”

So that’s how the crest of Claver House came to look like this:
The hands with their broken chains
IHS, the symbol of Jesus
And those words from Matthew’s gospel, ‘Esurivi et dedistis’.

Who’s Leading Us?

The issue of leadership comes into sharp focus at times like these. “People might like to think that other issues should dominate but the central question for any democracy is ultimately the quality of leadership”, wrote Harold Mitchell four years ago. The issue is even more sharp now, as capacities of our political leaders are tested consistently. There is hope in the examples of history.

One of the greatest American Presidents, Thomas Jefferson (pictured left), took office after the trauma of the Revolutionary War 230 years ago. Australian political leaders “can rise to the challenge because our country desperately need leaders as great as Jefferson, with the imagination to recognise the possibility of discovering the undiscovered and the courage to lead the people,” writes Harold Mitchell.

We put notions of leadership before our young men here consistently. They can lead their country, their towns, their colleagues, their families, with imagination and courage. But there are other ideas that are central to our education in a Jesuit school and there is hope that a better world will emerge.

The 28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Father Pedro Arrupe SJ(pictured right), is sometimes called the ‘second founder’ of the Jesuits. He was a calm, courageous leader of inspiration and vision. It was he who directed that those of us who work in education in Jesuit schools must form “men and women for others… who cannot even conceive of the love of God which does not include love for the least of (our) neighbours.” This was the basis of his famous 1973 address in Spain. To accept what Father Arrupe said is to accept a challenge: that we must produce leaders from our schools who work for positive change in our world, who will change the world for the better, whose leadership must be underpinned by “a commitment to promote justice and enter into solidarity with the voiceless and the powerless” as Arrupe wrote in another place.

And, as Fr Andy Bullen SJ, one of our former Rectors at Riverview, wrote:
“It is impossible to change the world without entering into the world. So much of Jesuit education is pitched at readying our students to be actively involved in the world. They study how the world is by experiencing it (for example in all the excursions and certainly through our immersion programs), by all their classroom activities, by all they gain from the library…

“Much in the world that we want our students to discover is friendly so should be befriended. Some forces, however, are destructive and Jesuit education tries to initiate students into the task of lifelong discerning among all the variety of the good, the bad and the dangerously attractive that the world casts in their way.”

Our hope is that our young men will surely lead their world with the imagination of Jefferson and with Arrupe’s words ringing in their ears.

The Jesuits are Everywhere!

This time last year, when I was on long service leave, my wife and I travelled through the Mediterranean. A year ago, Italians looked askance at the ‘New World’ as news seeped through of the victory of Mr Trump in the US Presidential election. His ascension to the casa bianca was seen as variously unexpected, unpredicted, unexplained, extraordinary. When I was mistaken for an American in Florence, a taxi driver commiserated, remarking that “The President will need good advice (consulenza) because he’s a little crazy!”

In Trapani, a province of West Sicily, we stayed in Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the same street which is dominated by the Church of the Jesuit College (Collegio Chiesa dei Gesuiti, pictured left).

The Jesuits came to Sicily in 1548 while Ignatius was still alive and when they were invited by the Viceroy of Sicily to open a college in Messina. This was the first college established by the Jesuits although Francis Xavier had taken over a pre-existing college in Goa (the College of St Paul) in 1542. By 1549, the Jesuits were in Palermo, Sicily, and then, by 1581, in Trapani. The Jesuits relied on donations from grateful citizens and by the 1590s, the church on the present site was begun. The Jesuits have been significantly influential over the 500 years and a small example of that influential persuasion occurred in Trapani in 1606 when a road was closed by order of the city council when petitioned by the Jesuits and blocked off to create the college and Jesuit house which exists now in one large area which takes an entire block of the street.

Two further facts about the church:

• As with many of the early Jesuit buildings, the architect was a Jesuit, Fr Natale Masuccio SJ.
• And the church has been at the centre of various upheavals in Italy over the years. When Garibaldi’s troops occupied Trapani in 1860, they damaged the church by throwing stones and shooting their rifles at the windows.

If we’re travelling in the Mediterranean, it’s evident that the Jesuits will have been to so many places before us and it’s a way to experience this world-wide, world-affirming Society when you can (as we did) hear Mass in a different Jesuit church just about everywhere you go.

Anniversaries, Commemorations

Some weeks have history written across every day. Last week was a week of anniversaries and feast days.

31 October 1517. 500 years ago, Martin Luther, German Augustinian friar and professor of theology, picks up a hammer and nails and fastens his ‘Ninety Five Theses’ to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. He begins a revolution that altered the culture of Western civilization.

31 October 1917. 100 years ago, the Battle of Beersheba, the last successful cavalry charge in military history; the first great Australian military victory. The last day on earth of Australian Test cricketer and stretcher bearer in the Great War, Albert ‘Tibby’ Cotter (once a student at Sydney Grammar), the only Australian Test cricketer killed in WW1.

31 October. Halloween, a festival that has its roots in Celtic history over 2000 years ago. Now marked by habits borrowed from America!

1 November. The feast of all saints, celebrated in the Church for about 1300 years.

2 November. The feast of all souls.

And this week, there are more significant anniversaries.

5 November. The feast of all Saints and Blesseds of the Society of Jesus. We salute them all, ‘whether they lived simple or extraordinary lives, known or unknown to the world.’

6 November 1917. 100 years ago, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, occupy buildings in Petrograd to mark what is known now as ‘the Russian Revolution’.

And tomorrow is 11 November.

One hundred and thirty eight years ago, Ned Kelly was hanged at the Melbourne Gaol.

Forty two years ago in 1975, the Whitlam Government is dismissed by the Governor General Sir John Kerr.

And Ninety-nine years ago, on 11 November 1918, the guns of World War 1 finally fell silent. The peace treaties were signed. The War was known as ‘The Great War’ or ‘The War To End All Wars’. And tomorrow is called Remembrance Day or Armistice Day. It’s a day when we remember all those who fought in wars, those who died in wars, those who returned and endured.

It’s a day when we pause for a minute to remember a day that ended a war, 99 years ago; a day when we remember those who worked for peace; a day when we acknowledge the horror and futility of war, wars that took away so many young lives; a day when we celebrate peace.
At Riverview, we particularly remember those Old Ignatians who died and served in the wars.

Each of them was once one of us. Each wore the blue and white of this school. Each is now remembered in our hearts and on stone with the blue and gold lettering on our War Memorial honour boards.

Every one of our Old Ignatians who served is remembered with special significance and solemnity tomorrow, on Remembrance Day 2017.

Chaplains… They Also Served

Fr Michael Bergin S.J., M.C., Australian Army Chaplain in WWI, and his gravesite

Fr Ross Jones recently drew my attention to an exhibition which concluded in Ireland this week. The exhibition focuses on Fr Michael Bergin SJ who served as a chaplain with the Australian army in World War I. Dr Diarmuid O’Driscoll also sent me the photo of Fr Bergin’s grave which he visited recently. Diarmuid and Suwanna have just finished as parents here with their last son, Aidan, the fifth of the brothers.

32 Jesuits associated with the Irish Province served on the battlefields. Fr Bergin was one of four who were killed. Two others died from illness.

Eight priests who had connections with Riverview also served as chaplains in World War I. The fierce Irishman, Fr Joseph Hearn SJ from County Mayo, who had been a Master at Riverview in 1896, served at Gallipoli at the age of 60. He was known to the troops as ‘blood and iron Joe’. He earned the Military Cross for bravery in action, and when he returned to Riverview in March 1917, 1200 people came to hear the charismatic priest talk of his experiences. He then lived for another 24 years.

Fr Cecil Loneragan (OR1901), an old boy from the prolific Loneragan clan of Mudgee, was a diocesan priest when he enlisted in 1916. He served as a chaplain in France and Belgium from 1916 until 1919 and his diary survives in our College Archives. At Messines, Fr Loneragan wrote:
“Guns. Dust. Bombardment. Trembling of earth. Tornado of shelling. Gas – ours and theirs. At the dressing station, sickening severe shell wounds.”
And at Crepy-en-Valois in France, he told proudly of the Old Ignatians serving in France: “All the French speak of the edifying spectacle of our soldiers crowding the altar rails at Holy Communion. Splendid singing of hymns. A fine example…”

But Fr Michael Bergin’s story is compelling. Born in 1879 in Tipperary, Fr Bergin never saw Australia but he joined the Australian 5th Light Horse in Egypt in 1915 and served at Gallipoli and in Belgium with distinction. In 1914, he had been imprisoned by the Turks in Syria where he was teaching and then expelled to Cairo where he met up with the Australian troops. He then was the only Catholic chaplain serving with the AIF in the Great War to die as a result of enemy action. At one stage, he observed:
“One gets callous to the sight of death. You pass a dead man as you’d pass a piece of wood.”

Fr Bergin was killed at Passchendaele, Belgium, 100 years ago. On 12 October 1917 he was hit by a shell while working at an aid post. He was buried in the village churchyard nearby. Fr Bergin was posthumously awarded the Military Cross.

Banjo’s Cousin and the Stretcher Bearer

Robert Anthony Barton (1895-1917)
Paul Stanislaus Baxter (1896-1917)
A Grim Centenary for Shore and Riverview

Robert Anthony Barton and Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson

Robert Anthony Barton was a first cousin of Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson (1864-1941), the renowned poet, solicitor, war correspondent and soldier. The Bartons and the Patersons were inextricably linked by marriages and tragedies. Banjo was the son of Andrew Bogle Paterson (1833-89) and Rose Isabella Barton (1844-93). Rose Isabella was related to the future first Prime Minister of Australia, Sir Edmund Barton (1849-1920). Banjo’s grandmother, Emily Barton (1817-1909) was also Robert’s grandmother. Robert was born in 1895, the same year that Banjo wrote Waltzing Matilda. By 1916, when Banjo was wounded in France, Robert was serving in Australian colours in Armentieres. In 1917, when Robert was killed, Banjo was publishing ‘Saltbush Bill’.

Banjo, 31 years older than his cousin, was to outlive Robert by 24 years.

When Robert’s father died, Mrs Barton was left to look after her six surviving children and she moved to Greenwich. Although many of the Patersons and Bartons had been educated at Sydney Grammar School, Robert (known to his family as ‘Tony’) was sent to nearby ‘Shore’ School in 1907. There he prospered for seven fruitful years before matriculating to Sydney University in 1914.

Now the connections with Riverview.

In the 1st XI at Shore, Robert batted in the top order and bowled occasional leg breaks, but consistency eluded him. Low scores were interspersed with occasional epic innings. His 151 against Riverview in a non-competition match in 1913 stands out. Similarly, his 30 against Kings was “of good style, but he was out to a very bad ball from Farquhar which he put up after its second hop.” Caught off a double bouncer!

By the time Robert played his first game for Sydney University on 3 October 1914 at the University Oval in 2nd Grade, his older brother had enlisted, soon to sail to Egypt. In Grade cricket, Robert faltered. His first four innings produced just 11 runs as he batted in various positions from opening to number 10. When he bowled, it was in short spells only. His two wickets cost 58 runs.  Meanwhile, he worked diligently at his studies in Arts 1, gaining a Credit in Geology and Passes in English, Maths and Latin. He also involved himself in University life, joining the Sydney University Scouts.

But in April 1915, his cricket career was over and his studies terminated. While the Anzacs were still at Gallipoli, Robert enlisted, originally as a Private in 1 Battalion. His brother, Captain Francis Maxwell (known as ‘Max’) Barton, took part in the initial landing at Anzac Cove but was wounded at Quinns Post in May. 15 months later, he was killed in the slaughter at Pozieres. The brothers met in France in early 1916. Their treasured letters and photos sent to their mother and the family survive and have been lovingly preserved.

Max tells of meeting up with ‘Tony’: “Tony arrived here this afternoon… had quite a good yarn to him…” And when ‘Tony’ strikes France, he writes to his mother: “I have been busy trying to recall some of the French learnt at school…we expect to be in the firing line before long…”

During the battle at Messines in Belgium, on 9 June 1917, aged just 22, Lieutenant Barton bravely met his death. On the same day, Private Paul Stanislaus Baxter (OR1913) of 35 Battalion was also killed. Baxter had played for Riverview in 1913 when Barton scored his mammoth 151. They were two of the young men whose lives were cut tragically short by a war that took 62,000 Australians. Lieutenant Barton has no known grave. Private Baxter, one of 15 children, aged 21, was a stretcher bearer at Messines. On 9 June, he was bringing in the wounded when he was hit by a shell and killed instantly.  He lay, hurriedly buried, on the battle field until 1920 when his body was reinterred and laid to rest in the Strand Military Cemetery in Belgium.

Baxter was one of 62 Riverview old boys killed in the Great War. Barton was one of 130 from the Shore School.

Thanks

Sitting at the Valete dinner at the end of last term, I was struck by how gracious were the words coming from the stage… words spoken by the Captain of Day Boys, Ben Sullivan, and the Captain of Boarders, Andy Dupont (who earlier in the day had been awarded the Insignis Medal, the most outstanding student of our Valete year). Ben and Andy gave heartfelt thanks and gratitude to their teachers, mentors, coaches, boarding masters and all staff members for what they had done for them over the years.

Valete et gratias. Farewell and thanks.

Those of us who recall the words of the Latin Mass will remember the number of times gratias is used in the Mass, especially the Gloria where we give direct thanks to God to emphasise the glory of God: “gratias agimus tibi…”

Gratitude is also one of the cornerstones of our Ignatian spirituality. “Ignatius would tell us the gratitude is to be expressed daily for all things, always pointing back to God,” writes the American, Andy Otto. It’s been a mark of this College for 138 years.

Some years ago at Eastertime, Barney Zwartz, then the Religious Editor of The Age, wrote about gratitude firstly by recalling Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:

Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy did not make a particularly prepossessing first impression on each other… Darcy soon recognises his error. Elizabeth takes much longer… it is only when she recognises her tremendous debt of gratitude at his rescuing her sister Lydia that Elizabeth truly realises how much she loves him. Gratitude sweeps aside the barriers.

Gratitude changes everything and not only in literature. Some atheists say that religion begins in fear and ignorance; others suggest it begins in gratitude. Gratitude is the distinctly religious orientation to the world…

The capacity for gratitude and for expressing it is an important element in a good life, and those who lack it impoverish themselves and others.

So at the Valete dinner we were all enriched when Ben and Andy simply said ‘Thanks’.

1978: A Basketball Premiership

It’s been almost 40 years since Riverview won its first GPS Basketball Premiership. The 1978 Basketball Premiership shines like a beacon, a slightly unexpected win for a fledgling sport. Or was it so unexpected? Perhaps the signs were there for those who could read them.

Basketball had been played at Riverview only since 1971, and admitted to the GPS Competitions in 1975, much to the surprise of some traditionalists. But the momentum was there. By 1978, Riverview had 18 teams, 160 players, and a Premiership team.

Interest in the sport blossomed. For those who watched closely, Riverview was developing a powerful team. Coach Les Roberts in 1975 saw three boys shooting endless baskets on the Third Yard courts, hauled them from the 16As into the Firsts, and watched them grow in confidence and ability. The team trained with discipline and passion. It was almost unheard of for Riverview sporting sides at the time to complement a gym session with specific training during the week until Basketball led the way.

The First team won the GPS knock out competition (now called the Raschke Cup) in both 1976 and 1977. In 1977, the First team won the first five games only to fall at the last two hurdles when injury and suspension left the team bereft. In 1978, the ‘Alma Mater’ was able to open its report on Basketball with the triumphant sentence: “Basketball came of age this year as our Firsts achieved the first win in the GPS competition and became co-premiers with Shore.”

For the first four Saturdays of Term 1, the team was victorious by convincing margins. Then two crucial rounds enabled history to be written. In Round 5, the powerful Shore side overwhelmed Riverview by 65 to 41. Then in Round 6, Riverview crept in against Kings by 61-60 and across Sydney, Grammar defeated Shore. Riverview held their nerve in a tight Round 7 game against High and celebrated a co-premiership. David MacQuillan scored 111 of the team’s 394 points and joined captain Paul Baker in the GPS 1sts side coached by Les Roberts. Justin Allen and Damien Scroope earned selection in GPS 2nds.

The team’s success was all the more remarkable when the rest of Riverview’s teams’ results are taken into account. The 2nds won one game, the 3rds three and the 16As one. And it’s even more remarkable that despite some agonisingly close results and vast improvements and huge numbers, the 1978 Premiership remains solitary.

In 2017, there are nearly 50 Basketball teams in the school (Senior and Regis) and nearly 600 players. Basketball is now pervasive. Australian teenagers are now more likely to know the names of more NBL players than Australian first class cricketers. That pioneer 1978 Premiership side didn’t play with electronic timing (referees’ stop watches were sufficient), didn’t play on state of the art indoor facilities (in 1978 Riverview and St Joseph’s played on outside courts open to the vagaries of the weather) and slam dunks were virtually unknown.
So raise a toast to the pioneers. They have regular reunions to celebrate and reminisce, especially as now two of their number, Andy Imperial and Aaron Butler have passed away.

In 2017, the 1978 side presented the College with a trophy to be given to the ‘Best Contributor at Training’ in honour of their much regarded fallen colleague, Andy Imperial.

They gave us much and they have given back.

TKC

One lunchtime, a teacher asked me, “Why is the Common Room at Riverview called the ‘TKC Staff Common Room?” Good question.

TKC stands for Thomas Kevin Crowley, who died on 16 June 1981, having served Riverview faithfully since 1936 – an extraordinary 45 years of significant influence at the one school. A Requiem Mass was said for him in the Dalton Memorial Chapel and he was laid to rest at Northern Suburbs Cemetery. The Chapel was filled with Old Boys whom he had taught and who came to show their deep appreciation and affection for their former teacher. Six of them carried Tom’s coffin down the aisle: Eric Giblin (OR1939), Bob Barry (OR1940), Charlie Burfitt (OR1940), Farmey Joseph (OR1941), Paul Hunter (OR1949) and Ritchie McKay (OR1949). Three of them were former Presidents of the Old Ignatians’ Union. One of his colleagues was Bill McCrossin, who was himself to serve 35 years here. Bill subsequently wrote:

“Tom’s death brought an end to an era that spanned so many years of great dedication to the College. He never spared himself… in all facets of school life. He inspired others with his enthusiasm and untiring energy, setting a standard that both teachers and students felt they had to achieve to be worthy of the College. All recognised his great affection and love for the school, the Jesuits, students, parents and Old Boys… he inspired us by his thorough preparation of his classwork, his determination to get the best out of his students and his untiring energy… As the lay staff gradually increased, Tom’s influence and his ideals still pervaded the Common Room and helped to unite the staff.”

It was in 1935 that Fr John Meagher SJ, the Rector of Riverview, had telephoned Tom when he was teaching in the country and offered him a job at Riverview teaching Maths and coaching the 1st XV Rugby team in 1936. Rarely at Riverview has one phone call been so rewarded.

In turn, Tom was rewarded by honorary membership of the Old Ignatians’ Union and a Life Vice-Presidency of the OIU, the first honorary Old Boy to be so acclaimed.

Then, when the Common Room was named after him, or at least after his well-known initials ‘TKC’ (for some years, he was nicknamed ‘Tex’ Crowley by his students), Tom was humbled, declaring that he could think of at least 25 others who deserved that honour more.

Peter Burt (OR1958), one of his thousands of students over the years, wrote in 1981: “I will always remember him as a man small in stature, a Chaplinesque figure, a reconciler of the irreconcilable, but a mighty teacher and an exemplary Christian.”

There’s now a small understated photo of Tom in the TKC. He would have liked that. No fuss! And a simple text sits under Tom’s photo: “… he laboured to the end of his days for the good of the School.” And that’s why our common room is called ‘the TKC’, to honour the longest serving lay teacher at Riverview.

The Centenary of ‘The Single Worst Year in Australia’s History’

1917.

Paul Kelly has recently termed it ‘the single worst year in Australia’s history’. He says, however, that the story of that year, 100 years ago, is largely lost: “It is the product of a nation unaware of the scale or purpose of the greatest sacrifice in history.” We are subjected to a form of repressed memory when we don’t understand that almost 77,000 Australians were killed, wounded or missing in the battles of the Western Front, as any lingering ideas about the romance of war were shattered. General John Monash wrote at the time: “Our men are being put into the hottest fighting and are being sacrificed…”

In other places, in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II abdicates in March 1917 prefacing the Bolshevik Revolution, ‘Red October’. Closer to home, there is a bitter Federal election in May 1917 when the ‘turncoat’ Billy Hughes successfully leads a Nationalist Government. Sectarianism is rife. Irish Catholics are vilified. The second conscription plebiscite is defeated in December amidst unrelenting internecine strife. In August 1917, 100,00 Australians go on a strike which lasts months and which was a response to the fear of technology in the workplaces.

1917.

And even closer to home, 12 of our old boys were killed in the battles of that ill-fated year. One of them is Herbert William Ferrier Hendy-Pooley (OR1887), killed 100 years ago next Thursday, 21 September, and the second oldest Old Ignatian killed in World War I. He was married with six children when he enlisted on 6 January 1916, aged 43. He was sent to France. Wounded at Bullecourt in May 1917, he spent over a month convalescing but soon re-joined his battalion during the Third Battle of Ypres which cost 5,000 Australian lives.

The morning of 21 September 1917 was filled with mist and cold drizzle. The Australians tramped through a mass of earth torn up by battles and fought through a pall of smoke, flying dirt and phosphorous fumes. They passed dead horses and mules drowned in mud and wagons blown to pieces. On this morning, corporal Hendy-Pooley and four of his colleagues were killed instantly by a shell. They had been positioned in a strong post about 30 yards in front of the trench in the front lines. Private JJ Wright wrote, “I saw them bury what remains they could find in the open close to where he was killed’. Corporal Fyfe gave an eyewitness account, ‘I saw their dead bodies afterwards and helped bury them in an old trench just behind our lines.”

Soldiers who served with Hendy-Pooley described him as a fine fellow, popular and jovial. Two of his grandsons, Michael Pooley (OR1951) and Kerry Pooley (OR1954) were educated at Riverview, and a great grandson Andrew Pooley (OR1983) graduated from Riverview 98 years after Herbert began here.

Memory. Understanding. Recognition.

John Henry Keating (OR1889): ‘One of the most brilliant speakers in Australia.’

Writing in The Australian last week, Kenneth Wiltshire argued that Australian students’ knowledge of history is too often fragmented, leading to misunderstanding or ignorance. So, Judith Brett’s The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, published last month (Text Publishing) is a welcome exploration of Australia’s second Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin. Who?

David Marr in his review of Brett’s book, comments that this is a biography “that will restore Deakin to his proper place in the national imagination: the mystic politician who gave us Australia.” Deakin had such an influence on one of his parliamentary colleagues who served with him in Australia’s first parliaments that he named his son after him. Who?

John Henry (Harry) Keating (1872-1940) was at Riverview from 1886 until 1889 and was elected as a Senator for Tasmania in the first Australian Parliament of 1901. Aged 28, he was the youngest in that Parliament and eventually served for 22 years in the Senate. After he married Sarah Alice (1885-1939) in 1906, they named their second child John Deakin Keating, born in 1908 when his father was serving as Minister for Home Affairs In the Deakin Government. JD Keating would also go to Riverview, from 1922 until 1924. Harry Keating had been College Dux in 1889. John Keating was Dux in 1924.

At Riverview, JH Keating regularly scooped the pool in examination results until, in 1889, he was first in nine subjects and first in aggregate. In addition, he involved himself in Riverview life with as much vigour as anyone. He was a debater, a public speaker (he recited an ode and participated in a debate on Speech Day in 1889 in front of the Governor of NSW, Lord Carrington), a sergeant in the cadet corps, a rower, organiser of concerts, editor of ‘Our Alma Mater’. In 1896, he graduated LLB, one of the first two graduates in Law from the University of Tasmania.

Harry Keating and Alfred Deakin were strong campaigners for Federation during the 1890s. Deakin then appointed Keating as Vice President of the Executive Council, involved in some of the foundation legislation of the Commonwealth, and eventually he was Minister for Home Affairs. Keating actively supported Australia’s involvement in World War I and visited the Australian soldiers at the Western Front in 1917. Keating’s support for immigration restriction and his work ‘White Australia’ are products of their time. He was an influential, strongly principled, faithful politician and a dedicated supporter of his old school. In 1906, he was President of the Old Ignatians’ Union.

Sir Robert Menzies admired him. He called him “one of the most brilliant speakers in Australia.” His success in parliamentary speaking was said to have been founded in the Riverview Debating Club of the 1880s.

A genealogical footnote:

Keating’s descendants have been educated at Riverview into the 21st century. His daughter, Tulla Marie, the Australian journalist, married Stephen Brown and they had three children including Felicity, who married John Gavaghan (OR1967), brother of Chris (OR1968) and Tom (OR1971). The other daughter of Tulla and Stephen was Sally, who married James Deves. Their sons (JH Keating’s great grandsons) are Jonathan Deves (OR1999), Chris Deves (OR2002) and Robert Deves (OR2004).

A political footnote:

Riverview’s first parliamentarian was Thomas Curran (OR1886), who served in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons from 1892 to 1900. Riverview’s first parliamentarian to serve in any Australian parliament was JH Keating. The long sweep of representatives of the Australian people with Riverview connections begins with Keating and his prominent role in the Deakin Government and continues into the 45th parliament with its three Riverview-educated parliamentarians: Tony Abbott (OR1975), Barnaby Joyce (OR1986) and Dr David Gillespie (OR1973).

50 Years Ago… They Made Memories Glow

One black and white, formally posed in the Rose Garden in August 1967. 16 players: 10 standing, 6 sitting and the coach, all look out at the camera. 8 have the hint of a smile. Each proudly wears the 1st XV jersey and socks. The captain holds the ball ‘1st XV. 1967’.

The other photo is in colour, taken on the steps of Peter Wadsworth’s Helm Bar at Darling Harbour on Friday 11 August 2017. 14 men, aged in their middle to late 60s stand in deliberate position. The captain holds the 50 year old photo. They proudly wear caps which proclaim ’1st XV 1967’.

Memories of 1967 seep back as I walk among those ‘immortals’, the heroes and giants of our youth. 1967. Innocence was being buffeted by events often a long way from relatively isolated Riverview.

1967. Increasingly, pop music was a voice for dissent. The Vietnam War (where some of the young Riverview old boys were serving), university campus riots, race riots, the Australian ‘aboriginal’ referendum, civil wars, the first live international satellite TV production. The first year of the NSW HSC for which there were 18,336 candidates.

But at Riverview, winter Saturdays in 1967 were filled with football, what we now call rugby, the only winter sport available then. And leading up to the final GPS Competition round in August 1967, there was a surge of excitement in the school as a feeling took root that the 1st XV could do something special against St Joseph’s.

So, on 5 August 1967, this group of players did do something that hadn’t been done for generations. They defeated St Joseph’s at Hunters Hill for the first time since 1945 and for the first time in a GPS Competition game at Hunters Hill for 46 years.

On this day in 2017, at Darling Harbour, we are taken to a scene in the dressing room 50 years ago as the 1st XV prepared to step through the door, walk down the steps, run out onto the St Joseph’s main field. Paul Lippmann, their coach, looks them in the eye and sends them out with prescient words: “You will remember this day for the rest of your lives.” Then he detains Bill Quinn, the half back, the captain, the Captain of the school: “Run to the Joeys’ end of the ground in the second half.” Vice-captain, Michael Frost, leads the team down the steps in recognition of his singular honour. This is his fiftieth game in the 1st XV. Or did he? The ‘Alma Mater’ claims it, but most players have no memory of this 50 years on.

It’s a mild 20 degrees. Rain on Friday gave way to clear skies on Saturday.
Injuries disrupted our preparation. Derek Price had broken ribs in the previous game against Newington. Denis Lynch was ill with glandular fever. Tim Stack, David Frost were missing. So, Michael Frost moved from back row to centre. Michael Dobbin and Kim Duffy were summoned from the 16 As for their debuts.

Joeys led 6-0 at half time but our swift backline, many of whom were members of either the Senior or Junior Athletics teams that won both Senior and Junior GPS Athletics premierships* (Lynch, Jones, Fridrich and Coleman won the Open relay in a College record time, 42.9 secs, that stood for 33 years) was unleashed in a pulsating second half. Firstly, Bill Quinn ran from the scrum base, dummied to Paul Jones, ghosted into a gap on the blind side and scored at the scoreboard end. Then he did it again! This time, he darted over after a ruck. Geoff Byrne converted both tries (then worth 3 points each) for a lead of 10-6. Many could not remember Riverview leading Joeys this deep into a game before.

Then a moment frozen in memory forever. On the right wing, Duffy plunged over after a series of passes. 13-9.

50 years later, memories are mostly sharp but occasionally, with the great sweep of time, they falter. When memories fluctuate, Wordsworth reassures us:

‘Grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.’

What remains to bolster memories are the 1967 ‘Our Alma Mater’ and a treasure now lodged in our Archives. It’s Bill Quinn’s exercise book/scrapbook entitled ‘My last 2 yrs at school 1966/1967’ and subtitled ‘Ancient History – it will be some day.’ There are all the 1st XV results for 1966 and 1967, the team list for each game, scorers, reports, programs, newspaper clippings, photos, personal notes. Some side lights, not often recalled: Sydney Grammar won both seasons’ Premierships, both undefeated. In 1967, Riverview led the competition for four rounds and scored 22 tries to 9 in the GPS games.

But, for the 1967 Joeys game, apart from Riverview’s team list, the scores and scorers, there’s no report! There is a comment in Bill’s handwriting: ‘Paper Strike’. (The Sydney newspaper journalists’ strike lasted for over two weeks in August 1967). Bill concluded: ‘We thrashed Joeys – first time it has been done in a comp. I got 2 tries…’

Whatever of their memories, even though most admitted that the 1967 team was a ‘couldabeen, wouldabeen, shouldabeen’, all concluded without any hint of arrogance that it had the potential to be just as good a side as the 1964 Premiership side.

Four were unable to be there but sent regrets and reminiscences. Two of this side, David Burke and Michael Frost, have died. The coach, Paul Lippmann, is still going at 91 years of age but felt that the lunch might be too much for him. Instead, some of his players go to visit him at his home.

It was a lunch when history came alive; where 14 members of a memorable team deservedly celebrated what they had achieved 50 years ago. These were good times and 14 men in their sixties clung to them and made them glow.

*Riverview won four Senior and three Junior GPS Premierships in Athletics in the ‘golden age’ from 1964 until 1967. 12 of this 1st XV side represented Riverview in these premierships.

‘In the harshness of the slaughterhouse, he showed the gentleness of Christ.’

18th August 2017


Pope Francis says that we need saints we can relate to; not legacies of the past but beacons of hope for the future.

On Monday this week, we marked the feast day of a man whose story captivates us. Saint Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), in a place, Auschwitz, which redefined man’s inhumanity, showed extraordinary humanity and compassion. Kolbe was a Polish Franciscan Friar who had given shelter to many refugees, including 2000 Jews, in his friary in Poland until he too was discovered, arrested and sent to Auschwitz as prisoner 16670 in May 1941. There he suffered brutal physical punishment but continued to give hope to his fellow prisoners, visiting bunks at night, sharing his own small rations and urging them to pray for their captors. In July 1941, one man from Kolbe’s block went missing. In retribution, the guards selected ten men for execution. One was Franciszek Gajownickzek who begged not to be killed because he was a husband and father. Kolbe calmly stepped forward to take his place.

If you visit Auschwitz now, which is a searing, bleak experience, you can see the tiny starvation cell into which Father Kolbe and the nine others were thrown. After two weeks, only four remained. On Thursday 14 August, the four were injected with a lethal dose of carbolic acid. Father Kolbe went to his death with his left arm raised, ready for the injection. On the same day, a German spy, Josef Jakobs, was executed in the Tower of London, the last person to be executed at the Tower by firing squad.

In 1981, Pope John Paul II canonised his Polish compatriot. Quite remarkably, Franciszek, the man he saved, was there to witness the canonisation. He died, aged 95, 53 years after Kolbe saved his life.

Here is a story of heroism, forgiveness, humanity. It is the ultimate expression of our year’s motto ‘My Brother’s Keeper’.

One of the Auschwitz prisoners, Dr Rudolph Diem, who treated Father Kolbe in prison, later wrote: ‘During my four years in Auschwitz, I never saw such a sublime example of the love of God and one’s neighbour.’ Another, Jerzy Bielecki, has written that Father Kolbe’s death ‘brought new life and strength to us…it was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of that place.’

From Iggy to Jack: Riverview’s Wallabies 1899-2017

Constitutional Capers

The Australian Constitution has made a rare foray into Australian public life and consciousness recently. The provisions of the previously rather obscure Section 44 now threaten some parliamentarians’ tenures in office.

Section 44 prohibits any Australian who ‘is the subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or citizen of a foreign power’ from sitting in parliament. In other words, people who hold ‘dual nationality’ are prohibited from sitting in Australian parliaments.

Some commentators have viewed section 44 as an archaic remnant of a document drawn up nearly 120 years ago; a product of 19th century presumptions about the world. In the very first Australian Commonwealth Parliament in 1901, there were 26 who had been born in England, 17 in Scotland, seven in Ireland, two in Canada, one in New Zealand and one in Chile. These are vastly different times. But this Section is still there and upheld and may not be changed except by referendum.

Who framed the ‘Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900’? Well one of those who worked on the endless drafts in the 1890s was Richard Edward O’Connor (1851-1912), born in Sydney, son of an Irish-born librarian, descended from Arthur O’Connor an Irish rebel and a general in Napoleon’s army. RE O’Connor was elected to the first Australian Senate in 1901 and, with Edmund Barton and Samuel Griffith in 1903, served on the first High Court of Australia. O’Connor argued strongly and consistently that the High Court’s duty was ‘to save the Constitution from the risk of…a misrepresentation of its fundamental principles.’

Where does Riverview come into all of this?

RE O’Connor was a Riverview parent. Two of his sons, Richard (OR1897) and Arthur (OR1897), were both at Riverview in the 1890s when their father was Solicitor General in the NSW Parliament. RE O’Connor died in 1912 and was thus spared the tragedies of both his oldest and youngest sons’ deaths in France in 1916.

Lieutenant Roderic Alan Edward O’Connor (1895-1916) had been educated at St Aloysius College and Sydney Grammar School and was killed near Armentieres in September 1916. Two months earlier, on 3 July, Private Richard Hensleigh O’Connor (1880-1916) was killed rushing into the thick of a charge. He was serving in the New Zealand forces and had spent ten months at Gallipoli. He had originally enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney after leaving Riverview, but a life at sea beckoned and he travelled extensively overseas for some years before enlisting in February 1915.

RE O’Connor had a well-developed social conscience along with his deep Catholic faith, and he had a significant influence on his oldest son. In 1902, in a prescient speech, he had proposed enfranchising the indigenous people:
‘It would be a monstrous thing, an unheard of piece of savagery on our part, to treat the Aboriginals, whose land we are occupying, in such a manner as to deprive them absolutely of any right to vote In their own country.’

It took 65 years for a majority of Australians in a referendum to allow the indigenous people to be counted in the Census. RH O’Connor in his relatively short life, continued his father’s advocacy for such enlightened causes.

RE O’Connor was highly regarded and esteemed by a series of Australia’s earliest Prime Ministers, including Sir Edmund Barton with whom he had attended Sydney Grammar School in the 1860s.
Patrick O’Sullivan, writing the St John’s College Annual Essay a few years ago, concluded that O’Connor was: ‘…such an important person within Australian history. It is a shame that he isn’t more regarded and well-known.’

Riverview can claim connection with one of the most significant legal minds in Australia’s history.

‘A Collapse of Serious Reading…’?

When I asked one of my senior students what he was currently reading outside of the curriculum, the answer was disappointing: ‘I don’t have enough time with all my study.’ The second part of the response speaks of his admirable attention to his work. But the first part? When I interview the families of eight year olds wishing to be accepted into Riverview, every boy can tell me what they’re currently reading. What happens between eight and sixteen?

Harper Lee, author of the classic To Kill a Mockingbird, admitted towards the end of her long life: ‘…in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPads and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.’ Niall Ferguson, Economic History professor, is more generally pessimistic and provocative: ‘I think there has been a collapse of serious reading among a generation of my students who are cut off from the great works of world literature. How can we possibly preserve our civilisation if the next generation has read 1% of what we read?’

Is civilisation at peril? Or are we just evolving with different skills?

Gerard Windsor in his 2011 review of David Malouf’s The Happy Life observed, ‘Children are developing lightning-fast technical skills, absorbing a host of disparate facts, but are having trouble with a comprehensive argument.’

Are we forming young men of such limited ability? Jesuit education fosters students’ ability to think, read and write.

‘We need engineers who have read Shakespeare and computer scientists who understand the history and roots of our civilisation,’ writes Fr Robert Mitchell SJ of Boston College. The use of the imagination in Ignatian prayer is called ‘contemplation’ and is dependent on deep reading and rich imagining as we accompany Jesus through his life, imagining the Gospel scenes.

It’s equally clear that we read differently now. Just recently, Bloomberg Media announced a new global breaking-news network, interactive, filled with social content, available on any device. Alan Kohler comments, ‘The reign of immediacy is killing consideration and care.’ And in Here Comes Everybody (2008), Clay Shirky argues that ‘time’ is now used for ‘creative activity rather than for passive consumption’. So my senior student was doing creative homework and not passive reading? But the American essayist, Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) wrote lovingly of such an activity that is at the same time a joy and a vice: ‘The subtle happiness of reading… this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.’

Reading is a celebration of its undiluted joy.

But before we celebrate too loudly, consider that Professor James Flynn of Otago University has argued from his research that reading’s concentration and focus are losing to the visual immediacy provided by the internet. ‘Studies are beginning to appear that seem to show that the less you read, the less value you set on empathising with other people,’ he observes.

Current young readers become the next generation of writers. Riverview has a proud tradition of questing writers from Christopher Brennan (OR1886) to Benjamin Rome Clarke (OR2014) who published his A Definition of Magicwhen he was in Year 9. Of those Old Ignatians still living, consider the contributions of such disparate personalities as Barrie Hughes (OR1961), Gerard Windsor (OR1962), Justin Fleming (OR1970), Michael Pembroke (OR1972), Justin Sheedy (OR1986), James Curran (OR1991), Tony Abbott (OR1975), Fr Tony Doherty (OR1950), Fr Ed Campion (OR1950) and others. Peter Boyle (OR1968) was recently awarded the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards for 2017. His Ghost Speaking (Vagabond, 2016) is his seventh book of poetry.

So, keep putting books of all sorts in the hands of our young men!

A POST SCRIPT TO LAST WEEK’S STORY ABOUT RIVERVIEW’S DRAMATIC PAST

Last week’s article made reference to Gregan McMahon (OR1892), Dux of the College in 1892, one of Riverview’s first professional actors and dramatists. Gregan was first educated at Lachlan House, then Sydney Grammar School before beginning at Riverview in 1890. Here is some more on this family’s enduring connections with Riverview. I am indebted to Richard McLachlan (OR1983) and to Gregan John McMahon (OR1953), who has written extensively, for ‘The Hungerford Society’ on aspects of the family history.

Two of Gregan’s great great great grandsons are at now Riverview: Oliver McLachlan (currently in Year 7) and Xavier McLachlan (currently in Year 8).

The following is a bit complex so read slowly!

Gregan McMahon (1874-1941) married an actor, Mary Kate (known as Mollie) Hungerford (1873-1946). They had a son, Gregan Thomas Hungerford McMahon (OR1908), who had four daughters and a son, also named Gregan (OR1953). The four sisters of Gregan (OR1953) married four Old Ignatians: Margot married Leo Clear (OR1931), Anne married Myles McLachlan (OR1938), Ruth married Mark Heesh (OR1947) and Frances married Archibald McClemens (OR1956).

A further bit of fascinating trivia:
Gregan (1874-1941) was the son of John Terence (JT) McMahon (1843-1898) and his wife Eliza. JT emigrated from County Clare in 1857 and worked his way up to be Assistant Superintendent of Mails at the GPO. In 1868, Prince Alfred Ernest Albert, the Duke of Edinburgh, on a visit to Australia was the victim of a failed assassination attempt by a deranged Irishman during a picnic at Clontarf in Sydney on 12 March. It was JT McMahon who helped save the Prince who was to become Duke of Saxe Coburg Gotha in the German Empire. JT McMahon, great great great great grandfather of the two current Riverview students, always wore a memento, a gold replica of the would-be assassin’s bullet which hung on his watch chain.

Riverview on Stage

21st July 2017

Riverview has had a rich tradition of actors, dramatists, directors and writers for the stage from the earliest days of the College in the 19th century until the present time. It’s particularly gratifying to see this tradition continue among some of our more recent graduates.

Patrick (Patch) May (OR2009) was here at Riverview with his brothers Matthew (OR2006), Joseph (OR2008) and Michael (OR2012). They followed their father Matthew (OR1972) and uncles, Greg (OR1974) and Peter (OR1976). At Riverview, Patrick was fully and widely involved as a boarder from Cronulla, noted for his positive and practical leadership and sunny personality. He was a Proctor in the Boarding House in his last year, vice-captain of Cheshire House, vice-captain of the Swimming team and a member of the SRC in Years 10,11 and 12. He combined a passion for the Arts (he placed among the top 10% in NSW in the 2009 HSC for his on-stage drama performance) with a significant ability in sports (Rugby, Rowing, Water Polo, Swimming). The four May brothers were all in Riverview’s 1sts Water Polo teams.

After graduating from Riverview, Patrick went on to UNSW to study a Bachelor of Media/Screen and Sound, in which he excelled with a Distinction average. After developing a love of Drama and the Arts through his time at the College, he decided to follow his dream and was selected to study at Screenwise Film & TV School for Actors in Sydney. This is where his skills and passion for acting were developed. While working part time, he would develop his acting skills over the remaining three years to chase his dream of becoming the next ‘Thor’.

Like many Australian actors, the road to fame is extremely challenging and it takes considerable time to be noticed. After receiving some minor roles in shows such as A Place to Call Home and Home and Away, Patrick most recently starred as one of the lead actors in the Ronny Chieng: International Student series, in which he played an American international student known as Craig Cooper.

Patrick now joins a distinguished list of Old Ignatians who have found their way onto the stage.
 

One of the earliest Riverview graduates was Gregan Thomas McMahon (1874-1941), the son of Irish emigrants who lived at Paddington when Gregan was at Riverview from 1890 to 1892. Not surprisingly, he acted in the College’s production of Julius Caesar, played in the Football side and achieved 1st Class Honours in Classics before going up to the University of Sydney. He was entranced by the theatre and even though he’d graduated with a BA in 1896 and had begun working in a legal firm, he left it all behind to join an acting company on a tour of Australia, India and China, and found his vocation acting with JC Williamson. Living in both Melbourne (where he set up the Melbourne Repertory Company in 1911) and Sydney, McMahon was a creative risk taker when he produced, directed or acted in many Australian plays making their premieres. He became enormously influential in introducing George Bernard Shaw’s plays to Australia. He was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1938 but died three years later relatively unnoticed. His wife, Mary Kate (nee Hungerford), died in 1946. For all that, Alan Ashbolt writes of Gregan McMahon:

“In early twentieth century Australian Theatre, he was unique in his combination of technical proficiency, careful craftsmanship and intellectual insight.”

Patrick May now has it all in front of him. Another star of the theatre whom Riverview is immensely proud to have nurtured.

‘We Band of Brothers’

Occasionally, the course of events intersects to produce something intensely memorable. When the famous battle of Agincourt was fought on 25 October 1415, the day coincided with the feast of Saints Crispan and Crispian. England’s commander, King Henry, rallied his hugely outnumbered troops (10,000 English to 30,000 of the French) with a stirring speech that Shakespeare later adapted:

‘And Crispan Crispian shall never go by
From this day to the ending of the world
But we in it shall be remembered.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d that they were not here.’

Those words have been used by generals and sports coaches down the ages to motivate and inspire. Lord Nelson in the Napoleonic Wars used them, as did Notre Dame Varsity soccer coach, Bobby Clark, more recently.

What happened on 1st Field on Saturday will surely be remembered to inspire future generations. The crowd was sparse (but those who were elsewhere may think themselves ‘accurs’d’ that they were not there); the odds seemed to be against us. We came into this match with only one victory in the trials and Newington had beaten us six weeks ago at Stanmore.

Even with this weight of recent history on us, a series of extraordinary events in the second half will mark this day as one of Riverview’s most inspirational. A stygian gloom had settled over the ground. The scoreboard lights pulsed bright telling the story: Riverview 21 Newington 10.

Then, with Newington storming our line, the referee issued three yellow cards against us within a minute. We were reduced to 12 men for ten minutes: ‘We few, we happy few’. What happened next is a tale of courage under fire. Newington scored an almost inevitable converted try. 21-17. Our resolve seemed even more steely. Defence was unstinting, unsparing. What attack was possible was precise. We even came close enough to kick a penalty goal. 24-17.

When our three players scampered back onto the field of play again, spirits elevated even further. A remarkable surge lifted players and spectators. The rumble of war cries sounded as if they were belted out by a crowd ten times in number. Players stood taller. The three converted tries that followed were exhilarating. But those ten minutes of focussed courage will remain forever in hearts and memories.

25 October, St Crispan’s Day, is now remembered especially for the history-changing Battle of Agincourt. Last Saturday’s date, 17 June, was the 150th anniversary of Henry Lawson’s birthday. At the same time as this Rugby game was unfolding at Riverview, enthusiasts were celebrating the great Australian bush poet at Henry Lawson Park at Abbotsford, almost exactly half way between Stanmore and Lane Cove. They read from his works in a program called ‘While The Billy Boils’. Perhaps 17 June, Lawson’s birthday, will now be associated, in the minds of those who were there, with one of Riverview’s greatest Rugby triumphs. It’s a story that deserves to be told for ages.

But this was not battle…or poetry. Perhaps there were bits of both. But this was sport. And this was sport at its finest.

‘… That Does Justice’

Recently, the NSW Attorney General announced that David Price (OR1993) was to be elevated to the NSW Bench as a Magistrate. David now joins his father, Derek Price (OR1967), in a rare union – both father and son are members of the NSW Judiciary at the same time. Derek is a Judge of the NSW Supreme Court.

It’s rare but not the first instance in NSW of father/son judicial officers at the same time. The Street family’s legal dynasty reached one of its landmarks when Sir Phillip Street was Chief Justice at the same time that his son, Kenneth, was appointed to the Supreme Court in October 1931. But, as Justice Michael Slattery (OR1971) of the current NSW Supreme Court reminds me:

‘…the most famous example of all is Saint Thomas More himself. When he was appointed Lord Chancellor in 1529… he presided in the Lord Chancellor’s Court in Westminster Hall… His father, Sir John More, was then already a judge of the King’s Bench Division… It is said that after his appointment, Thomas More used to pass by his father’s court on the way to his own court… and would kneel down to receive his father’s public blessing whilst the cases were being heard.’

Justice Slattery is familiar with father/son combinations. His own father, Justice John Slattery, was also a Supreme Court Judge.

David Price’s elevation continues Riverview’s remarkable record of lawyers appointed to higher honours. In particular, there are eight current Judges of the NSW Supreme Court who were educated at Riverview, while John Dunford (OR1953), Anthony Whealy (OR1959) and George Palmer (OR1963) have recently retired. Others came before them, the first of whom was Judge William Thomas Coyle (OR1886) of the District Court.

The eight Old Ignatians currently Judges of the NSW Supreme Court are: Clifton Hoeben (OR1964), Derek Price (OR1967), Peter Johnson (OR1968), Peter Garling (OR1968), one of a prolific family in the Law, Anthony Meagher (OR1971), Michael Slattery (OR1971), Michael Pembroke (OR1972) and presiding over them all is Tom Bathurst (OR1964), the first Old Ignatian Chief Justice of NSW.

And this is at a time when Law students are more successful at finding post-university employment than any other students. In 2015, Australia’s 39 law schools turned out 7583 graduates, 74% of whom were employed in the first four months after graduating.

Those educated in Jesuit schools would seem to be in a significant position to administer the Law with justice. In 1973, the Jesuit Superior General, Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ, delivered his famous ‘men for others’ address to a group of Jesuit alumni in Spain. Arrupe, not speaking only to lawyers, enjoined Jesuit alumni around the world to love the poor, to live in a faith in the service of justice. He posed the question: ‘Have we Jesuits educated you for justice?’

A footnote on Chief Justice Bathurst: Speaking at State Parliament earlier this year, he recalled the NSW Government’s 1888 decision to prevent and detain Chinese passengers disembarking in Sydney Harbour, a decision subsequently ruled illegal by the NSW Supreme Court, much to the displeasure of the Premier, Sir Henry Parkes. The Chief Justice commented with a nod to contemporary events:

‘This story also demonstrates the role of the judiciary and the profession in promoting equality, fairness and the rule of law, despite popular sentiment… Judicial officers are required by oath to do right to all manner of people… without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.’

Equality, fairness, the rule of law: justice.

Gerard Windsor Explores Faith

Here is the promised review of Gerard Windsor’s most recent book,The Tempest-Tossed Church: Being a Catholic Today (NewSouth, 2017). Gerard Windsor (OR1962) has previously published eleven major works, but this is something else: an exploratory, attentive, demanding account of a Catholic, Catholics, Catholicism (‘an exploration of the whats and whys of my Catholicism’).

A colleague has written that the book ‘combines insightful overview of changing faith with sympathetic personal glimpses of living faith’.

Gerard traverses such rich and demanding territory. Interspersed among the chapters devoted to issues, ideas and doctrine (‘Getting Religion’, ‘Incarnation’, ‘The Appeal of the Gospels’, ‘Scandal’, ‘Spirits and Laws’) are twelve portraits of people whom Fr Andy Hamilton describes as ‘familiar and surprising’ in his Eureka St review of the book. My review is limited to just a few of the ideas in the book.

Firstly, the exploration of personal faith.

To the question posed to himself on page 4 – “Do you still believe?” – Gerard answers, “I’d say I hope…I hope more ardently than I believe.”

Forgive the longer quotation, but to do justice to a statement of such personal realisation, I must quote in full from page 97:

“I myself might be a believer, a Christian, a Catholic because I was born into that culture and have continued to find it sustaining and enriching, and because the New Testament presents a figure whose extreme individuality makes it plausible that he might be God. And I think it’s plausible to believe that there’s some all-intelligence, all-goodness whom we call God. And Jesus Christ, in some way, is that person. That, in summary, is the logic of whatever faith I have.”

Gerard’s response seems to ask the reader to personally consider the same questions.

Secondly, the twelve ‘portraits’. The personalities are fascinating and rich. They are sustained by St Francis de Sales’ observation which Gerard quotes: “There is no harm done to the Saints if their faults are shown as well as their virtues.”

St Francis was writing of those Saints canonised by the Church, as was St Thomas Aquinas when he observed that “the Saints were at liberty to hold divergent views just as we are.”

But Gerard’s portraits are of those who belong to that wider group, the ‘communion of saints’ (communio sanctorum) affirmed in the Apostles’ Creed as members of the Church who share gifts as Christians with others.

So Gerard explores a warming notion that “a relationship with Christ is to meet Jesus in other human beings”, which is a most reassuring way of experiencing the divine. In Matthew’s Gospel account of the last judgement, he has ‘the king’ say: “Whatever you do unto the least of my brethren, you do to me.”

This is a crucial point of Christianity. We can meet Christ (another difficult notion that Gerard explores in ‘The Character of Jesus Christ’) in others, in relationships. And so, immediately after his chapter on Jesus, Gerard tells of three Jesuits instrumental in his formation – Fathers John Cowburn, Paul Gardiner  and Tom Daly. It was his sympathetic portrait of Father Tom Daly (1924-2014) in just a few pages that drew me to read it more than a few times.

Father Daly, a Lonergan scholar and lecturer in Epistemology during Gerard’s time with the Jesuits, lived in a small room where students would go with questions. There, he’d be found always sitting at his desk, not a forbidding presence but ‘there was nothing relaxed or mirthful about his laugh’. Yet, he always listened, never interrupted the ‘bumbling’ questioner. There was something urgent and demanding about his manner that told his students that they had to ‘do the work, do the thinking’. Gerard’s final word on him is the encomium that only the best teachers deserve: “…he was a masterly and generous teacher, and I am immensely in his debt.”

Gerard was formed by some questing teachers who listened to him attentively. In turn, Gerard has been demanding of, gracious for and grateful in his own hope, if not belief.

Hope For The Next Generation

Two years ago, on 25 April 2015, many Australians were commemorating Anzac Day, contemplating our great losses in wars. On that day, however, a devastating earthquake in far-away Nepal killed 9,000. 23,000 were injured. Hundreds of thousands were made homeless. Whole villages were flattened. World Heritage Sites were destroyed. Human traffickers preyed on women displaced from the villages.

Most of our response was compassion from afar, although one of our Riverview immersions goes to Nepal each year in December/January to work with and for the people there.

But a small group of 21 year olds was moved to do something practical. And so, ‘From The Ground Up’ was born on the basis that ‘anything great starts small, from the ground, and is built up.’

The photo above shows Nick Abraham, a carpenter from Darwin, along with Paddy Hayes (OR2012), Scott McKeon (OR2012) and Joey Wehbe (OR2012) who have all put their considerable talents at the service of those who need us most. They are “a committed group of young people, focused on using their time and talents to develop innovative solutions… to achieve social change for those most in need in Nepal.”

In the community of Ghumarchowk, they have developed or restored the Urgatara school, HAPSA Health Centre, a village home, a model home and employment for locals in construction.

I met with Nick and Joey this week. They give inspiration through their humility and simple lives made out of complex strands. They will speak at a Hot Potato Shop later this year.

One Old Boy wrote to me to let me know what they’re doing:

“[They are] an exemplar of Ignatian education… young men working on the margins of society. This is not fundraising but just awareness of this Ignatian-inspired, and inspiring, outreach project.”

They face demands: resources, remoteness, continued commitment and experience. But they are undaunted, optimistic, hopeful.

Matthew’s gospel enjoins us: ‘When I was hungry, you gave’ and here in a committed group of 23 year olds is such faith in action.

Old Ignatian Boer War Veterans and Descendants

Image: Australian soldiers during the Boer War, from the Australian War Memorial website

Last week, I asked what connects:

a) One of the 18 Old Ignatians who went off to the Boer War with
b) A past Lawrence Campbell competitor,
c) The current Prime Minister,
d) and the 2016 Dux of the College?

A little about the Boer War first.

When Henry Reynolds published Unnecessary Wars (NewSouth, 2016), he argued that Australian governments have seen the Boer War (1899-1902) as a paradigm by which they could commit to participating in subsequent wars in return for the promise of security from the ‘great powers’. The Boer War, which ended with the signing of the peace treaty of Vereeniging 115 years ago next week, 31 May 1902, was Britain’s response to the Dutch Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Reynolds writes:

‘It was an extraordinary achievement of British diplomacy to receive the military support of the six Australian colonies… The Australians and New Zealanders competed with one another to display their loyalty… Supporters of imperial federation were ecstatic.’

Australia’s patriotism was exemplary but losses were severe. Of the 20,000 Australian men and nurses who served, 1000 were killed or died of sickness. Of the 18 Old Ignatians who served, two died. Riverview was only 19 years old at the start of the war. Peace was secured by conceding to the Boer demands that black South Africans would be treated as equals. Realities were often hidden. A trooper’s diary recorded:

‘All Dutch houses were looted… it was a very amusing sight to see our troops returning to camp with all kinds of loot… a large number of women and children may be counted in our list of captures. We burnt all their houses.’

But much was censored back home. An exploration of this is for another time.

One of the Old Ignatians was Charles Hilton Cecil (known as Hilton) Goold (OR1893). He had outlived most of his contemporaries and most of the Boer War veterans when he died in 1976 aged 97. He came from Cobar to Riverview in 1890 and stayed until he was 15 years of age. He won prizes for studies and he threw the cricket ball a considerable distance in that event at the 1891 Annual Sports. Aged 22, he went off to South Africa. Trooper Hilton Goold, regimental number 3335, was in the 3rd NSW Mounted Rifles (the same regiment as his old Drill Sergeant at Riverview, Harry Williams, who was to die in South Africa) and was renowned as an accurate rifle shot. 115 years ago last week, he left Capetown and returned to Australia and to civilian life until the clarion call of another war moved him to enlist in July 1918, aged 39. His brother, Arthur Goold (OR1893) had been killed in action at Gallipoli on 29 April 1915. But Hilton was not to see action this time as the Armistice to end the Great War on 11 November caused his boat to turn around and to proceed back to Australia. For the next 58 years, Hilton Goold lived contentedly and peacefully, running a general store at Drummoyne, a veteran of two wars but virtually lost to memory at Riverview although his son, John Hilton Goold, was here for one year, 1945, and other relations, the O’Neills and the Rotherys, were also here.

Then Hilton’s great nephew, Ric Davidson (OR1972) contacted me recently: “I knew Hilton. He lived to 97 and my mother and I used to visit him in his home in Chatswood near Boundary Rd… my (great) aunt said she’d never heard my story about Hilton being in the Boer War.”

Like so many, he simply didn’t say much about his war service even to his own family. Ric Davidson, later a teacher at Riverview, was a gifted debater and public speaker, a member of the Australian Schools’ Debating side in 1972. He was also Riverview’s contestant in the Lawrence Campbell Oratory competition held at Sydney Grammar School in July 1972. There, he ran up against one of the best and was placed second, speaking exceptionally on the proverb, ‘The peacock hath fair feathers but foul feet’. But the winner chose the quotation from ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. When Agrippa hears of Antony’s death, he says:

‘And strange it is
That nature must compel us to lament
Our most persisted deeds.’

The winner? MB Turnbull of Sydney Grammar. Of course, since then, Mr Turnbull has served as the 29th Prime Minister of Australia.

Hilton Goold’s connections continue. Last year’s Dux, Mark Rothery, is Hilton’s great great nephew, through his grandmother’s line.

CHC Goold, the last of the 18 Old Ignatian Boer War veterans. Spare a thought for him on the 115th anniversary of the end of the Boer War next week.

Riverview Playwright Plays at Riverview

When Nick Enright represented Riverview in the 1966 Lawrence Campbell Oratory competition (a competition that is searching in its intensity, when candidates chose from three topics given to them 15 minutes before they spoke for 10 minutes), he chose the quotation from Polonius in Hamlet:

‘This above all: to thine own self be true
And as it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.’

Earlier in the year, Nick had played Hamlet, in Riverview’s production of Shakespeare’s play so he may have been quite familiar with the quotation. In any case, he entranced the audience at Sydney Grammar School on that cold July night in 1966 as he spoke without notes. It was a commanding performance and for the fifth successive year, the Lawrence Campbell Oratory trophy returned to Riverview that night. This was a golden era for Riverview. From 1959 until 1975, Riverview boys won the Oratory trophy 13 times in 17 years.  In 49 years from 1960 until 2008, Riverview won the GPS Debating competition an extraordinary 36 times!

Nick Enright was first speaker in the Debating side in 1966, but such was Riverview’s breadth of talent at the time that when Nick returned in Year 12 in 1967, he decided to step down and help coach the younger boys in Debating. Needless to say, even without Nick, Riverview once again won the 1967 Lawrence Campbell and the 1967 GPS Debating. When sickness caused Riverview’s captain, Paul McClintock, to miss the 1967 Final, Riverview once more called on Nick Enright and for one last time, he inspired the side to another victory, another premiership. Father Charles McDonald SJ commented, ‘…with his experience and a temperament that rises to big occasions…he was recalled like Cincinnatus (in ancient Rome) summoned from the fields to save the day…’

From the time when he was acclaimed as Dux of Riverview in 1967 until his death far too early in 2003, Nick Enright (OR1967) and OAM (awarded posthumously ‘for service to the performing arts, particularly as a playwright, teacher, actor, director and as a mentor of emerging talent.’) was a colossus of the Australian stage. One of his many works was Blackrock adapted from an earlier play of his, winner of the AWGIE Award for best play in 1996 and made into a feature film in 1997. It was inspired by the real events surrounding the murder of Leigh Leigh in 1989.

So, last week, it was with some pride that I saw the Year 12 drama production, ‘Landscape of Australian Voices’ which featured a scene from Blackrock. As far as I can remember, this was the first time that Blackrock had been performed at Nick Enright’s old school. And, it came only a few days after Charlie Hoffman, Riverview’s most recent Lawrence Campbell contestant, had performed so admirably in this year’s oratory competition.

Stirring memories of past Lawrence Campbell triumphs and of Riverview’s rich tradition in the performing arts.

PS – Next week’s article will start with a question that you can ponder for a week if you wish: What connects

a) one of the 17 Old Ignatians who went off to the Boer War in South Africa, with
b) a past Riverview Lawrence Campbell competitor and
c) the current Prime Minister?

Generations Of Distinguished Old Ignatians In The News

Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes QC (OR1940) 

During the recent holidays, I re-read Ian Hancock’s ‘Tom Hughes QC, A Cab on the Rank’. This is the absorbing biography of Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes QC (OR1940) which I had only skimmed last year. It’s well worth much deeper reading.

Mr Hughes will turn 94 this year, one of our oldest Old Ignatians from a distinguished Sydney family whose breadth of achievement is scarcely believable. His story “comprises many other fascinating narratives” (Kate Allman, Law Society Journal of NSW, July 2016) and this is one of the reasons why Hancock’s book is so fascinating. You get caught up in the stories of so many other characters in the sweep of Australian life.

Mr Hughes has led a full life that surely few would even aspire to. He flew WW2 Sunderlands on Uboat hunting patrols over the Atlantic. He was Attorney-General of Australia in the Gorton Government, the only Old Ignatian ever to hold that position. He was a commanding presence in the Law Courts, one of Australia’s leading barristers even into his eighties.

Tony Blackshield wrote in Inside Story:

“The early chapters (of Hancock’s book) trace a family saga of almost epic proportions, beginning with the arrival in 1840 of Hughes’ great great grandparents as boat people from Ireland. His grandfather, Sir Thomas Hughes, like his own daughter, Lucy Turnbull , a century later, rises to the position of Lord Mayor of Sydney. His father, Geoffrey, is a First World War flying ace…” and his younger brother, Robert, was the “rambunctious art critic.”

This is an absorbing life of one of our most notable. But why wasn’t he appointed as Captain of Riverview in 1940?

Read the book.

Gerard Windsor (OR1962)

Gerard Windsor (OR1962), essayist, reviewer, memoirist, novelist and author of eleven major books has just written another: ‘The Tempest-Tossed Church: Being A Catholic Today’ (NewSouth, 2017), launched on 1 April. Gerard writes in NewSouth Publishing:

“…I’ve treasured friendships with fellow Catholics, with lapsed Catholics, with a multitude of citizens of the secular and agnostic world. This book is anything but a polemic. My intention is to say that it’s rational and enriching to believe in Jesus Christ. And to disbelieve might be very rational too. Prejudice, scorn, invective, however, should be anathema to all sides.”

When I’ve read it properly, I’ll write a personal notice for it here, but you can read a review on Eureka Streek online. For the moment, let Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ speak. In a most thoughtful review in ‘Eureka Street’ on 28 March this year, he concludes with a vision for the Church’s future:

“The Catholic challenge will be to shape pockets in which religiously literate and radical communities are formed around the symbols of faith. Its contribution to a more humane society will be made by joining other small groups in keeping alive the sense of ‘something more’ and by passing on the craft of finding the words, symbols and silences that catch it.”

Justin Greiner (OR1990)

In February came news that the Harvard Club of Australia was named ‘Harvard Club of the Year’. The President of that club is Justin Greiner (OR1990), College Captain and Insignis winner that year, son of an Old Ignatian, Nicholas (OR1963), and father of a future Old Ignatian, Angus who is in Year 7.

Justin graduated MBA from Harvard in 2000 and has embraced the admirable philanthropic activity of the club ever since:

“The club funds a series of scholarships and fellowships that see 20 to 25 people travel to Boston to study… post grad scholarships, including one for an indigenous postgraduate researcher as well as a range of others for school principals, public servants and not-for-profit leaders.” (Julie Hare in ‘The Australian’ 22 Feb 2017).

What links those three? Hughes (OR1940), Windsor (OR1962) and Greiner (OR1990)?

81 years of Jesuit education at Riverview since Hughes came here, until the present.

And an abiding passion to put their considerable talents at the service of others in Australian public life.

Six Degrees of Separation

6th April 2017

The idea of ‘six degrees of separation’ says that all the people and things in the world are only six or fewer steps away from each other. In 1993, Six Degrees of Separation was released as a film, based on John Guare’s play.

The photo on the left was taken in December last year when we visited Greece. The gleaming white ruins of the mighty temple dedicated to Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, built in 440BC, stand on a spectacular site on Cape Sounio, a headland 60 metres above the Aegean Sea. The site has great mythological importance. When Theseus returned from Crete after conquering the Minotaur, he forgot to hoist white sails to reassure his father, King Aegeus, that he was returning in triumph. When Aegeus saw the black sails, he feared the worst. In distress he threw himself into the sea from Cape Sounio, and the sea is now known as the Aegean Sea.

What’s all this got to do with Riverview? I’m coming to that!

On the columns of this mighty monument are various names scratched there by various celebrities and non-entities, mainly in the 19th century. These days, you can’t deface it because it is quite rightly well-guarded and fenced off. When the great Romantic poet, Lord Byron, toured the ancient sites of Greece in 1810, he managed to leave his name on one of the buildings at Delphi and also here at Cape Sounio. You can see it reasonably clearly on the column just behind me in the photo. ‘BYRON’.

Here’s where the six degrees of separation begin.

On 8 July 1822, Byron and his friends, including the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, picnicked on a beach near the Gulf of Spezia in Italy. Shelley and two others then took a boat across the gulf. A storm sprang up and all three were drowned while Byron looked on from the shore. One of those drowned was Edward Ellerker Williams (1793-1822), a friend of Byron’s, an army officer who lived with but never married Jane Johnson (1798-1884). Their son was Edward Medwin Williams (1820-1897), who eventually moved to Australia where Percy Edward (1848-1925) was born. In 1890, Percy Edward married Mary Eveline Gabriel and their first son was born in 1893. His Christian names reflected his family background: Percy (after the poet), Charles, Louis (after his mother’s father). He was, however, known as Charles or simply Charlie.

Aged 12, Charlie came to Riverview and stayed for four years. He rowed in the junior crews, which was rather ironic considering his great grandfather’s death on the water. He had a keen wit, a notable sense of humour and was very well liked. At the outbreak of World War I, Charlie was one of the first to enlist at Randwick on 22 August, 1914, aged 21. He was not to live to his next birthday. In October 1914, he sailed to Egypt, trained at Mena Camp and then landed at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, on that first morning, Sunday 25 April, 1915.

What happened then was shrouded in confusion for many months. He was variously reported as ‘missing’ or ‘not seriously wounded’ or wounded’, but one of his colleagues wrote to Mr Williams in December 1915: ‘He was wounded in the upper arm… but refused to leave the firing line and kept on blazing away at the enemy. When found, he was dead with a bullet through his head.’

Charlie Williams was the first Old Ignatian killed in the Great War. In fact, he was the first killed in action in any war.

Sounio, Poseidon, Byron, Shelley, Edward Williams, Charlie Williams. Six degrees of separation.

A postscript to last week’s article on the Football Codes at Riverview:

The figures in last week’s article on ‘active participation rates’ were taken from research recently published by Roy Morgan, which reported that Rugby’s active participants (aged 14+) had dropped to 55, 000 in 2016. However, the Australian rugby Union rejects these findings: “The ARU’s own data and a report published by the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) in December 2016 do not support this.” View the full media release

FOOTBALL… but which code?

This is the 34th season since Soccer (Football, Association Football) was first played at Riverview in 1984. At the time, it was a monumental advancement for Riverview to increase the number of winter sports from the monopoly that Rugby mostly enjoyed.

For the first 12 years of Riverview’s existence, the boys actually played Australian Football (Australian Rules) only. Father Joseph Dalton SJ, the first Rector, knew enough about Rugby to refer to it as ‘that horrid Rugby rule’ but a surge in interest among the boys and various petitions to the Rector led to the change to Rugby in 1892. It would be another 92 years before Riverview played Australian Rules again. Despite an underlying feeling in parts of Australian society that even the Rugby Laws did not prevent the game from becoming increasingly malicious and spiteful, a feeling shared by Fr Dalton, Riverview played Rugby exclusively in winter.

In 1984, Riverview’s Sports Master, Mr Michael Punch, took the visionary decision to introduce Soccer and reintroduce Australian Rules. By 1988, Soccer was an official GPS sport and Riverview has fielded strong and successful teams ever since. The AAGPS was not always so well disposed. In 1926, the NSW Soccer Association approached the AAGPS. The request was politely declined.

Why didn’t Riverview play Soccer in the early years?

An easy answer is that Soccer was at the time seen as an English game and many of the Jesuits at Riverview were Irish. If that’s correct, it’s only half of the story. After all, cricket, a very English game, was played at Riverview from 1881 and this year marks its 137th consecutive season. Another answer is that Soccer was not introduced to Australia until 1880, Riverview’s first year, and Australian Rules had been played in Melbourne in 1858.

On Saturday 14 August, 1880, a small crowd watched quizzically at Parramatta Common as a club called  ‘The Wanderers’ played the first game of Soccer in Australia against a team representing The Kings School, Parramatta. Two weeks before that, a meeting had been held to establish a Soccer association under English FA rules. The Secretary of this committee, now referred to as the ‘Father of Soccer in Australia’, was John Walter Fletcher, an English schoolmaster. A fascinating character, he was born in London, an illegitimate son of the English Attorney General, educated at Cheltenham Grammar and Oxford University where he earned his Master of Arts, a cricketer and an athlete. When he arrived in Australia in 1875, he soon established his own College, Coreen (initially in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, then in the Blue Mountains), and appointed himself Headmaster. Immigrants to NSW at the time were mainly English or Scottish and Fletcher simply cashed in on their natural fanaticism for Soccer. Meanwhile, at Riverview, Rugby ruled without alternative from 1892 until 1984.

Incidentally, numbers of regular participants in various sports in Australia have just been released. Since 2001, Soccer has enjoyed a 46% increase, from 428,000 to 623,000. Australian Rules shows a slight decrease of 1%. Rugby’s decrease is a massive 63%, from 148,000 to 55,000.

What would those visionary schoolmasters, Fr Dalton and JW Fletcher, think about that?

T20 Charity Cricket Match Hits it for Six

On Monday, our 1st XI played a Celebrity team in a T20 match on the main oval before a crowd of about 1000. The match raised funds for Redfern Jarjum College (RJC), a primary school in Redfern with a vision to mentor, educate and assist indigenous children and families mainly in the Redfern community. We were thrilled to welcome many of their children, families and teachers to Riverview on Monday, and thankful to the celebrities who supported this worthy cause to the hilt.

The crowd was richly entertained by the skills of Adam Goodes, AFL legend and former Australian of the Year, who top-scored with 58 runs. Former Australian Test cricketers, Simon Katich and Jason Krejza also wowed the crowd, along with English slow bowler, Monty Panesar, who came as a special guest. Former Wallabies, Jason Little and Phil Waugh, showed off their impressive cricket skills while Australian wicketkeeper, Peter Nevil, was so supportive of the cause that he came just to be part of the crowd and the commentary team. Two Indigenous NSW Imparja Cup players, Tim Croft and Ryan Bulger, were also popular on the day – especially when Tim took four outfield catches.

The final score? It didn’t really matter in the midst of such enjoyment, but 1st XI captain, Sam Fanning, incredibly hit his first seven scoring shots for six and finished 47 not out, as the Riverview side chased down 150 in the 17th over.

We want to thank all the people who contributed to the success of the day by purchasing raffle tickets, even if they weren’t able to make the match. With your help, along with the BBQ sales, we managed to raise just under the overall goal of $30,000 for Jarjum, which will go a long way to helping them continue to educate and support families around Redfern. We’re very pleased to announce the winners of all the fabulous prizes and extend huge congratulations to:

• Naomi & Jason Stone on winning dinner for 10 on the stunning St Aloysius College Rooftop, kindly donated by St Aloysius’ College and Stephanie Donovan Catering.
• Mary Byrne & Matthew Egerton-Warburton on winning a function for 20 people at Cova Cottage, kindly donated by the College and Chartwell Catering.
• Lisa & Bradley Apted on winning a week-long stay at a beautiful holiday home in Crescent Head, kindly donated by Tom Meagher and Susan Carmody.
• Grainne & Paul Meehan on winning $1,000 worth of video editing and photography services, kindly donated by Greg Skeed of Skeedvision.
• Rebecca & Anthony Marren on winning a dinner party for 10 hosted by Riverview legend, Father Jack McLain, in the Jesuit Quarters at Riverview.
• Christine & Peter Mackey on winning a signed, framed, limited edition poster of cricket legend, Shane Warne.

Centenaries