The Carey Files
Publicity, philanthropy and purpose: Carey’s beginning Helen Penrose Carey’s Centenary Historian
The following are excerpts from Chapter 2 of the centenary history of Carey Baptist Grammar School, to be published in 2023.
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hen Baptists in Victoria decided, in 1919, to open a school, they required an exceptional leader to enact the entrepreneurial vision. That person was Revd Leonard Tranter. He led the new Baptist Secondary Schools Committee that met in 1919 and reported to the Baptist Union of Victoria (BUV) its decision in favour of establishing Baptist schools. In 1920 the BUV enlarged this Committee and asked it to raise £20,000. Several other influential Baptists featured in this committee’s membership. They included Hedley Sutton, missionary; Alfred Fullard, chairman of the Victorian Baptist Fund; Joseph Goble, admired minister of Footscray Baptist Church; Dr William Moore, president of the Baptist Theological College; and Ernest Tuckwell, minister of Kew Baptist Church. Also among the group of zealous and influential campaigners was William Holdsworth, who had been a minister of Kew Baptist Church. As principal of the Baptist Theological College of Victoria, he hoped that a boys’ secondary school would shore up the college’s enrolment.
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Joseph Newnham, then the minister at Ivanhoe Baptist Church, was a member of the committee too. He later served as minister of Kew Baptist Church. He was renowned for his evangelistic character, and during his ministry at Kew Baptist Church, it became one of the largest Baptist congregations in Australia.
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n 1920, Leonard Tranter was given permission to establish The Propagandist as the new monthly newspaper. Plans to open a boys’ school featured prominently in the first issue in 1921. Circulated to every Baptist Church in Victoria, the newspaper, from that moment, was deliberately and consistently harnessed by BUV leaders, and later Carey’s leaders too, to plead with members of every church to contribute to the regular appeal to fund major denominational activities, including Carey Baptist Grammar School. Later the newspaper publicised the activities and successes of students in sporting, academic and religious pursuits, and linked these glowing reports to the denomination’s future. In 1921, Leonard Tranter’s tract entitled ‘A plea for Christian education’ laid out the educational aims and values for the proposed secondary schools. It was published in The Propagandist and printed in 1922 to accompany the first
‘The close-knit Carey community was founded on generosity of spirit and belief in the cause. These traits carried Carey through the enormous challenges it faced during the 1930s and 1940s.’
