↓ SECTION 04 —THE MAIL ROOM
1944
Rhonda ‘Plum’ Haet (Rutherford, Cl’44) is the subject of a biography, From Bihar to Berkeley: The Extraordinary Life of Plum Rutherford Haet (Wingidgeon Station, 2015), written by past parent Andrea Palmer, mother of Julia (Cl’05), Gordon (FB’07) and Nick Peardon (M’09). Born to Sir Thomas and Lady Audrey Rutherford (Dickenson, Cl’18) in 1927, Plum spent the first few years of her life in East India, where her father was Governor of Bihar in the days of the British Raj. At barely five years old, Plum was sent to a strict boarding school in England and then to Clyde School in 1939 to complete her secondary schooling at her mother’s alma mater. “Her early years away from her family helped Plum develop a stoic strength that flourished throughout her teens and early twenties,” Andrea said. “Her escapades included serving in the Burmese Army, travelling the world during the 1950s and joining the student body at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied Russian. Never the shrinking violet, after completing her degree, Plum went on to gain a Masters in Sociology and became a controversial lecturer covering courses such as The Sociology of Sex.” Plum married Jewish American doctor Martin ‘Muddy’ Haet in Las Vegas in the early 1960s and the couple had two children before Muddy took up a volunteer posting in American Samoa, where he tragically died whilst successfully saving his daughter from drowning in the ocean (the Cedar-Sinai Medical Centre in California holds an annual memorial lecture in his honour). “This changed the course for the rest of Plum’s life and set her on the path as a trail blazer in the study of the sexual revolution,” Andrea explained. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Andrea studied at the University of California, San Diego. She met Plum in 1982 but didn’t start working on the biography until 2008, when she was living in rural New South Wales and had raised three children of her own. “Plum could not imagine that anyone could be interested in her life, although she was happy to provide many anecdotes.”
1964
Two aspiring Indonesian filmmakers, Ima Puspita Sari and Kiki Febriyanti, completed an intensive graduate course, Thinking with a Video Camera, at the Australian National University’s School of Archaeology and Anthropology in 2015 courtesy of The John Darling Fellowship. Established in 2013 in memory of the late John Darling (P’64), the Fellowship is designed to offer training opportunities in Australia for emerging Indonesian documentary filmmakers to assist with the development of their filmmaking skills, commercial knowledge and awareness of archival issues. Supported and administered by the Herb Feith Foundation, the Fellowship has now funded four young Indonesian filmmakers to complete courses in Australia and produce short films.
John Darling, who died in November 2011, was once described by American anthropologist Clifford Geertz as Bali’s “most innovative cinematographer”, ranking him alongside other international scholars for his “definitive studies”. John had studied at ANU and Oxford before he began living in Bali in 1969, directing, producing and researching nine documentary films about Indonesia that screened internationally on the BBC, PBS, ABC and France 3. His 1978 documentary (co-directed with Lorne Blair), Lempad of Bali, about 116-year-old master artist I Gusti Nyoman Lempad won the Best Documentary award at the Asian Film Festival. He went on to direct a three-part series about Balinese culture, showing the history, life rites and religious practices of the island. His last documentary (co-produced with wife Sara), The Healing of Bali, focused on the 2002 Kuta nightclub bombing. John wrote books and poetry about Bali. He was also a lecturer in Media Studies at Murdoch University in Perth and a Visiting Fellow in the Anthropology Department at ANU.
1949
Rafe Slaney (P’49) is writing a book about the sinking of HMAS Goorangai in Port Phillip Bay with fellow volunteers from the Fort Queenscliff Museum. A small auxiliary vessel fitted to sweep for mines in Bass Strait, HMAS Goorangai was the first Australian naval vessel lost in World War 2 after an accidental collision with MV Duntroon in the South Channel of Port Phillip Bay on 20 November 1940. It sank within a minute, taking all 24 personnel aboard with her. The wreck was destroyed two months later as it lay inside the shipping lane, resting in less than 15 metres of water. Rafe’s interest in the HMAS Goorangai stems from knowing one of the sailors aboard, Able Seaman Albert McDonnell, who had worked as a farmhand on Rafe’s father’s farm on the Mornington Peninsula.
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LIGHT BLUE - GEELONG GRAMMAR SCHOOL