FEATURE REFLECTION: YEAR 7 IN 1970, PART TWO
Reflection: Year 7 in 1970 Part Two Ann Rennie (O’Neill, 1975) | English and Religion Teacher We have come a long way since 1970. Australia had a population of 12.2 million and Sir Henry Bolte, the cartoonist’s dream, was Premier of Victoria. This was the year Tullamarine Airport opened and the Westgate Bridge collapsed. IBM introduced floppy disks and 3XY was the local hip radio station. Dame Edna was still Mrs Edna Everage, wife of Norm, denizen of Moonee Ponds. She had not yet gone on to conquer the universe with her quick wit, outsize ambition and swaying gladioli, and undertake advertising campaigns for an insurance company with meerkats mistaken for possums. Daddy Cool was a year away from releasing that other national anthem, Eagle Rock, and John Farnham, was a much loved popstar plumber whose Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head is still as fresh as it was on its 45 rpm vinyl record the day it was released. A baby-faced twenty-six-year-old Mick Jagger featured in the title role in the film, Ned Kelly. Melbourne girl, Germaine Greer, published The Female Eunuch and the world for women began to change, s…l…o…w…l…y. One of the biggest things to happen in 1970 was the arrival of Mr Duncan, the first male teacher in the history of Genazzano. Of course, the school had been used to visiting prelates, monsignors, bishops and archbishops and had chaplains and priests thick on the ground in Kew, with the Redemptorists in Majella Court a fiveminute walk away and the Jesuits at Xavier, but this was ground-breaking. Brave Mr Duncan!
I am afraid to say that my later Year 10 Maths class with him was not a success and that was all to do with me and nothing to do with Mr Duncan and his efforts. (I recently met him again and oh, how we laughed about those days. He kindly pretended to remember me and perhaps he did because I sat solidly up the back for the year with my best friend and spent most of the lesson laughing, but he certainly had happy memories of his time teaching at Genazzano). I digress… back to the first year of living in the seventies! Monday tuck-shop was heaven with Gen mothers making salad rolls I can still taste. Something to do with the butter slathered on doughy rolls and the fact that it wasn’t from home. Vanilla slices and neenish tarts were my favourites as our orders were put into brown paper bags with correct money, name and class for collection at lunchtime. Before that we recited the Angelus at midday in those days when prayer punctuated much of our young lives. Sometimes, we would stop at the grotto and wonder about Bernadette and Lourdes and all things miraculous. We acknowledged our grubby venality through the frequency of confession for the sins of fibbing, pinching siblings, saying unkind things and thinking mean thoughts, being rude to parents and the usual litany of misdemeanours for which a Hail Mary or three or a Glory Be was the penance. I loved the old chapel with its bees-waxed wooden pews, plaster cast saints, lingering incense and its enveloping gothic gloom. Riffling through the 1970 yearbook, I am reliably informed by Sr Eymard that the Medium School performed the operetta, The Gypsy Maid. No doubt the mothers spent hours sewing costumes for those with great theatrical and musical talent and the rest of us. We were taken into town for the cinematic experience of watching Walt Disney’s animation masterpiece, Fantasia on the wide screen and out on excursion to Yan Yean reservoir to
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understand Melbourne’s water supply. We were also introduced to the Scientific Research Association method of narrative composition. This was probably the neuroscience of the day with the explicit aim of improving our writing. However, after 25 years of teaching, I know that the best thing for writing is reading. Twelveyear-olds then and twelve-year-olds now need the nourishment of words and ideas from both classic and contemporary fiction to expand their own imaginative repertoire. We studied Colin Thiele’s heart-breaking February Dragon. With our recent devastating bushfires, this book is as relevant today as it was then. As I reminisce I wonder what my Year 7s of 2020 will think about their interrupted school year when they connect at their 45-year school reunion in 2070. I wonder what the school day will look like and how the Genazzano campus might change architecturally to reflect the student population and new educational pedagogies. I hope the grotto is still here reminding us of the Gen girls of 1931 and that the Wardell building is a hive of activity. I hope the old stories and traditions are kept alive. There’s nothing like the changing incarnations of the Grey Lady to add to the school mythology. I hope that this next generation, in their turn, will be encouraged to find and treasure the beauty, truth and goodness of the world around them; to see their lives as graced opportunities to do good; and to be thankful for their fleeting days at the wellloved school upon the hill. Most of all, I hope that some happy little Year 7 in 2070 reads this for her research on the history of Genazzano and marvels at the olden days and all the great school stories archived for posterity and rediscovery. Correction: In Part 1 of Gen in 1970, Sr Barbara Reed fcJ was listed as Principal of Genazzano FCJ College however, it was actually Sr Barbara Hume fcJ.
