to change it but then I met an Inspector, Mr O'Sullivan, who seemed to understand and invited me on to a syllabus committee where they were reviewing an Art programme. And by the mid fifties the Principal, Dr Greenhalgh, and then Mr Crowder, were quite happy for me to experiment with the students to see how this would work.
As time went on it became known around Brisbane that the men as well as the girls were doing all forms of fibre craft. A reporter from the Telegraph came by and photographed two men - the reporter was quite clear that the photo had to show, not men and women together, but just two men, stitching away at a machine.
We never thought anything of it until the letters began to arrive pointing out that it just wasn't right, men taking sewing. What would women do if men took over sewing and teaching sewing as well? What I didn't realise at the time was that I wasn't just fighting to get a change in educational ideas using textiles. There were women who not only enjoyed having a monopoly on the skill, but for whom it was important because they were being paid to come into the school and take sewing.
So there was that aspect of the problem - not only the quite strong feeling that sewing, and related craft work, was for women.
Concentrating hard on a fine yarn - spinning class, 1960s.
Courtesy of the Department of Education, Educational History Unit
In 1963 I went to a Home Economics conference in Paris. That was due to Dr Greenhalgh's support, not financial, but in approving my leave application. Well, over there the idea came across loud and clear that men were doing all these things.
I came back fired with enthusiasm and of course the papers got hold of the wrong end of the stick and wrote that I was going to change the whole structure of schools and have the men cooking and the women doing woodwork, which was not what I was saying at the time. I was gradually leading up to it, of course, and now that is exactly what happens in high schools, but I knew the change would be gradual.
I've been interested in fibre art all my life. I doubt whether there was a time I was not interested. Needlework is one part of fibre art.
I think we have been lucky to always have the right head for a given time.
Mr Robinson was only here for a short part of my time, but Dr Greenhalgh and Arch Crowder, Gordon Jones, and Peter Batsman too, were all good for the College at the time they were here, showing their support and encouragement for new ideas.
For example, Dr Batsman knew I was keen on spinning, weaving and dying and that I had formed a Queensland group and he was quite appreciative of all that. To me it was just something you did as a lecturer in the College, but he would encourage staff to go out into the community, because he thought that if you became practised in a given area you would become a better lecturer in it.
I was "loaned" to Kedron Park by Dr Greenhalgh and to the Darling Downs Institute in Toowoomba by Dr Batsman, and that gave me the opportunity to go out and spread my particular fibre craft gospel. And as early as Mr Crowder' s period as Principal the College made space available to the Spinners, Weavers, and Dyers group, which fitted Dr Batsman's philosophy of community involvement very well.
When the word came around that we were changing from a teachers' college and we were going to become autonomous - the first thing that entered our minds was we would lose our holidays! Now that sounds ridiculous, but you see teachers get all those holidays, ten weeks a year, I think, and we were getting that also.
We all had to reapply for our jobs, which made many of my colleagues quite worried. Well, I couldn't imagine Kelvin Grove without Cecile Falvey so it didn't enter my head that they would get rid of me!
Cec Falvey at a floor loom
And there was a lot of questioning about what we were doing and why autonomy? But slowly we could see the good rather than the bad - we could make decisions ourselves without worrying about the Education Department. We lost holidays, but increased salary - it took us a long time to get over that lack of holidays.
Everyone had to decide which Faculty we were going into. They had people coming in to assess us to see which Faculty would be most suitable; but by the time amalgamation came along I think most of us just took it in our stride.
We taught both what to teach and how to teach it. Strictly speaking, I was supposed to just teach content and then they would go off to methodology, but I could never separate the two. Students had to have content in order to go out and teach, so as you taught content, you would also give demonstrations or written notes on how something could be put across in an interesting way at both primary and later high school levels. That to me came hand in hand, content and how to do it.
Some people thought we should just be giving how to teach it, method of teaching, and that students should already know content. I can't speak for all areas of the College, but I am speaking for the one in which I was involved.
They came with very little content and relied on us quite heavily; and we were happy to give them everything so we could see how they would carry it out in a school. I remember one occasion when a group of lecturers from all areas of the College went to Craigslea School, to put into practice what we had been teaching the students. We became the staff of the School!
Life at College was a ball, I think. There were sad days and fun days but to me it was just a wonderful experience even though perhaps there were often things I didn't agree with. It was like growing up in any family, where one learnt to give and take.
One of the areas I thoroughly enjoyed was going as a chaperone on physical education camps at Tallebudgera. Now these camps were being run by Nan Durrans, Alwyn Krebs, Murray Hine, George Hay, Ken Southgate. Because
of the time we were living in, boys and girls just did not mix, so they had to have chaperones to keep them apart. Well, remember that I was not much older than some of those I was keeping apart - but it was a most wonderful time, very exhausting. There are some hilarious stories about the chaperones.
We would have no-man's land in the middle where the boys were in the camps on one side and the girls were on the other and if they wanted to meet they had to do so in no-man's land under the full glare of the lights of the camp, plus the eyes of the chaperones.
Many is the night we sat up waiting for students who had slipped through the net and gone up to Surfers Paradise. This did not happen often but when it did it was quite a worrying time until we reached a point where we all decided we had outgrown running camps - because students did not understand why we were chaperoning
them when they were left to do these things, they would tell us, by their parents.
And one year we decided to go skiing. I have forgotten which year it was, but it was unheard of - you could not buy clothes - there was no such thing as a ski shop and none of us had seen snow.
And again the papers got hold of the story - I think they were intrigued - it was so unusual for students from the heat of Queensland to go to the ski fields of New South Wales.
Since learning to spin in 1969 I have been proud of being a genuine "spinster". Well, a few years ago now, 1986 I think, there was an article in the paper saying that they were removing the word "spinster" from legal documents because it was not a very nice word. So I wrote to the 'Letters to the Editor' of The Courier-Mail because I personally could see nothing wrong with the word spinster!
And the flack that I received from that letter was unreal! Even from some of my own colleagues. They'd say "Oh but Cecile, you
know the word spinster, what it means?" "The Spinster" by Brian Dean - portrait of Cec Falvey in a hand spun and woven jacket, with the ubiquitous spinning wheel!
According to Webster's Third New International Dictionary 1976:
Spinster 1 a: a woman whose occupation is to spin bobs: a man whose trade is spinning 2a archaic:
an unmarried woman of gentle family b: an unmarried woman - often used as a legal term 3: a woman past the common age of marriage or one who seems unlikely to marry - also called old maid.
Well, I did - and the dictionary will tell you what it means - but I just couldn't accept all the negative connotations.
So perhaps that is how Brian Dean actually saw me, as chief spinster - and he painted me rather wonderfully in my spun and handwoven jacket with a spinning wheel, which I was always carting around the countryside to encourage others in the art of spinning.
Text from an interview with Susan Pechey in 1990.
"Yes, Sir, Miss Durrans": Nan Durrans
Nan Durrans was born in Sydney and spent much of her childhood "outback", having her early schooling by correspondence. In 1941 her family moved to Toowoomba where she started formal schooling at Grade 4 level. She attended the Toowoomba State High School from 1944 to 1948, taking commercial subjects; in 1947 she took out a Junior Teaching Scholarship to the Training College, intending to become a commercial teacher. This involved additional classes taken after school each day as she continued with Senior studies at Toowoomba State High. In 1949 she entered Kelvin Grove on a Senior Scholarship and was granted free attendance at the University of Queensland to take a Diploma in Physical Education, completed in 1952. She took up her first appointment, to the Holland Park Housing Commission, in 1951 and in 1953 was transferred to a one-teacher school at Nangwee on the Darling Downs.
In 1954 Miss Durrans was brought back to Kelvin Grove, where she remained until her retirement in 1988. During that period she was instrumental in establishing several of the new courses and held a variety of senior administrative positions, including being Acting Campus Principal and Acting Head of the School of Teacher Education for a few months - the most senior position in the College to be held by a woman to date!
~
During my first year at College physical education seemed to become more attractive and by the end of that year I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to the University of Queensland to become a physical education teacher.
During 1950 I was attending the College during the day and the University at night. Then at the end of 1950 I was appointed to a school, in fact I was appointed to a Housing Commission School in Holland Park. It could not have been a worse introduction to teaching. "Provisional School" it was called-it did not have any school property of its own, just a hut in the middle of the camp and parents could look in the window at the classroom.
Interviewer: Can you comment on the quality of the training you got at the College and also the course you did at the University?
Nan: Well, for me at the time they were marvellous. I enjoyed College very much and I enjoyed University very much-but at that time of life I seemed to be the sort of person who enjoyed everything I did. In later years I could not understand when students started to pick and choose and say "That's useless, why are we studying this?" I think it is all part of education to study as much as you can, to be a broadly educated person. I could not reconcile my feelings of enthusiasm for everything with the attitudes of others who
Nan Durrans
War Party-Ann Miscamble and Marie Johnston at Tallebudgera, April 1959
were so easily "bored". I just enjoyed studyingfull stop and it did not matter what it was. The College lecturers were a small band at College.
They were nice people, good people and very dedicated. You would not criticise any of them for their manners or their way of life. They were people chosen to go to the College because they had been good teachers and good teachers generally make good College lecturers for teacher education. They were all disciplinarians but I have very fond memories of the lecturers concerned. I thought they were great.
Dress was regulated. I wore skirts and blouses or light cotton dresses, generally with the arms covered because our Principal required that girls had their arms covered, particularly wizen they were at prac school. If Mr Robinson saw you at prac school you had to look fairly trim, meaning a long sleeved blouse. I don't remember wearing stockings at College though I certainly did at prac school where we dressed like teachers. We were very careful about our dress - it wasn't until, I think, the 1960s that men were even allowed to wear short trousers and long socks. That was one of the privileges; they still had to wear their ties for prac school. After that, once the rules were relaxed, it was anything goes- jeans, thongs, bare feet. It was a pity really that they would not hold the standards so111ewhere along the line. Some tried - in phys ed people 111iglzt be running around bare-footed outside but if someone came into class with bare feet, we'd say "Come on, put your shoes on". The exception was that bare feet were preferred in the dance studio, where the floor marked easily, especially by pebbles in the bottom of sandshoes. In the seventies and eighties with a physical education course of specialists in the field, we always liked our students to be well-dressed and tried to keep a uniform.
Sometimes when I look back on 111y old notes, which I kept for quite a while, I wondered if some of it was not a long way over 111y head at tlze ti111e. Wizen you first go to College you arc not, in most cases, really ready to understand and appreciate the full significance of theory. I think it was later that it really became more valuable, after one had been in the field for a little while. We had more regular prac than they have now. They have blocks of prac but we went to prac school one day a week in first year and two days in second.
When only three days of the week are at College and the other two days you are face-to-face with the class, then you are trying to get out of what you are learning something that will help you to teach.
Some of the high-flying philosophies in education were a bit beyond what we were ready for; but certainly the things that we did in the method subjects that we were teaching - music, physical education, science and art - everything that we did in the specific subject areas was very much related
to what we were going to teach on Thursday and Friday. We were getting help with our lessons and that was very important.
Interviewer: Someone has commented to me that he was taught what to teach but not how to teach it. Would that be valid in your view?
Nan: No, it wouldn't, because the lecturers we had at the time were pretty specific about that. Now Phil Radcliffe, who didn't have a University degree (always said he was too busy reading to do a degree) was one of tlze most learned teachers when it came to English grammar and literature. He would teach us how to teach a certain point of grammar and I would go out and teach that lesson to my prac class - and the teachers would be absolutely delighted, "That's wonderful, I have never been able to get tlzat across before". I'd rush back to Phil's class to get the next lecture. After a wlzile his pattern of doing things became internalised and you started to think that way. Our maths was the same. It was a very lzdJ-~ful way to begin teaching.
Interviewer: That is what you were doing during the daytime. What courses were you doing out at the University at night?
Nan: The three years we lzad for the Physical Education Diploma involved physical education classes for primary school in one year, for secondary the next year, and recreational sport the next year. So everything we did in each year in the sports and the other activities was related to the physical education programme in schools at the time. We also did, for example, theory and practice of teaching PE, organisation and administration (which was organising things like
Sports mp presentation, 1962 From left: Cl11"ist1nc C11rt11cr, I.y11 /3,istock, l'J1111 f1111T1111s,
Iic11//1cr StT11ggs, Ciro/ Lidg11/c 1111<! R/1,i11dn A111rslw!I
camps, courses, schools and carnivals), history of physical education, anatomy, physiology, statistics, speech, and psychology. We took sports on Saturday morning- two hours on Saturday morning entirely for sports. 111 each semester we took a different sport, so we covered most of them in three years. We took swimming in the summer semester and this included lifesaving, culminating in the Bronze Medal, without wlziclz no-one can teach swimming, anyway. Since I had been a non-swimmer when I started the course I was really extended to get the Bronze. The awful part was transport - trams and buses involved so much time. We'd fin islz at College at 3.30pm and the bus left King George Square at 4.30 for Uni and lectures started at 5.05pm - so we had to be there and changed - and finish about 6.55pm. I often didn't get home until 8.15pm and then there were meals,
and study for College and for Uni. It was a very busy time - even examinations claslzing at the end of the year!
I played in the first grade University hockey team, and tlzey accepted me without training because they practised on Sunday- my only ti111e to study!
I tried to get tlze balance between sport and study but I was always a bit of a swot. The balancing act went on for years because when I ca111e to College as a lecturer I spent nine years as a part-time lecturer at tlze University ('.f Queensland and 1 didn't lzave a car even tlzcn - so 1 was still coming lzomc late at night. And I lzad to take tlze students Saturday moming at Uni and go out ·with my College hockey teams 011 Saturday afternoon.
ill 1953, after J' d graduated, the Education Department made tlze edict tlzat all specialists had to do ou t-scrvice in onc-teaclzcr sclzools before they became
Where's the snow? College ski trip, 1962.
Courtesy of Nan Durrans!Val Cocksedge
specialists. Now tlzere uwe only a handful of specialists available in Queensland in physical education - about twenty or twenty-five - so they could not really afford to send such people out to onc-teaclzer schools. But out we went! I went to Nangwcc, between Cecil Plains and Oakey, and it was tlze most exciting year of my life. It had clzildren from Grade 1 up to scholarship. I had very little experience of lzow to handle tlzat situation - except that we lzad spent one day at the Ascot one-teacher sclzool observing how a teacher looks after all tlzose different grades.
Nangwec had never lzad a Head Mistress before.
They loved sport and this was where tlzc brcaktlzrough came for me. 1 think that if I had not been quite so "sporty" they would lzavc remained very reserved. Tlze children could play with me ·without losing respect. At lunch ti111c I could be flying along in the lunch lzour kicking a soccer ball, with 111y shirt out at the back and my shoes all dusty. Tlzen I would look at tlzc time, excuse myself and go back upstairs, dust off 111y shoes, tuck in 111y blouse, ring the bell, and they would be all standing in line with their feet apart ready for me to say "Attention" and march t!zem into school. I really appreciated the experience of a one-teacher school, because you could sec how little ones could be inspired by the experience of the older children and the older ones gain tlze benefit of the leaders/zip of little ones and consideration of their needs.
Later we started something for the adults, a Saturday night social, where I called square dancing for a couple of hours - it really grew to quite a big