Ross Coady
Memory of North Sydney Boys High
When I was twelve, I began at North Sydney Boys High. It is a “selective school” and all students from Artarmon OC automatically went there. On the first day we sat in the lofty school hall and the headmaster, Mr. Mason strode impressively down the centre aisle, in full academic dress, to the stage. I was very impressed and a bit scared by the academic dress.
The school was quite a forbidding place. There was a large central, asphalt covered “playground” with two storeys of classrooms on the eastern and southern sides and the school hall on the western side. Cloisters ran around the ground floor, outside the classrooms. There was a lawn in front of the building (out of bounds), two other “playgrounds” outside the classroom wings, and a rifle range for the cadets behind the hall. The tuckshop was off one of the ground floor cloisters. The science building was out the back, and there were several “portable” buildings down the eastern boundary, one of which was the woodwork workshop.
My subjects in first year were English, History, Science, Maths, Latin, French. We also did music and woodwork, which did not “count”. In second year, I dropped History and replaced it with German. Then in third, fourth and fifth years, I took English, Maths I, Maths II, Physics, Chemistry, French (Honours from 4th year).
High school was not a happy time for me.
I was not interested in, or good at sport, which made life quite miserable, particularly as Wednesday sports afternoons approached. Mondays and Tuesdays were days of increasing dread, while Thursdays and Fridays were days of brief respite and relief. I had to play football in first year; the only small compensation being the bright red jersey (colour of Smith House, which I was in) which I
liked. When I was allowed to play tennis in later years, I did so but was not much good at that either. I partly blame the school because they made no attempt to teach the rules or encourage boys like me. When I had to be a coach, as a teacher at Shore many years later, I took time to support and encourage the more timid boys and they (and their parents) were very grateful.
Cadets, another manifestation of the generally macho culture pervading the school, was another unhappy experience. I joined because I wanted to play the horn, and to do this you had to be in the band, and to be in the band you had to be a cadet. Of course the members of the band were never accepted as real soldiers, were never given rifles, and at cadet camp did not go on manoeuvres, but had to do medical training instead. The final humiliation was that I was never promoted beyond lance corporal.
The subjects I studied were also unmemorable except for maths and French. Maths started badly in first year when I failed one of my exams. My dad took this in hand and coached me relentlessly, for which I quite unreasonably hated him at the time, and after that I grew to enjoy it and did very well. I particularly excelled at three-dimensional geometry, and was the go-to person for that, amongst my friends. I loved French and joined after school Alliance Francaise classes as an extension. I won the French prize in 4th year, a book called “L’Automobile et Son Histoire”. In 5th year my teacher was Nancy Robson whom I loved. She was an interpreter for the United Nations and hence was quite often absent, but when she was there, she would bring petits fours to class and took us to French movies at the Savoy (where I discovered the beautiful Alain Delon). She later became Anne Kerr, the despised second wife of Sir John Kerr, the notorious governor General who dismissed Gough Whitlam. Of course, I hated him but always defended her. She brought a glimpse of culture, romanticism, and art into my life.
Another good memory is of two books we studied in English. They are Emily Bronte “Wuthering Heights” and H G Wells “The History of Mr Polly”. I loved them both for similar reasons I think. “Wuthering Heights” contrasted the wild insecure atmosphere of Wuthering Heights and its family with the warm security of Thrushcross Grange and its family. I somehow felt this reflected my own insecurity and the possibility of an answer to it. “The History of Mr Polly” meant the possibility of freedom for me. Mr Polly burns down his shop, the restricted site of his unhappy marriage, claims the insurance, and runs away to a new free life with the plump owner of an Inn beside a charming river. I so wanted to do that. I also had an English teacher who paid me the only academic compliment I received from a teacher. In the margin of one of my critical essays he put a tick and wrote “good point”. His name was Mr Devir. He must have looked foreign because he was nicknamed Luigi.
I had two friends who mattered at high school. The first was Ronny Witton who for some reason took me on. I think it may have been because he also felt an outsider, but I am not sure. He lived in Neutral Bay and I was quite often invited to his house. His parents were (I think) Austrian and may have migrated here after the war. Their place had a foreign feel to it, and I remember how much they respected Ronny and his older brother Nic, and doted on them. I remember a holiday with them to a bush hut somewhere down south, where we had fun shooting at bottles with an air gun. This friendship waned and was replaced by my friendship for Stephen Cains. He came to the school in second year, from Newcastle I think, and he may have been a bit lonely. Hi mother had recently died. He also lived in Turramurra and we travelled on the train together. His friendship was so real, and my warmest memory is of him waiting outside my classroom to go home with me. At the end of 4th year I was really disappointed not to be made a prefect but he remained my friend when he became one and gave me entrée into the prefects social circle of parties, which was so important as I entered my fifth and final year. That year was better for me as I could sense the end. I also remember becoming very conscious of my appearance and took pains to dress well in my uniform and polish my shoes. Stephen remained my friend throughout university years and was best man at my wedding.
I have written elsewhere about being gay, but I was only subliminally conscious of this at that time. I did know I was attracted to some of the boys but this attraction never reached my reasoning mind. I have only scattered memories of myself, but I do remember that sexual desire was ever-present, but in a lonely and hidden way, primarily expressed like most adolescents I guess, though relentless masturbation. The only same-sex attractions I remember were for the school captain, a few years ahead of me, who was tall, athletic and handsome and also for the vice-captain, whose bad skin did not deter me. I never gave these attractions the name of “homosexuality”, a word I did not even know, and try as I might, I cannot recall how I thought of myself sexually at this time. I do know I went on going to school events with the occasional girl and even kissing a girl at a fifth (final) year party, so I must have thought, or hoped I was just a “normal” guy, whose male fantasies did not count or would go away. I do know I had to keep them secret, so obviously I knew they were unacceptable, but somehow this never translated, in my mind, into this being really me. Within my narrow world there was no gay world; it did not exist, nor was it ever mentioned, let alone in derogatory terms. At the end of high school, I sensed that I had become acceptably popular, and I remember putting on a macho front at the school athletics carnival, not by competing but by loudly leading the cheer squad.
I did very well in my Leaving Certificate, achieving As in English, Maths I and II, and Physics, B in Chemistry, and First Class Honours in French. So maybe there was something good gained at the school…but at what psychological price?
Throughout my last two high school years, my parents were breaking up, and this reached finality just after my leaving. But that is another story.