Teachers dedicated to educating generations of Australian school children gathered for a special 70th anniversary reunion at QUT this week.
More than 30 former teachers, who finished their studies at Queensland's Teachers Training College (QUT's predecessor) in 1945, returned to QUT's Kelvin Grove campus to catch up with their classmates and walk through QUT's iconic A-block building.
The event was planned by alumnus Phil Cullen AM (pictured above first on left), a QUT "Golden Graduate" and a former Director of Primary Education in Queensland.
He is widely known for his concern for the morale of teachers and leadership in primary education.
For 40 years he has maintained regular contact with his graduating class, all aged over 85, who have tried to meet every year in October at Orleigh Park, West End.
"We decided that we should keep going to the same venue on the same day for as long as we could... until only one person turns up," he said.
Mr Cullen also recalled his first day as a teacher of Grade 3 at Proston State School in Queensland's South Burnett region.
"I was as nervous as a kitten and I was too nice to them," he said.
"Then I was transferred to Sarina in north Queensland where I was firmer and tougher."
Mr Cullen said teaching was "in the family's blood" as his mother had been a 'pupil teacher' in Plainland, near Ipswich before World War I and his older brother worked at a one-teacher school.
"They would ride their horses to school," he said.
He and his colleagues reminisced about working in one-teacher schools, administering isolated schools, rote learning on Fridays and numerous anecdotes of past pupils.
Roma Hawthorne (nee Boyd, pictured above third from right) brought some well-thumbed text books she used at a one-teacher school on the Condamine Plains, west of Toowoomba.
She had also discovered a cheque, dated January 1951, and it paid her three shillings and seven pence to clean the school.
"I taught 17 children from five different grades and cleaning the school was a part of the job," Mrs Hawthorne said.
Alumnus Norma Hecht wrote a poem to celebrate 70th reunion with a verse that said:
"Many stories could be written of the experiences to be had
"The distant fields, the isolation, but the friendships made us glad
"That we had chosen to take this path, for nothing can compare
"With the rewards that come so freely when children show they care."
Mr Cullen now has his mind set on organising the 75th reunion in 2020.
Media contact: Debra Nowland, QUT Media Officer, (Mon, Tues, Thurs), 07 3138 1150 or media@qut.edu.au
