It was a serious offence for a boarder to be out of bounds, even on a hike! One of the offenders, as well as another member of the hike, recalled the incident sixty years later. There was a happier end to the story, however. Later that night Mrs McCristal came into the dormitory and put […]

“Another ex-student recalled an incident where he and a friend dropped behind the main body of walkers near Mordialloc one Sunday. He and his friend went into a shop on Beach Road and bought a small packet of Capstan cigarettes which they smoked in the scrub along the beachfront. Then they raced along the beach […]

Mentone College: “The story of one new pupil illustrates this. One February, a boy of twelve from a grazing property in the Riverina stepped out of the cab for his first day at Mentone College. Turning around, he saw the blue of Port Phillip Bay a couple of hundred yards away through the trees. His […]

Quotes follow: Meeres’ School: “It appears that after the kindly and cultured Meeres couple went back to England, the school was run by a Mr Chambers whose delight seemed to be in thrashing the pupils savagely with canes chosen from his extra large collection.”

The first eight chapters of the school history are devoted to Mentone College, and some of the quotes come from there. There’s also discussion of the history of education in the area around Mentone – it’s considered interesting because there are so many schools in that small area (5 large secondary schools today). One quote, […]

    St Bede’s College, Mentone, Victoria, Australia. Well, most of them are. The book is ‘St. Bede’s College and its McCristal origins 1896-1982’ by Leo Gamble, published by St Bede’s in 1982. St Bede’s is considered to be the successor school to an earlier one called Mentone College, often referred to as McCristal College […]

Paddy would then proceed through the class carrying a chocolate box. Those listed for corporal punishment would be invited to take a chocolate and on opening the box would find Paddy’s strap, neatly coiled and ready for action. Funnily enough, recalled several former students, boys somehow accepted his use of the strap when they were […]

“On the staff for fewer years than Peter Hall but recalled vividly by former students was Paddy Wright. Paddy had come to St Kevin’s after teaching at Trinity Grammar School. He immediately struck his colleagues as a dedicated teacher and managed to communicate his enthusiasm to students through, or perhaps in spite of, his often […]

Eric was intrigued by a schoolground game apparently invented by the boys to fill in time on the cramped Orrong Rd yard. This game ‘throwball’, as Eric remembered it, took place each lunchtime at the back of the college. Trying to get a grip on the intricacies of the game, Eric was found around the […]

The history is ‘St Kevin’s College: 1918-1993’ by Chris McConville. “Brother Paul Sebastian Mulkerns, for example, an Irishman and an asthmatic, seemed unsettled in both Australia and Ireland and moved several times between the two places. Mulkerns was an enthusiastic and an occasionally violent disciplinarian (North Melbourne students recollected that he taught often with a […]