He put ‘the boys through conjugating verbs and declining nouns and those who failed too ignominiously received a few strokes with the taws on their open hands. There was no newfangled nonsense about old Dr Morrison.’ The taws was a Scottish leather strap slit at the ends. Gordon ‘Gunner’ Owen (staff 1946-74) ended a boy’s spelling mistakes by threatening to cane him.”

“Much of the physical punishment seems to have been considered unexceptional. Lyne later became friends with Adams, and together they ran Scotch’s branch of the Australian Student Christian Movement (ASCM). Another Old Boy recently extolled the virtues of Littlejohn, several times expressing his admiration of the man, and concluding with a final emphasis that, after all, ‘I knew him quite well for he often caned me’.