Sunnybank74

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Park Ridge State School was easy. One building. Sunnybank High was pretty much an order of magnitude bigger in every respect including complexity. We now had different teachers for different subjects in different classrooms. That was a challenge. We had to learn the geography of the school and at the end of each period, navigate to the next classroom. In 1970, there were, if memory serves correctly, five main blocks. Four blocks of classrooms and one of workshops.

The classroom blocks were all of a pattern. One classroom wide and about ten long, they were built on two levels. Access to the classrooms was by covered verandahs, always running along the sunny north sides. The verandahs had covered bag racks, where students left their bags outside their home rooms. Every government school in Queensland used the same efficient style.

Block One faced onto Turton Street. Upstairs were the administration offices, the library and the staffroom. Downstairs were classrooms. Two “tunnels” between classrooms allowed groundlevel access to the rest of the school.

Block Two was behind Block One. There was a large open area underneath allowing rainy day activities, doubling as a place to sit in the shade to eat lunch. The toilets were also located here.

Between Blocks Two and Three was the assembly area where we would line up for roll calls and school announcements. Block Three had the school tuckshop and bookshop on the ground level and this area was always busy with students lining up to buy a pie or a salad roll or a notepad.

Block Four, in 1970, was under construction. The eastern end was complete, with two classrooms upstairs and two down, and the rest of the block was a building site. I think by the end of the first year the whole thing was finished.

Block Five was the workshop block where woodwork and metalwork instruction was given. One level, but the rooms were far bigger, with solid benches and stools grouped around various saws and anvils.

The school was continually growing to accommodate rising student numbers, and in my memory there was always construction going on. A science block and a “Commonwealth Library” were added early on, and temporary classrooms were parked in inconvenient corners.

8-12 was assigned a homeroom on the second floor of the Block Four stump. Our room was probably called 401, but I’m relying on a very tenuous memory here. One thing I do know is that it was a death scene.

Because it was the end classroom, the verandah likewise came to an end, and there was a half-height wall guarding the drop. A convenient place to rest one’s elbows, looking out over the roofs of the temporary classrooms and beyond to the well-treed streets of Sunnybank.

Or, if one were foolhardy, a place to sit, or stand, or skylark around.

In 1969 a student had done just that, and toppled over onto the supports for the not yet installed temporary classroom beneath. One of the short steel poles had pierced his body and he had died a short time later.

Mr Hill, my primary school teacher, had mused aloud that one of the staff would have had to lift the dying student off the pole, and he was sorry for that teacher.

The student had come from Greenbank – incorrectly reported in The Courier-Mail the next day as Greenslopes – and would have been one of the regulars on Danny’s bus. We were never officially told or warned, but none of us ever got up on that wall. We leaned our elbows on it and thoughtfully gazed out on the school.

After Block Four, there was the “oval”, a green rectangle big enough for four football pitches, though of course it was overlaid with markings for cricket and baseball, track and field. The ground fell away in two gentle banks, forming natural viewing areas. The bottom area, where the volleyball courts were lined up, was distant and out of direct sight from the main school buildings, and was a natural venue for smokers and other illicit passions.

All told, it was a large and well-ordered schoolyard. Seen from above, it would have looked very blocky and rectangular, with very few trees or circles to relieve the eye. But we saw it from ground level, or one storey up, and after a while, we didn’t see the rectangles and lines – they fell into the background. We saw the flowing patterns of schoolchildren, walking, running, talking or even skipping along between the classrooms, dodging around the slower-moving taller shapes of the teachers.

No one person could remember every one of the thousand or more names, but odd fragments return to me. There were those who were close to me, and those who taught me lessons I remember to this day. Their forms and faces are hazy now, but as I look back through black and white class photographs, they dance in my mind yet, their young voices rising through the years.

Australian Top 10 – 21 February 1970

	this week	last week			weeks in
	1.	(2)	Venus	Shocking Blue	8
	2.	(1)	I Thank You	Lionel Rose	11
	3.	(6)	Don’t Cry Daddy/Rubberneckin’	Elvis Presley	5
*	4.	(7)	Whole Lotta Love	Led Zeppelin	6
	5.	(5)	Superstar	Murray Head	9
	6.	(3)	Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head	Johnny Farnham	15
	7.	(4)	SMILEY	Ronnie Burns	14
*	8.	(10)	ALL I HAVE TO DO IS DREAM	Bobbie Gentry And Glen Campbell	4
*	9.	(12)	HONEY COME BACK	Glen Campbell	3
	10.	(8)	TWO LITTLE BOYS	Rolf Harris	8

>–Peter Mac

Pete’s Jukebox

This was an odd song. As a song, it wasn’t much. A sweet love song with a catchy chorus.

The singer was the sensation. Lionel Rose was the first Aboriginal Australian to gain a world boxing championship title. And the first Aboriginal to become Australian of the year. Along with Evonne Goolagong, who was a world class tennis player in the mid-Seventies, Rose was a tremendous role model for Aboriginal Australians.

Rose’s stint as world bantamweight champion began in early 1968, when he was only nineteen, and ended in mid 1969. This song (and the B-side Pick Me Up on Your Way Down) became hits in early 1970.

Rose was very different from the normal pop star, by being Aboriginal and a boxer. His earnest delivery was also at odds with the more flamboyant style of Aussie rock. After retiring from boxing, he toured with Ashton’s Circus, the singing boxer in a three ring circus.

When a boy becomes a man,
He must do the best he can
To live his life and find his childhood dream
I’m glad that the biggest break I’ve had
Was when I found that girl that thought of only me.

Thank you for your smile
And the love that’s in your eyes,
Thank you for a heart that’s big and true,
Thank you for the many things you are, my love,
Let me thank you for just being you.

Looking at Rose’s entry in Wikipedia, there is no mention of marriage, though he is noted to be the godfather of an MTV VJ. His childhood dream, one would imagine, given that his father was a boxer on the tent-show circuit, was realised with his world title.

In 1970, he and this song inspired those of us with ears to listen. Only a few years older than us, he had reached a world pinnacle. Talent, training, skill and determination enabled Rose to overcome all barriers to make it, not only as a boxer, but a singer. If he could do it, so could any one of us.

–Peter Mac