Remembering the early days at the New England University College - Ian Johnstone reviews Jenny Browning's Four Wives

Retired Armidale lawyer and local historian Ian Johnstone with his latest book.  

From time to time here and elsewhere I have written of life in the early days of the New England England University College. Part of that writing dealt with the families and especially the story of the siblings, the children of the early academic staff.

In 2008, Jenny Browning nee Howie published a book called Four Wives, the story of four women who came to Armidale with their husbands in 1938 and 1939. I discussed briefly it in a column I wrote in October 2018, Armidale's university family grows. My experiences were a little different because my father was unmarried when he arrived in 1938 and later (1944) married a local girl.

The number of people who remember the days of the New England University College are thinning rapidly. Recently I was contacted by Dorothy Casmir who had seen the material I had written on Jenny's book.

Dorothy came to NEUC in 1950. There she met Alan who would become her husband. She was taught by Doctor Howie (psychology) as he was then, while she and Alan used to babysit the Voisey children. Alan Voisey was head of geology. My earlier story brought all sorts of memories back and she wanted to contact Jenny or Yvonne Voisey now Roach.

One of the real pleasures of my role as a regional historian lies in the requests I get, the desire people have to learn about their past, to reconnect. I cannot always help. This time I could. With the assistance of the Armidale  Families Facebook page  and Dorothy's son, we were able to put Dorothy in touch with Yvonne. In an email, Dorothy said that they talked and talked and that Yvonne was able to put Dorothy in touch with Jenny. I also had a rather nice email from Alan passing on his recollections of a particular conversation he had with my father. 

Ian Johnstone is an Armidale lawyer and local historian. In 2008, he wrote a full review of Jenny's book.  With his approval, I have reproduced his original review in full without editing. It provides a snapshot of life at the New England University College. Note that I'm not sure that either Readers Companion or Boobooks have copies anymore. I think that it is out of print.  

Book Review

Four Wives: The Story of Four Women Married to foundation Academics Appointed to the New England University College 1938 and 1939

By Jenny Browning

Self published, April 2008. 145 pages, 92 photos, $49.95 including postage from tecprint, P O Box 598, Darling Heights, Queensland 4350, and $39.95 from Readers Companion and Boobook in Armidale.

Ian M Johnstone johnstone@bluepin.net.au December 2008

Jenny Browning has added to the recorded history of part of UNE’s “golden days”.  The first sixteen years of the University of New England, its babyhood and adolescence, as it were, from 1938 to 1954, have long been held in special regard by those fortunate to have experienced any of them.

The NEUC, New England University College, was a College of Sydney University, which employed the staff, and gave the fledgling community university status. NEUC, however, was not a replica of its guardian, and immediately acquired standards and a distinctive corporate spirit of its own. The small community of scholars and students, housed mainly in Boolominbah, the White family mansion beautifully designed by the architect John Horbury Hunt and built in 1888, soon generated its own ethos. This was one of achievement, adventure and excitement which, with sound guidance from understanding administrators, came naturally to those fleeing school and embarking on higher learning of their own choice in an idyllic setting. It was a much appreciated privilege in those days to attend university. It has to be said that NEUC was extraordinarily fortunate in the high quality of its initial academic staff both as scholars and teachers and as strong all-round individuals.

Jenny includes her father Duncan Howie quoting, on page 35, Wordsworth’s lines from his Prelude

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!

Howie wrote in 1973 in a tone tinged with nostalgia, of ‘the first fine frenzy of whirlwind confusion and desperate improvisation’ in 1938. 

This enthusiasm for learning and for living a full life, engendered by being in a small rural community of scholars is mentioned by many of those who experienced it first hand.

There are many examples of the expression of this in these publications:

1. Margaret Franklin (Ed.) The New England Experience: Inside stories of UNE 1938-1988, UNE Alumni Association, 1987. [Appendix IV, which I compiled, lists the staff members for 1938 and 1939, and their qualifications.]

2. Keith Leopold, Came to Booloominbah, UNE Press, 1998, edited by John S Ryan.

3. J P Belshaw and P E H Barratt, Some Reminiscences about NEUC, 23 Armidale and District Historical Society Journal ADHSJ 1-17, March 1980.

4. Jim Graham, ‘Some Recollections of life at NEUC and UNE 1952-1955’, 45 ADHSJ 1-12 May 2002.

5. The Golden Years: A collection of reminiscences from the pioneers of the New England University College Collected by Elaine and Neil Graham, UNE Alumni Association October 1988, and

6. Margaret Spencer ‘New England University College 1938-1945’, Chapter 17 in The Arts from New England; University Provision and Outreach 1928-1998,edited by J S Ryan, the Faculty of Arts, UNE Alumni and UNE, 1998, pp.231-242.

Three comments from early students will suffice to confirm the point I am making.

Paul Barratt was the first student to arrive on campus in 1938 and returned to it from the war and was later to take the Chair of Psychology. He wrote in 1980:

There was no library, no laboratory and no apparatus.  Everything happened in Booloominbah where students and staff had their bedroom-studies, took their meals and attended classes.  The result of this peculiar set of circumstances was the growth of a very close staff-student relationship characterised by an exceptional dependence upon the staff for support, instructions and guidance.  I must say that, without exception, the staff rose to the occasion and engendered in their pupils a very strong feeling of confidence.  Consequently motivation was high and was enhanced by joint participation in sporting and social activities. 23 ADHSJ p12.

Alwyn Horadam, who arrived as a student in 1940 and was later A/Prof of Mathematics, wrote in 1987:

Perhaps there may have been a touch of magic in the air in those heady days, a feeling of participation in an exhilarating academic adventure.  More to the point, the truth is possibly that the students were a select group with a unity of purpose living in a closed environment…Looking back at these New England experiences, one has a feeling of pride and privilege in having participated in something unique and worthwhile: the birth of a fine university.  Remembrance of Things Past in The New England Experience, p6.

Jim Graham OAM was a student from 1952 to 1955. He taught at TAS for 44 years, 1956-99, wrote A School of their own, the history of TAS, wrote and produced many plays, including Ginger Meggs and Seven Little Australians, and was President of UNE Alumni Association. In 2001 he wrote:

As I reflect I conclude that UNE derived its special character from its relative isolation…The size of the university , in numerical terms, was certainly a factor which contributed to its distinctive personality…..There was a real feeling of corporateness. We were a discernible body…We were a community of teachers and scholars; undergraduates learning not only the prescribed courses of study, but, along with the teachers, learning from each other…The ambience, which was created by the group and the opportunities made available through collegiate life, led students to an understanding and respect for each other and for each other’s prejudices and points of view. 45 ADHSJ p.2.

There are many other sources of descriptions of early UNE including significant memoirs by Don Aitken, Paul Barratt, Noel Beadle, Kathleen Letters and Alan Voisey.

Jenny Browning has now added a new dimension to UNE’s early history, by rescuing details and attitudes from memorabilia, diaries and oral history about the otherwise overlooked wives of the early academic staff. She has brought to centre stage four who were used to working only back-stage. Some precise details will help to introduce these four wives and mothers.

1. Jenny’s father Duncan Howie, M. A. (W. A.) Ph. D. (London) was appointed in 1938, at age 35, to lecture in Philosophy and Psychology, and later had the Chair in Psychology. His wife was Ella Howie (nee Willliams).

2. Ralph G Crossley B. A. (W.A.) Ph.D. (Frieburg) was appointed in 1938 to lecture in French and German. His wife was Hilda Crossley (nee Collet)

3.Dr. H F C Davis, M. Sc. (Sydney) was appointed in 1939 to lecture in Biology. He was born in 1912. He died in Papua New Guinea in WWII in 1944 and the Consett Davis Playing Fields at UNE are named in his memory. He is also commemorated on the war memorial plaque in the circular garden east of the Union building. Cathy Davis was aged 4 when he died. His wife Gwenda Davis (nee Rodway) later lectured in Botany and Zoology at NEUC, but was paid only two thirds of the male rate because she was a woman. (p.72)

4. A H Voisey, M Sc (Syd) was appointed in 1939 to lecture in Geology and Geography, and later had the Chair in Geology. His wife was Phyllis Voisey (nee Cox).

Four of their children, Jenny (which is the affectionate Scottish diminutive of Janet, which her father called her) Browning (nee Howie), Peter Crossley, Cathy Davis and Yvonne Roach (nee Voisey) formed the group ‘The Families of New England University College’ and conferred with Dr Philip Ward at UNE Archives, who helped them considerably with their project. The group’s endeavours resulted in the materials and photos from which this book were quarried and also recorded talks which are now archived as Historical Collections: Families of NEUC, 1938-1954.

Jenny starts her book by quoting the much admired historian Dr John Ferry to the effect that ‘of all social institutions the family is the most significant in shaping people’s lives.’ Colonial Armidale,1999, p.12.. Then, in an appealing mix of the memories of the group of four about their families, anecdotes and relevant academic quotes, she sketches the social mores in Armidale; the scarcely suppressed animosity between the Protestants and the Catholics, the role expectations, especially by and of women, and the contrasting attitudes of university academics, Teachers College staff, graziers and townsfolk to each other.

The Armidale community perceived distinct social differences between vocational teachers’ college academics and university academics who were envisioned as a “rarer” breed. (p76).

Surely most readers will be glad that religious and social differences and divisions do not  now signify as they used to. One form of liberation is to have less social vanity, but perhaps personal vanity has expanded to fill the space vacated!

Jenny quotes Kerry James as writing in 1989:

- Women in particular have a great capacity for exerting social control over one another.  Female networks elaborate and enforce notions of proper and allowable female comportment and deviants are harshly dealt with. (p109) 

The main subject of Jenny’s book is how the four wives responded differently and with varying degrees of defiance to these pressures to conform.

For example, Jenny writes of Gwenda Davis:

Gwenda’s father was a doctor in Nowra and she was well aware of, and had no time for, the snobbery and narrow-mindedness of a rural community. She particularly disliked the controlling behaviour and influence exerted by the women of society’s upper echelons upon other women as to how they should manage their children and run their home.

Jenny quotes a telling phrase from Gwenda’s diary in February 1938…’lest I become a bloody lady!’  Both  p.78. She defied local conventions from the start. She got on instead with her Botany and Zoology lecturing at NEUC.

There is a startling revelation that for NEUC academic staff, being members of NEUC and not of Sydney University, had a huge consequence as well as depriving them of some status. ‘Their salaries were much lower than those of Sydney University lecturers.’  p.70-1. Matthew Jordan in his Jubilee history of UNE A spirit of true learning, UNSW Press, 2004, deals  at length with the tensions between Sydney University and its country ward, but he does not mention this fact. It was a special relief therefore, when autonomy was gained on 1 February 1954. At last academic staff could be represented on the governing body, UNE Council, and new faculties created including Rural Science and Agricultural Economics, and the pay anomalies removed.

There are many other delights to be found in this book; for example, this description of Dr Isabel Blanche who taught French: -

The academics’ children have many fond memories of the quirky, later somewhat eccentric, Miss Blanche…ho cycled to and from the university and everywhere around town, on her ancient black bicycle.  With her longish dresses and high heels, her long hair escaping from her French roll, her black university gown streaming in the breeze threatening to tangle in the back wheel, she rushed about always running late.  As she gaily waved to us children, shouting a greeting, usually in French, the bicycle would wobble alarmingly as we waited in apprehension and wicked childish amusement for her to fall.  (p112)

Jenny has honoured all four wives and mothers, and at the same time, she has written a valuable book about a memorable era in Armidale’s educational and cultural history.