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.
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.
