1972 School Magazine

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On Thursday after a brilliant day of ski-ing we had, now wait for it!-a fancy dress parade. This time it was won by Anne Belcher who went as Sonia llcMahon and Jane Allen who went as Billy (they made a iovely couple). Second was Nicky Cyhroweth who was dressed as Julius Caesar. Friday was our last day at the "Royal Coachman Inn" so most of us spent the whole day ski-ing, even the four hopeless cases seemed to have improved. We came home and packed ready for our departure in the morning. Saturday was a very sad day for us. Nobody wanted to ieave the mountains and we had prayed Friday night for a blazard but there wasn't one. At breakfast we played our theme song, (which we haven't mentioned before although we played it every morning at breakfast) "Last Night"-we didn't get to sleep at all. We left about 9.30 am. arriving at Cooma at 12.05 p.m., approximately, to have lunch. The irip from Cooma to Sydney was very rough and a lot of people wished that they hadn't had any breakfast. About 4.10 prn. we arrived in Brisbane to meet our parents who couldn't believe that there had been no accidents. We are all going back again next year if Bill and Freda can stand us for another week. We would all like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Salzman very much for a most enjoyable holiday.

Why go seven hundred miles to attend five days of lectures on history during the holidays? Perhaps this would be an understandable reaction from anyone who had not been to the H. W. Baker Memorial Conference in history in the May holidays at Bowral, a small town about eight miles south of Sydney and about 3000 feet above see-level. It was at the spacious Agricultural College at Bowral that students from ail over Australia (including W.A. and New Guinea) gathered for the History Conference, for which the theme of 'Imperialism' had been chosen. Surprisingly enough, Brisbane and its environs fuere represented by more students than any other region of Australia. It seemed as if at least one third of the members there were from Brisbane or Toowoomba- There was a fairly tight schedule of lectures to attend during the five days but they were diversified and interesting and the organizers had taken the trouble to bring lecturers from universities at Armidale, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. One of the most interesting lessons of the conference came from a simulation exercise we did one evening. In this exercise we used counters as money and traded with them as best we could to gain as high a score as possible. We were divided into three classes- peasants, middle class and upper class- according to our wealth, and the upper class was given the power of government to make any laws. Quite soon people began to act as if it was not a game any more and, in one case, when the upper class made itself totally exclusive and hoarded all of the most valuable counters, the middle and lower classes joined en masse and literally violently overthrew their oppressors. But there was play as well as work. A concert was arranged one night in which almost everyone participated and the usual last night dance was held at the end of the conference. Sports facilities were readily available in spare time and there was even a combined football game. Because there were relatively few students at the conference (only about eighty in all) and there were no fixed seating positions, either in lectures or at meals, everyone moved around and got to know the other people. In the big 'dorms' in free time we chattered with people from other parts of Australia about the differences and similarities of our areas and found that similarities overwhelmingly prevailed. Imposed state borders did not divide the character of the people-we were all Australian.

Ski Bums Unanimous S.A.R.S.P.R.

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