July 1953 School Magazine

July. 1953

Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

July. 1953

Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

CURRENT EVENTS School started this year with over two hundred new faces among the pupils but few changes in the Staff. We welcome to the Staff, Miss Simonds and Miss Hume, who replaces Miss Sutton, now overseas, and we extend our best wishes for future happiness to Miss England who has recently been married in london. In the Inter-School Swimming Competition, the School re- tained fourth position, but was successful in the life-saving when our team won the McWhirter Cup for the first time since 1945. This year the Inter-Form Swimming, which was won by IV D, was held after the Inter-School Carnival; next year the positions of these two events will be reversed. Inter-Form Athletics resulted in a win for VI with Vas the runners-up. On July the fourth, Inter-Sch ool Athletics day, our team provided great excitement when they won the Senior Cup by one point from Somerville House in the last event. We congratulate Somerville on winning the Junior Cup and the Stephens Cup. Both our tennis teams as well as the "B" basketball team have been defeated by other schools; but the "A" basketball players still have high hopes of reta ining their pennant. True to the tradition of Old Girls' Day, the heavens opened and outdoor sports were impossible. However, we all enjoyed the volleyball matches in the gym and the afternoon tea which followed. At a later date the Old Girls' tennis and basketball teams gave our players their first match practice for the year. The School concert, held on two successive nights during Coronation week, proved very successful, the main item being the Nut-Cracker Suite which included mime, ballet and an in- sect orchestra of unrecognisable school girls. We are very grateful b those mothers who worked so hard making cos- tumes for our concert, and to those who prepare food at the tuck-shop on Fridays. Now the athletics are over, the sale of cream buns will rise enormously! As a result of a lecture given last year, many forms have responded to an appeal from the Fairbridge Farm, a school for English children in New South Wales. Lynda! Edmiston, an Old Girl of the School, thrilled us with a violin recital given during her vacation from the Con- servatorium of Music in Sydney, and Ruth Leslie, another prom- inent Old Girl, who gained first place in the Final Dentistry Examination this year, added to our knowledge by a lecture on the care of the teeth. The upper School was privileged to hear an address by 14

Mrs. Fordham Flower, the wife of one of the Govern~rs of the Shakespeare Memorial Company now touring Austraha. Many girls hope, in the years to come, to take advantage of her generous and practical offer to show them round the Stratford- on-Avon Theatre. The two hundred and fifty girls who saw "As You like It", are extremely grateful to Mrs. Fordham Flower for making the opportunity available. Prior to the Coronation we saw a screening of "Coron- ation Ceremony" shown at the School by the Shell Compa~y. The School now has its own projector (as well as an epl~la­ scope) which we hope to use in September for the screenmg of "A Queen is Crowned". The Clubs, Debating, Dramatic, Music and Science, _have been very active during the last few months. In the Sc1ence Club some of the members have been conducting experiments and illustrating them during meetings, while girls belonging to the Dramatic Club give individual performances as well as act in the Form plays. The Deba ting Club has organised Inter- Form Debates which are now in progress, and the Music Club listens to records every Friday afternoon. Past pupils of the School will be pleased to know that the Assembly Hall has been painted in pastel shades and that the School canine mascot has a progeny of three! KENDALL BROADBENT NATURAL HISTORY ESSAY, 1952 MORETON BAY FIG TREES fig is the name given to the genus Ficus of the fam~ly Moraceae. There are sixty species indigenous to Austrahc;r, including the Moreton Bay fig, Ficus Macrophylla. Th1s species is very popular in parks and along foreshores where they are planted to provide shade and also for ornament. am sure most of us have rested from the sun's burning rays in the shade of one of these beautiful spreading trees . The fig tree usually begins to grow in the fork or in a crevice of a branch of another tree. This tree is known as the parent-tree. Birds drop the seed into the decayed matter which accumula tes in these crevices and there it takes root. The roots grow down towards the ground and increase in size . They cross and form a tight lattice-work until fi~ally they strangle the parent-tree. While the roots are growmg down- wards, the baby fig tree is growing upwards. The parent-tree forms the foundation for the fig tree which thus reaches the nourishing rays of the sun much more quickly than if it had started growing from the ground, as most other trees do. 15