Objects of Substance- School Magazine

We have a school magazine – not a yearbook

2020 Display for Foundation Day OGA Afternoon Tea

Acknowledgement and celebration of the student voice has always been a feature of life at Girls Grammar and the number of publications in which that voice rings clear attests to its significance. Girls Grammar was established with the idea of providing girls with the best opportunities to develop as students and as people. One aspect of this is that they leave the School having experienced genuine chances to speak out, express ideas, and create discussion. That is why in 2021 students can speak to an audience of over 1,400 at every Assembly, and explore student-generated propositions in the Student Council, committees, House meetings, and service groups. Evidence that this “voice” has always been heard was the early instigation of a school magazine that showcased the lives of Grammar girls through the writings and artistic efforts of the student body. Our first School Magazine was published in 1913 – before the First World War. By modern standards, this inaugural publication may seem humble but a closer examination of its contents attests to its historic importance.

1913 School Magazine cover

The only original copy we have is one donated and inscribed with the name Ettie Baird. The badge on the front looks, to modern eyes, more like one for Brisbane Grammar School but the contents are definitely all about the girls. The first six pages are advertisements which did nor re-appear until 1933. Perhaps the most pertinent advertisement for the School is that for a Miss Dorothy Brockway, a “teacher of physical culture and of swimming” at her “private gymnasium and swimming bath” on Wickham Terrace. Dorothy Brockway was an old girl of the school for a year before leaving, in high dudgeon, in support of Miss Fewings who was sacked by the Trustees in 1899. Miss Brockway returned to Grammar as a Physical Education teacher after studying in England establishing a comprehensive and professional Health and Physical Education platform.

1913 Dorothy Brockway’s Advertisement

The first page is rather official with the name of the Head Mistress and reads a little like a prospectus. It outlines the curriculum on offer and details that student will be “received in the lower school from the age of eight years, provided that they can read, write legibly from dictation and work example in the four simple rules”. The subjects studied included English, the classics, languages, mathematics, and sciences, physical activities, and the arts. However, the most intriguing offerings were in the lower school which added “Needle Work, Brush Work, Elocution and Morris Dancing”. Morris dancing!? The remainder of the magazine documents the voices of students both past and present. Old girls write o f life after school and at university as if to say, “Come and join us”. The library was

“flourishing”, especially with the care of Miss Mackay and the Sixth Form girls. Pages are given to the exploits of the sporting students in tennis [“out of the 130 gir ls attending the school, 120 belong to the tennis club], swimming [the School won the Brockway Cup with two of the four members being cousins, Joyce and Mary Lilley , granddaughters of Sir Charles Lilley], “basket - ball” [for the first time], rowing, and gymnastics. The writing was amazingly honest – gymnastics sessions “came into their fair share of abuse from the discontented and lazy”; VI A thought the “school for us has not been fun” because they had to “work both night and day”; gymnastics was described as “like compulsory military training”; the girls who moved gymnastics suits to other “pegs” to replace them with their own were described as “rabid socialists”, and they had no problem being critical of VI B who, apparently, did not do enough work caring for the library books. However, there also seemed to be a range of popular social events, including afternoon teas [many hosted by the Head Mistress] and an “impromptu fancy dress ball” after the inaugural “basket - ball” match against St Margaret’s. In this magazine you will also be able to read, an amusing but positive review of the Fourth Form concert; the 1912 University of Queensland and senior public examination results; hospital notes – not about patients but service by Grammar girls who donated one penny a week to the Children’s Hospital; “Notes” for the year by every form; original writing ; and boarders’ notes . While the magazine is now a much larger publication, it continues to be an avenue for the student voice. I wonder what the readers of 2121 will learn, or find quaint, from this year’s version. Let us hope it will still be a rich source of reports of student life with a plethora of photographs with the girls clearly identified.

Kristine Cooke (Harvey 1967) Director of Information Services

School Magazines across the years