Objects of Substance- School Magazine

“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