Objects of Substance- The 1966 Central Australia Tour

The 1966 Central Australia trip was supported by the Head Mistress, Mrs Louise McDonald who felt it was important to broaden students’ horizons. Perhaps, she, when supporting the Central Australia trip, was channelling Danish physician, Peter Severinus (1571) when he stated: Go my children, ... burn your books, ... buy yourselves stout shoes, get away to the mountains, ... the deserts, ... and the deepest recesses of the earth; mark well the distinction between animals, the differences among plants, the various kinds of minerals .... In this way, and no other, will you arrive at a knowledge of things, and of their properties.” In her 1966 Annual Report, Mrs McDonald explained that the intake of an extra level of students in 1964 had resulted in an expanding curriculum where “The field work in biology, geology and geography has greatly widened their horizons and has been enjoyed by all”. A scientist herself, she had realised that field trips engaged and entertained students, making students think beyond the textbook, four walls of the classroom or the picket fence on Gregory Terrace. After all, in 1953, when Mrs McDonald became Head Mistress, a group of Sixth Form [Year 12] students enjoyed what must have been a very exciting experience: a visit to the A.C.F. & Shirley Fertilizer Works in Pinkenba to study the preparation of sulphuric acid for Senior Science! Therefore, in 1966, thirty-three Fifth Form [Year 11] students and three staff members [Misses Marjorie Neil (1957), Heather Tuckett (1958) and Daphne Tuckett (1960)] embarked on the first Central Australia trip, travelling by bus over ten thousand kilometres in three weeks. This trip, by twenty-first century standards, might appear modest and decidedly unglamorous when compared to more recent journeys to places like Italy and England, but the joyfulness and enthusiasm detailed in these pages, duplicated on the School’s Fordigraph machine, are apparent to any reader.

1966: On the road to Augathella

One of the girls on the trip, Wendy Clarke (1967), recalls saying to Miss Neil at the end of the trip: “I want to go home, get some clean clothes and more money and go off again… it was just a fabulous experience.” During her 2022 telephone conversation, Wendy then said “and what did I do a lot in my life? Went off and travelled!”