was always kedgeree; lunch was better than a ninepenny lunch one could get in a cafe and dinner (or high tea as it was known) was white bread and jam. The Thorolds must have found it very difficult to make ends meet but they still insisted on bread being broken and butter put on only small pieces. This was expensive: Smith Minor, one evening alone, consumed twenty-six slices. We said Latin grace and all had impeccable manners.
It was difficult to teach five classes at once even with a complement of only twelve boys. It was made more difficult because some of the infants were brilliant and only with us for a few months until they could be fitted in to "bigger and better" schools. Some of the seniors, the more delightful ones, were slow learners. The curriculum was topsy-turvey. I never knew whether I was a child-minder, a wet-nurse or a sporting hero. At all important public events, like speech night or garden parties, I had to play trumpet solos. Miss Dorothy Ross, principal of the Associated Teachers' Training Institute at which I was obliged to study, accused me of always using the same tainted fish in nature-study demonstration lessons. I assured her that the fish always appeared in the kedgeree next morning for breakfast. Mentone Grammar School has now become an enormous establishment, having new buildings and hundreds of students. In all my teaching career I have never been so happy as I was in Mentone. There were the sea, the playing fields and the charming company of C.C. Thorold, M.A. (Oxon.).
I have been asked to throw some light on the strange story of this distinguished scholar and headmaster who purchased a little private school among the racing fraternity of Mentone. I don't know, he didn't tell me. When he died, his son took over. I think the son sold it to the Church of England. Once that happened its future was assured. I have seen many headmasters in many schools, many deans and many professors. The best of them all was C. C. Thorold, a gentleman of the highest breeding and scholarship. He was my friend. But for him I probably would have spent the depression in unemployment queues and the rest of my story would never have eventuated. Thorold was the therapy, someone I admired - no, more than that, loved. He encouraged me and in this physically healthy atmosphere, I reached my top as an athlete and won several championships. From the first day to the last of my two years at Mentone, I was always secure in my position and even revered because of my sporting prowess. Not many in Australia could beat me in an 880-yard race or the pole vault.
During this period the first of a series of first-class coaches migrated to Australia. He was Charlie Berger, coach of the Swiss Olympic team. Charlie became coach of the Melbourne Harriers. His method of teaching was effective and now universal. He taught a method of running, not a method of conditioning. Those were the days when running was for health and enjoyment as well as for winning, not like today where it is big business; where training until the joints and muscles collapse is the sine qua non of success. The year Charlie took over, we won both the A and F grade Victorian championships at Olympic Park.
All athletic events, particularly running, sprinting or long-distance, were based on simple principles. Even if running for the bus is the only running you do, this is useful information. The body is relaxed and upright, inclined forward just slightly. The knees are lifted; the concentration is only there. The foot comes to the ground flat - no running tippy-toes, like they used to teach. All balancing movement comes from the waist with the arms relaxed as balancing agents, not threshing machines. The head is upright. The only points of importance are the knees. Come on, mother, try it down the hallway! Relax, lift the knees and let the rest of the body hang like dead meat from the shoulders. This results in the perfect action. You may never become a Ben Johnson but do you really want to?
Charlie Berger told us: "Red Indians, three-year-old human babies and old people are the only ones who run correctly." Before the advent of Berger, athletes often learned to run, toes pointed, arms pumping, head back, body crouched. School and professional coaches were teaching people how not to run. There is another principle, which I have found essential for all good teaching and coaching - in music, school or sport: concentrate on one fault, the worst, and eradicate that. Only then go on to the next fault and so on. This precept has resulted in some success for me as a teacher in the composition of music.
When, after a few years, I went to Trinity Grammar School, Melbourne, I managed to apply what I'd previously been taught and brought the school's athletics team from last to first in the Combined Schools Sports. Some of the Trinity athletes went on to become champions. My biggest success was Ray Weinberg, who became a champion Australian hurdler and a fine coach.
Now, in the day of T.V. athletics, it is interesting to watch the running styles. Most of the best athletes have the Charlie Berger style. De Castella uses strength, a useful alternative and, provided the head, heart and legs are strong, it will succeed. My heart and head were all right, above average, but from somewhere I'd inherited skinny legs. There was nothing I could do about them. The more, I ran, the thinner they got. In one year with Charlie Berger, I'd improved enough to be among the best middle-distance runners in Australia. I represented Western Australia and Victoria and was in the training squad for the 1940 Olympics in Helsinki. Those Games never eventuated and I am sure I would not have been selected anyway. It takes more than a good style and the world's thinnest legs to make a true champion. Instead, I became more interested in musicianship and teaching others to run - and I was obliged to go to war eventually.
My mother and father moved to Perth again in 1935 and I decided to apply for a job at Wesley College there. I was successful and with my sister, Florence, went to Fremantle in the Adelaide Steamship steamer, Manoora. Florence had been left behind in Melbourne, when our parents moved westward again. Father was to become Commander in Chief of the Salvation Army in Western Australia. When they left, Florence lived with an ex-Salvation Army officer, who'd burned his red guernsey and was preaching freelance without the Army's "blood and fire". Mrs Abel, mother of the ex-officer, was one of my mother's best friends. I never doubted their Christianity and this was supposed to be evident in their continued support of Mr Menzies, but they were somewhat unmindful in naming their only child, Noel. Imagine his continuous consternation when asked his name. "Noel Abel," he would answer and then shudder when the retort would come: "Why don't you have a label?"
I rescued Florence from the kindness, cooking and the religion of the Abels and together we sailed to Perth. It was a rough passage, but I discovered that one couldn't be seasick while jogging or eating. However, conversely, one cannot jog or eat while being seasick. I began jogging before the Manooraleft Melbourne and kept it going all the way across. Most passengers left the fresh air and sea and jogging to me. I was a jogger before it became a universal disease.
Strenuous sport will inevitably leave the exerciser in later years with at least ten focal points for aches or pains, or worse. If joints could speak, they would certainly speak out against that extraordinary N.S.W. disease called Rugby League. Now joggers can begin at seventy or eighty years of age if they take it carefully. Young Joggers will probably have worn their joints out by that age.
After our arrival in Perth, Florence became temporary secretary to the British conductor, Sir Malcolm Sargent, during his Perth visit, and she was a temporary Soldier of the Cross as well. [During my time at Wesley College in 1936-37] it was a school among schools. It was unique. Under Dr J.L. Rossiter, it was an efficient operation, probably equalled only by the Catholic Church or the Royal Navy. It was clean, academically strenuous and exhilarating for the boys who went there. Discipline for both dayboys and boarders was effective. The boys seemed to revel in it. The school spirit was worth writing anthems about. Dr Rossiter was happy, Mrs Rossiter was happy, the headmasters' assistant was happy and the parents were happy. The majority of the staff, however, were overworked and underpaid. Only those who had wives and homes in the suburbs seemed to bear it. The discipline for the boarding-house staff was stricter than for the boarders - and the boarders slept in rows strictly at attention, with a prefect in the dormitory and a master at the end of each dormitory. Everybody slept.
My brother, Wesley, was still with our parents when I took up the position at Wesley College. He was a good-natured humorous boy who relished a protected life of safety and kindness. He got on well with everybody, particularly his parents. He was single-minded about art from the
