The Mt Lawley Teachers College story is essentially a story of the coming of age. For the most part, the students were post war babies. Mostly they did not come from money and often, were the first in their families to be afforded a tertiary education. Tertiary education, before Gough Whitlam, was too expensive for most. There were a lot of women in the course, partially due to the fact that there were few professions open to women at this time. Students were given a small stipend and bonded to the Education Department for three years. If you did not teach for the requisite number of years, you were expected to pay part or all of this money back. These are some of the thoughts of the students of this time.

Ruth Shean:

While we weren’t pub attendees at lunch time, we did enjoy the greater freedoms which went with post-school studies. Some lecturers regarded us as school kids — which we pretty much were — but others were very encouraging of our transition to a tertiary environment.

I have mentioned that we were generally a diligent group. When we did sewing, we were all required to prepare samples of knitting, crochet and embroidery. Most of us had done sufficient of this at school to be proficient, but set about dutifully working on our samples, often during other lessons. It is not difficult to sew, knit or crochet while listening. This became very popular, until large groups of students would happily proceed with their stitching work during all sorts of lectures. After a while, there was a polite request that we desist from such behaviour. I believe that some lecturers felt that we were not giving their topic our full attention.

There was a group of us girls who hung our together — Heidi Gfeller, Cathy Abe, Jo Nieuwkerk. I was of the view that if we worked as hard during the day as we possibly could, we would have more time to do the things that we wanted to do after hours. So we were frequently found working together, during lunch times and other breaks. We were a collaborative team who worked really well together on grouped class assignments. We would divide up the research, go off and do our own pieces of work, bring it back together and work out how best to join it up, then someone would write it up in a single hand. I don’t think that I ever had to do the handwriting, because I was as bad at writing as I was good at grammar. It was round about this time that I realised my study would be well served by my learning to type. By the time I left MLTC, I was a proficient if unorthodox typist. To this day, my typing is still unorthodox, but fast and reasonably accurate.

We all did different majors so in our third year we didn’t share all of our class time together, but still hung out with each other for the most part. Add to that, we were all away the full term of long-term prac at the start of third year [1973 for us] so all the friendship groups broke up a little. I did music and photography. I was already a pianist, but enjoyed recorder work and joined a recorder consort — for a brief period. I was not a talented recorder player because I never managed a mellow tone.

Bobbie Kidd (Smith):

I met and married the father of my two daughters, before our first teaching post in Pemberton.

Neil (Robert) Kidd:

After three hectic years at MLTC we [Bobbie and I] thought a country posting would be a bit more relaxing but we were called upon to run the inaugural Karri Karnival at Pemberton in our first year out!

Ruth Collett :

We were of the opinion you didn’t question why we had to do something – we just did as we were told.  We didn’t have a course or people to compare the Mt Lawley course with.  In hindsight I think we had the best 3-year course ever.   It covered the important theory we needed but also a practical component, which meant we were very well prepared teachers in our first year out.  I’m not saying we knew everything, but we had a lot of resources to draw on.  Teacher support in the early 70s was not in the schools and you were really on your   own.   Today’s student teachers are getting all theory and very little practical at uni – then struggle in the first few years in the classroom.

Marjorie Bly:

At the time there didn’t seem to be many career options open to women and one had to choose a career path so early. We generally had a choice of teaching, nursing, hairdressing, secretarial work or maybe becoming an air hostess. I was allocated to the “professional” stream in first year high school so I got to do French and Social Studies B instead of typing and shorthand, eliminating secretarial work as an option. In addition teaching was a fairly typical career path for members of my family back in the Netherlands so there was some expectation that I would follow suit.

During my time at Mt Lawley Teachers College, the legal drinking age dropped from 21 to 18 in 1970, so timely! There were Friday group lunches at the Knutsford Arms, with fellow students. Alcohol may have been drunk at these lunches and the following art lessons may have been enlivened by the predictable results, including fairly vague and incomprehensible answers to questions about the theory of art. Not sure if Mr McDiven ever cottoned on J

I remember the all night assignment writing sessions after an active social life and still being functional the next day at college, or at least believing I was. I couldn’t do that now.

As a mechanic’s daughter I drove an old Vauxhall Victor that was always breaking down, usually at the most inconvenient moments. There was never a lack of students to ask for a push, though.

I existed, quite well I might add, on the $16 per week education allowance. The continuous assessment was so welcome after the stress of the previous year’s angst over the Leaving and Matriculation exams. Some of the other highlights of my time at Mt Lawley included:

trying to learn the recorder with no musical talent. I usually ended up with the triangle during group music sessions. I liked the guitar playing option much better! I wasn’t any more talented but it didn’t sound as bad.

There was also a week-long geology trip in 1971, looking for and finding fossils, with Len McKenna. There was a sociology session based around ‘nature or nurture?’ and all the research up to that date couldn’t answer the question. It still resonates with me now for some reason. There was hearing about the possibility of being posted to Widgiemooltha if we didn’t study hard enough!

I remember watching drivers slipping and sliding around the oil slicks on the RAC driver training course at the rear of the college, on the other side of Central Ave. But above all, I remember doing my long prac at Como PS and discovering the teacher of my grade 5 class to be Miss Marsh – Fred and Colin’s sister. She looked very stern but was a great mentor!

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