Across the Border: Potts Point: Reader Story: Apartment Buildings: Byron Hall

This is a history of Byron Hall written by someone who lives in the building - what could be better than that? 

I enjoy writing about all the excellent early 20th-century buildings, and 19th-century buildings in our area, but it's so much better when it comes from someone who lives in it and loves it. 

Here is Ms X's journey through Byron Hall on Macleay Street - a building that is unmissable if you are into that kind of thing. 

Internal and fireworks pix by Ms X; externals by me.

2011 Sydney New Year's Eve fireworks display from the roof of Byron Hall.

"Given the new year has well past, it's about time I delivered on a promise to a woman I have never met.
"My Darling Darlinghurst is a favourite blog of mine.
"I love hearing stories from 2011 and share the author's fascination with the strange timetable the 311 bus keeps.
"A while back I happened to see that Violet had created a hand-coloured zine and was sharing them with her fans/readers.
"I was quite the excited one on the interwebs, and a quick email secured a copy.
"Shortly thereafter Violet fed it under the front door of my apartment building.
"In return for that kind gesture, I’m introducing her and you to the insides of my home at Byron Hall.

"Byron Hall sits at 97-99 Macleay Street and was designed by Claud Hamilton.
"Hamilton was a fairly prolific architect in the area, and also designed other apartment blocks like The Savoy (1919) and Regent’s Court (1925).
"He and the construction workers of Sydney finished Byron Hall in 1929, the year of the stock market crash and the start of the Great Depression.
"Byron Hall is a mix of styles: many aspects are art deco, some a little Georgian (like the windows), and others classical (such as the pediments).
"Until the 1950s the building was a series of serviced apartments.
"Maids lived on the top level and the caretaker in a small flat on the ground floor.

"The foyer is the grandest part of the building, and the caretaker’s office is usually occupied in the early part of the day by one of the longest-term residents who is now in her 90s.
"She arranges the more basic repairs and trouble shoots any issues, but more than that she is a pretty impressive collective memory of the old building. 

"Just outside the office are the original and still-used letterboxes, so tiny and made for an era when post-delivered objects had a smaller and more uniform size I expect. 

"Anything that does not fit has to sit on top in piles, each resident sorting through the pile. 

"It is terribly inefficient, but a reminder that it really is OK to spend a minute or two extra in the foyer collecting mail and chatting to neighbours. 

"There are two lifts, with wonderfully un-automated doors, which tend to inspire two types of reactions. 

"On the one hand there are the friends who squeal with glee (squee!) at things so well aged and beautiful. 

"On the other, those who cannot be convinced that the lifts, despite recent and full refurbishment, are safe. 

"The basement and an area on the top floor are the two other common spaces.
"The company (the building is company title) still own the flat the maids previously resided in, and you can access a small balcony and a meeting room.
"The view from the balcony is beautiful — straight across The Domain to the city and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
"The meeting room contains the original name board from the foyer, listing some of the first residents against their flat number.

"The basement has a communal laundry and the boiler room. 

"While not quite out of Nightmare on Elm Street, it is a little dark and spooky. 

"The basement also houses the building’s bike racks and ‘The Shed’: a giant old wooden workbench where you can repair things, sand things, paint things and generally make a mess.

"One thing you are always conscious of living in Byron Hall, is how lucky you are. 

"Lucky because the building is wonderful, but also because 2011 is home to a great many people who are without homes. 

"For that reason I'm a Friend of the Wayside Chapel, who live next door to us at Byron Hall. 

"They are often a friend to those who are in need, so perhaps you might think about become friends with them as well?

"The sun is pretty low in the sky as I finish writing this, streaming in to our lounge room and demanding I get organised for dinner. 

"So goodnight from Byron Hall."

Darlinghurst Blog: Street of the Week: Clarksons Mill Way

People are remembered in the strangest ways. This week's Street of the Week, which is really a pedestrian laneway, is named after Thomas Clarkson, who built the first windmill on Woolloomooloo Hill, now Darlinghurst.

Clarksons Mill Way, as the laneway is named, is possibly not the best way to be remembered, lined as it is with overflowing garbage bins and dotted with the detritus of life: cigarette butts, plastic bags and a man's pair of slippers.

The laneway, between Darley Street and Darlinghurst Road, is in dire need of some beautification. 

Nevertheless, I may never have paid Clarksons Mill Way much notice if it wasn't for the research of reader, Michael Armstrong, who was inspired to find out the story behind the lane. 

Clarkson, as I learned from Michael's story, was a bit of a shyster, who somehow managed to acquire five large properties and a number of windmils.

Through Michael's research I discovered more than I have ever known about the windmills of Darlinghurst - which arrived on the landscape about two decades before the first villas.

Along the way, Michael also led me to some marvellous historical photographs (make sure you enlarge the one of Craigend).

Here is Michael's account of the roguish life of Clarkson - and his windmills.

“In about 1819 a merchant, Thomas Clarkson, had erected a windmill near what is now the intersection of Liverpool and Darley streets (above). 

"This appears to be the first windmill in Darlinghurst: a stone mill with a mechanical turning head to catch the wind. 

Pencil sketch of Clarkson's Mill, by Henrietta Bloxsome, circa 1850.

"Close by, two post mills were built, their design allowing them to be turned to face the wind. 

"A fourth mill was built by Thomas Hyndes on his allotment close to Caldwell Street. 

"The windmills were prominent features of the landscape, often depicted in colonial paintings of the town. 

"The last of the mills to be demolished, reportedly around 1873 was Hyndes' mill, built close to Thomas Mitchell's Craigend villa. 

Craigend, with Hyndes' windmill to the right, circa late 1860s. "Taken with a Sutton water-filled lens panoramic camera, probably by Victor Prout or Freeman Brothers," according to the State Library of NSW.

"Hyndes' mill stood on the highest point of the ridge and was clearly visible from Sydney. Its position is reported to have been at the top of Beare's Stairs in Caldwell Street, east of Victoria Street. 

"The mill's building materials were possibly used to construct four terraces in Caldwell Street and maybe the stairs themselves (below)." - Mark Dunn, Dictionary of Sydney.

"Thomas Clarkson was born in Kingsbury, Warwickshire, in the UK, in 1763. 

"At 31 he married a local girl, Catherine Rayson, some 11 years his junior, and over the next few years they had four children. 

"However in March 1805, Clarkson was convicted of passing a counterfeit £1 note, and sentenced to 14 years transportation. 

"In January 1806 he was sent as a convict on the Alexander, Catherine and two children also travelling on the ship. 

"In August 1806 the four of them arrived in Sydney, Catherine purchasing a house some two months later for £38 on the corner of Hunter and Elizabeth Streets. Here she established a bakery."

Corner of Elizabeth and Hunter streets, 1933. City of Sydney Archives.

"Clarkson was convicted of “embezzling tobacco” on the Alexander and sentenced to two years hard labour. 

"On his release from Castle Hill gaol in 1808, he was assigned to Catherine as her convict servant. 

"In May 1809 he was fined £2/12/- for selling short weight loaves of bread, however in December the same year the remainder of his sentence was remitted for good conduct.

"In 1810 Clarkson was granted a licence to brew and sell liquor. 

"By the following year he already had four properties, and his properties and debts grew steadily. 

"The next year he became “bondsman” for rent on the Parramatta to Windsor Turnpike. 

"In 1814 he was contracting to build houses, seemingly supplying the upper end of the market. 

"He was also supplying fresh meat to government stores (eventually as much as 6000 lbs per annum) from his farm, and later also wheat. 

"In 1817 he took out £12,000 mortgage (now equates to $17,000,000 on average wage data) on an impressive list of properties. 

"They included a stone windmill built to support his baking and brewing business."

In the image above, from the State Library of NSW - which looks east across Hyde Park - Clarkson’s stone mill can be seen in the top right part of the picture. To the right of the mill, and rather further forward is the Australian Museum. In the distance, at the paper margin, is Darlinghurst Gaol.

"Around 1819-1820 significant cracks started to appear in Clarkson's business empire. 

"In 1819 he had built a paper mill, and the following year the beautiful Eschol Park House, at a cost of £1,500 (now a restaurant and function centre, about 5km north-east of present day Campbelltown). "However, in 1820, with the other Turnpike bondsmen — in turn having died and absconded — a suit was issued against Thomas for £1,000 in unpaid tolls. 

"In 1821 Clarkson's wife, Catherine, was convicted of receiving stolen goods and sentenced to five years transportation, although it’s not clear whether she served any of the sentence. 

"Three years later, Thomas died in Hunter Street Sydney.

"The first writ to recover debts from his estate was issued two weeks later. 

"Catherine commenced a legal fight to preserve the property she purchased in 1806 from the estate's debts. However, ownership of this property, free of Clarkson's debts was not finally established until 1836, Catherine dying some three years later." 

*

POSTSCRIPT: 

“If Only”, an online life of Thomas Clarkson, by Christine Woodhead, Marlene Willcocks and Margaret Aitken can be found here.

The first two authors are stated to be direct descendants of Clarkson. 

*

SOURCES: 

National Library of Australia

Trove

City of Sydney Archives

Dictionary of Sydney

State Library of NSW

Bones in the Belfry

Darlinghurst Blog: Reader Story: Sussan's Family Search

Bayswater Road, Kings Cross, 1929 - From the City of Sydney Archives

My Darling Darlinghurst reader, Sussan, wrote this story in the hope that any readers might help her learn more about the circumstances surrounding her mother's birth and adoption. If you have any clues, please email me: violettingle@gmail.com

''Was the Kings Cross Hotel in William St a boarding house in 1924? Does anyone recognise any of the people in this story?,'' Sussan writes.

"I am really after any leads that may help in trying to find out who my mum’s real father might be."

*

It was the roaring twenties in Darlinghurst: the Kings Cross Hotel, William Street, September, 1924, to be exact. My mum first entered the world in one of the rented rooms there.

She was born to a young, single, 22-year-old, named Elizabeth Florence Hainer, also known as Flory, I’m told.

In the year she gave birth, Elizabeth was living at the hotel with her mother, Alice Maud Hainer and her younger sister, Rose Lily Hainer.

The sisters were born in Forbes, in central west NSW, where their parents, Alice (nee Halliday) and Jacob William Hainer, had married in 1900.

Jacob was 37 at the time and his new bride just 17. The couple also had two sons: George Frederick (born 1907) and Thomas Joseph (born 1909).

It appears from family stories that Alice and Jacob separated prior to 1924 (Jacob died in Granville in 1940). This is possibly why the three Hainer females lived by themselves in the Kings Cross Hotel at the time my mum was born. There are no records of George or Thomas being there.

Elizabeth’s new daughter - my mother - was given the name Eunice Joan Hainer and we believe she was adopted out shortly after her birth.

Alice and her two daughters appear to have stayed on at the hotel for some time after mum’s birth.

However in 1926, Elizabeth, then 23, married John Guthrie, a 37-year-old tram conductor who lived at 28 Edgeware Road, Enmore.

They married at the Sacred Heart Church, in Darlinghurst, and Elizabeth’s “usual residence” was listed as the Kings Cross Hotel on their marriage certificate.

In 1930, six years after my mother was born, the electoral roll shows that Alice and Rose still lived at the hotel.

But by 1936, the electoral roll for “East Sydney Darlinghurst” shows that Alice, son George, daughters Rose and Elizabeth and her husband, John, were now living at 191 Brougham Street (below), just a couple of streets away from the hotel.

Alice remained in the Darlinghurst area until her death in 1952.

Rose married in 1941 and moved with her new husband to Annandale. She died in 1971 at Newtown, in Sydney's inner-west.

So the years moved by since my mother was adopted out by Elizabeth in 1924, but in 1948 unimaginable tragedy was about to hit her real family.

Based on the electoral rolls it appears that Elizabeth and John Guthrie separated sometime prior to 1943. During this year he was living in Wollongong, south of Sydney, while Elizabeth was in an apartment at 138 Brougham Street (below) with the couple’s three sons (Kevin, Colin and Christopher; my mother, who she adopted out, was her only daughter).

On September 14, 1948, newspapers across the country reported the tragic death of Elizabeth’s husband, John, who was crossing the railways tracks at Wollongong on his 50th birthday when he was hit by a train.

But the year of 1948 became even worse. 

A mere three months after John's horrible death another tragedy occurred.

Elizabeth was back living at 191 Brougham St, with her mother Alice, brother Thomas, his wife Edith and her children.

Elizabeth returned home from work one day and heard someone being violently ill in one of the bedrooms. She rushed to the room and found her 19-year-old son Kevin sitting on the bed in a very bad way. On the dressing table was a soup bowl and a tablespoon that contained Weedicide.

“Why did you take this Kevin?” Elizabeth asked.

He replied: “I am sorry mum, I don’t want to live."

Kevin was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital, but died a short time later. 

He had been suffering from depression since his father’s death, according to the coroner’s report.

One wonders how Elizabeth went on, but she probably did so for the sake of her remaining two boys. She lived until 1971 and died in Liverpool Hospital age 69.

As for my mum, Eunice Joan Hainer (above), she had been adopted by an older couple, Henry William Hines and his second wife Edith (nee Robinson), who had married in 1915.

By the time they adopted my mum they had been married for nine years and Edith was 53 and Henry, 57. Henry had been previously married and four of his eight children had survived to become adults.

They were very old to be adopting a new baby, which is why I sometimes wonder if they were related to the child. My mother was given the new name of Lois Edith Hines.

In 1937, when Lois was just 12, Edith died from a bad heart, and my mother and her adopted father moved into her step-sister’s house at Hurlstone Park, in Sydney's inner-west.

My mum: Eunice Joan Hainer/Lois Edith Hines

In 1941, when mum was 17, her biological mother, Elizabeth, approached her at the knitting mills where she worked.

Elizabeth gave Lois her contact details but my mother became hysterical as she didn’t know she was adopted. She ran home distressed and her family finally told her the truth.

I wonder how Elizabeth found her after 17 years – did she know who her child had been given to?

By that time Lois’s adoptive father, Henry, was suffering from dementia and died on Christmas Day, 1944, in a psychiatric hospital at Rydalmere, in Sydney's northwest.

Mum was only 20 at the time and continued to live at Hurlstone Park with her much older step-sister and her family.

*

At the end of 2006 I started my search for the truth of mum’s real beginnings and uncovered most of what has been told here with my cousin’s help.

Our breakthrough was getting her birth certificate and by chance it confirmed that the child Eunice Joan Hainer had become Lois Edith Hines. No father was listed on her birth certificate.

With these new leads we searched high and low for any remaining family members and through the Ryerson Index  - a database of funeral notices – we found her sole surviving half-brother, Colin. He died in 2006, which was such a shame as mum died in 2007.

Mum (1924 - 2007)

We also found other distant relatives, through ancestry searches, who helped put some of the missing pieces together for us, however, many of them didn’t even know that my mum existed.

I wrote to the funeral home that had conducted Colin’s funeral and they kindly agreed to pass on my contact details to his last known address. Colin’s daughter’s contacted me just before Christmas, 2010, and to my astonishment, said she knew about mum and that Colin had actually met her.

My cousin and I were in total shock.

Apparently, some time in the 1970’s a policeman friend of Colin’s helped track mum down. They found out where we lived and even drove past our home in Fairfield, in Sydney's west, a few times.

On one of these occasions mum was going out the gate and Colin followed her. He had one of his daughters in the car with him as they followed mum to a shop.

Inside the shop, Colin watched mum purchase a little gold vase and when she wasn’t looking he also grabbed one and bought it as well.

He then got mum into a conversation, small talk I think, and offered her a lift home, just down the street. Things were different in those days so mum accepted - he did have his teenage daughter with him at the time.

However, during this encounter, Colin never revealed to mum that he was her half-brother.

This was apparently because mum had reacted so badly that day in 1941 when Elizabeth had approached her.

She was only 17 then and had either not kept, or had lost, her real mother’s contact details in the confusion of that day.

As the years went by and mum’s real family never heard from her, they presumed she wanted nothing to do with them.

Such a shame as mum was a widow from 1977. She was left with two children to raise, my brother, 13, and me, 10.

For many years we struggled, and to think her one surviving brother was so close and yet they never reunited properly is so tragic.

Colin kept the same little gold vase that he and mum had bought separately on that day in the shop. Apparently it was a prized possession until his death in 2006.

Across the Border: Potts Point: Reader Story: Cockatoo Cull

Harro, my name's Errol, you know, after the movie-star and all. I may be a cockatoo, but I'm a lot like Errol Flynn in many ways. Yes, I admit, me crest isn't looking too good these days - I am in my 40s - but when it's breeding season, I still got a reputation with the ladies: in like Flynn, they say.

Well, I'm a big fan of Violet's blog and when she heard that me and me family were in some strife, she asked me to write about it for My Darling Darlinghurst. I'm not the greatest writer, I never did go to school and all, but Violet offered to clean up me spelling, so here goes.

I have lived in Sydney all me life and me family has been here for, oh, I don't know, more than ten generations, I'd say. We are indigenous to Australia but before coming to Sydney, me mob lived down near Young, in southwest NSW. 

But we like it here in Sydney. Most of the time, we hang around the Royal Botanic Gardens, gallivanting through the air between the tall trees. The tourists love it.

Me and some mates also spend a fair bit of time around Darlinghurst, The Loo, Kings Cross, Potts Point and Rushcutters Bay. There's a lot happening in them parts and there's some beaut trees too. 

We also like to chew on the sides of some buildings - you never know what you might find and it's good to keep the beak in tip top shape. The edges of the Garvan Institute building on Victoria Street are particularly good; I reckon we knocked off quite a chunk of that one. 

There's also a few residents who welcome us on to their verandas with offerings of honey-soaked bread. I'm not much into bread - gotta watch the carbs and all - but I like to have a chat with the people.

Recently, me and me mob have been hanging out sometimes in Potts Point. Posh part of town that one. Lots of fancy stores and flash cars to leave droppings on. We often have a bit of a squark (do click on the link) on the top of the art deco Tara building at 3 Greenknowe Avenue. It's got to be one of the highest points in the area, so our squarks can be heard for miles around, letting other mobs know who's boss in town.

There's also a nice wooden pergola thing on the top of Tara. We love to nibble on that one from time to time and because of that we are in some big trouble.

Apparently some residents of the building have applied to the National Parks and Wildlife Service for a licence to kill me and me mob and word is they WILL be given permission to either shoot or poison us. 

It has happened before too. Last year, the NPWS granted a permit to kill 20 cockies that were chewing on the Uni Lodge building on Broadway at inner-city Ultimo. Doesn't matter that we are a protected native species. 

And it was awful. Bang-bang! And then two of me old mates were dead. No warning, nothing. The rest took off. Scared shitless. But I think since then, a new mob has been chewing on the building again. They don't know what happened last time.

 

So I've been staying right away from Tara. It's not worth risking me life for a bit of wood-chewing. But I can't get word out to every cockie in the city: some innocent parrot could unwittingly go for a nibble or just a squark on top of Tara and then bang. Dead.

Now this is where I need your help. There are other ways of deterring me and me mob that aren't fatal. With all that money in Potts Point, surely they could invest in ultrasonic devices or kites and other visual deterrents, maybe even bird-spikes or some type of noise deterrent. From me past experience I know that slow-voltage shock-tape works. Never going near that stuff again. Ouch.

But guns and poison? That's a bit extreme isn't it? Your kind and my kind have lived alongside each other for years. Some of your blokes have destroyed our property, cut down our trees and all, but we haven't come after you with guns.

And yes, we may be noisy, but strewth, some of your fellas have some loud bloody cars, I can tell you. Doesn't mean we try and poison you. A simple crap on your windscreen is enough of a warning.

So please, can you help me? All you have to do is sign a petition. It has worked in the past and us cockatoos are hoping it works this time too. We just need enough people to sign up and say that it's not okay to shoot cockatoos.

See, look at how loveable I am. You wouldn't want to shoot me, would ya?

Please sign the petition. You're our only hope.

*

Petition Against Cockatoo Killing in Potts Point

UPDATE: Squark! It's not the Tara residents who are packing their pistols, it's the people at Kingsclere, at 1 Greenknowe Avenue, next door - and I don't even go there that much! Stay away from Kingsclere, cockies!

Across the Border: Kings Cross: Reader Story: Adrian Bell and his Street Photography

Santa's Little Helper, Kings Cross, photograph by Adrian Bell

''Sure is lots of interesting people around the area. Often it's the ones you least expect to be the most interesting. Ones who brag are only after attention.'' - Adrian Bell, 2011.

It's easy enough taking pictures of buildings, books and buses for my blog, but portraits of people are another matter that require certain conversational skills and patience that I have yet to master. 

Adrian Bell, 61 (''but I feel a hellava lot older''), has been living in the Kings Cross area for the past 35 years and has mastered that talent, having taken thousands of photographs of people on the street as well as learning their stories.

Bell studied photography at TAFE for a short time but said it was ''so boring, I'd go to sleep''. Instead, he just went out and took photographs and learned the craft the best way you can: not through books and lectures, but by practice.

''I like photographing anywhere,'' Bell told My Darling Darlinghurst.

''But there are lots of characters at the Cross and I can be more sneaky with it.

''People are an interesting species, I like to look at them and wonder what makes them tick.''

Bell's equipment includes a Canon compact camera with 10x zoom, a Canon 300D and a Canon 30D. He also has studio lighting, flash packs and tungsten globes. 

''My favourite subject is girls,'' he says.

''Faces I like best.''

Brown Sugar (Gemma), Kings Cross, photograph by Adrian Bell

The Strip, Kings Cross, photograph by Adrian Bell

Adrian took the photograph above outside the old Westpac Bank building on Darlinghurst Road. The building is now home to the Sugar Mill Hotel.

Animal and ''Radio John'', Kings Cross, photograph by Adrian Bell

Adrian says Radio John's health has ''gone downhill'' since this photograph was taken and he is now living in a nursing home. Kings Cross Biker Randall ''Animal'' Nelson continues his good work in the neighbourhood, which includes regular toy-runs for hospitals and schools and other charity work.

Norman, Kings Cross, photograph by Adrian Bell

''I'd give Norman cigs because he didn't ask,'' Bell says.

''Very polite fellow, non violent. I asked him about the marks on his body, which would occur often, and he said they were from fighting. Not his nature at all. Because he was non-violent, people would bash him. I went to the Kings Cross bikie toy-run on December 19 to be told that Norman was bashed and had been taken to hospital, where he died from internal bleeding. Hit me later. Poor fella, he was 44-years-old.''

John ''Pal'' O'Connor, died in 2008 aged 45, photograph by Adrian Bell

Violet says: I first met John O'Connor when I lived in Redfern in the late 1990s. I had noticed someone had been going through my garbage bins and leaving the rubbish strewn across the street, which the local dogs then had a fine time dragging around. One day I saw John going through the bins and I went outside and asked him why he was doing it and what he was looking for. He said, in the saddest voice I have ever heard, ''I can't help myself, ever since my friend died . . .''.

I vividly remember him showing me one of the things he had salvaged from the rubbish. It was the little insert tab from a box of tissues, which you remove to access the tissues. It had a picture of flowers on it and he said he was going to stick it on his wall. 

Later when I was living in Darlinghurst I would see John all the time, wandering down the middle of Victoria Street carrying his plastic bags. When John died in 2008, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph ran stories about his death. 

I'm so glad Adrian captured him on film, as he was then. I wonder what other treasures and stories Adrian has in his archive. 

*

All photographs copyright Adrian Bell, 2011. 

If you would like to contact Adrian about his work, please send an email to adrian40@tpg.com.au

Darlinghurst: Reader Story: Stephen Hickmott and the Secret Tunnels

Marist Brothers College Class of 1965

A wonderful story of a boy's own adventure in 1960s Darlinghurst, by reader Stephen Hickmott (front row, last on the right), now aged 59 and living in Tasmania.

I was raised from a baby in a little house in Darlinghurst, on the opposite side of the Green Park Hotel, in Liverpool Street, just up from the corner. I went to Darlinghurst Public School through the years, up until 5th class, when I changed to the Marist Brothers College, on the corner of Liverpool and Darley streets. 

The former Marist Brother College, now the Alexandra Flats.

When I was about five we moved to the downstairs of a terrace house at 96 Surrey Street, which had a massive backyard. We stayed there from about 1955 to 1970, but my father remained there for another ten years.  My old man was a merchant seaman and later drove Green Cabs. 

96 Surrey Street.

The thing I would love to see again one day is a secret probably not many folks know about: the secret passageways that belonged to the old Darlinghurst Gaol. 

The passageways were beneath the Marist Brothers College and the manholes, or entrances to them, were boarded up after the brothers set a trap and caught me another fellow down there. 

You had to go down and along, crawling on your belly, into a small cell, only 3 feet high, which had shackles on its walls.

There was one entrance to the tunnels under the staircase in the school, which at the time was a broom closet, and there was another entryway in a room the brothers’ used briefly for music lessons. We found yet another entrance in the house where the brothers lived - when we accidentally emerged from the tunnel in to their residence. 

We first discovered the tunnels one day in 1968 when we got in to trouble and the brother told us to go and get the biggest cane in the school. As we were always getting into strife we looked ‘’everywhere’’, but of course never went into the other classes to get one.

While we happened to be looking around we opened the broom cupboard and there was a 20 feet long cane with a chimney sweep on it - we decided this was the one.

But as we were getting it out, we noticed a crack in the floorboards, so we lifted them up and discovered a tunnel down in to the dark . . . we put the floorboards back and decided to return later.

We opened the classroom door and started feeding the cane in. After about 15 feet went through, the class was laughing, but the brother jumped up and turned red and spat the dummy. He screamed ‘’Next door! Get a cane!’’. He didn’t see the funny side of it at all.

We got six each and detention for a month. 

About a week later we went back and started investigating the tunnels with a torch.

The tunnels were about 2 feet wide and made of lime and there were small rooms about 8 feet wide with shackles on the wall. I guess it was solitary confinement to the max.

We would mainly access the tunnel through one of the manholes that was in the art class, which was taught by a teacher and not a brother, meaning we could get away during the class by going down the floor under the desk.

We would usually turn our pants and shirts inside-out because we’d be white as soon as we came out, and then we’d turn them back around so it wasn’t noticeable.

This one time, we didn’t bother turning our uniforms inside-out because the old teacher had a 2-hour class and we thought we’d have plenty of time to clean up.

But someone – one of the teacher’s pets – went and told the headmaster we had gone underground, so he turned up with the other brothers to look for us.

We had made our way back to the art class by then and when we got near the entrance we heard the brothers calling to us to come out. They didn’t sound very happy about it either.

After a 15-minute stand-off they got a hammer and nails and threatened to nail us in, which they proceeded to do. 

Rear view of the old college.

We headed back to the broom cupboard exit to escape, but before we could get out the brothers realised they had been outsmarted so a general assembly in the yard was called.

We slipped out of the cupboard and joined in with all the other classes coming down the stairs from level one and two.

In the yard I was in the second row back, and the headmaster walked up each row. We stood out something shocking, covered in white. As the headmaster went past me, he said, ‘’Out!’’ and then he also got my mate up in the back row.

I received six cuts of the cane on each hand. And detention. Which was actually pretty bad because you had to stay until 4.30pm and that made the day really long. 

*

Ten years ago I moved down to Tasmania, where I grow cherry trees. I have many great memories of climbing all over the Cross on roofs and riding our billy-carts down Bayswater Road, and I would love to come back and explore the tunnels again.

*

NEXT WEEK: Violet Investigates the Secret Tunnels.