The History of Hale School and its Old Boys - Old Haleians Association

There were few motor cars or trucks; buses had just
started a Perth-Fremantle service and the successful
ascent of Malcolm Street by them when fully loaded was
sometimes in doubt.
Trams ran along Hay street from the ‘Car Barn’ terminal in
East Perth (alongside Queen’s Gardens and the W.A.C.A.
ground) through West Perth to far-off places like Subiaco;
the Nedlands swimming baths, even in time as far away
as Claremont, to the Showgrounds and down by Bay View
Terrace to the river.
The dormitory … was basically a ‘sleep-over’, open on
the inward side, of wooden construction with a roof of
corrugated iron. It was airy and comfortable but had one
serious defect, in that it was situated right alongside the
George Street picket fence, and therefore hopelessly
vulnerable to stones thrown on its tine roof by larrikins in
the dead of night, usually accompanied by derisive shouts
of ‘water melons’ (an unkind reference to the rather
distinctive design of the school cap of that period, with
its alternative segments of light and dark blue). From my
own ‘sleep-over’ a short distance away, I could hear the
enraged cries of ‘larries’ from pyjama clad boys in hot but
generally hopeless pursuit down George to Hay Street
and beyond.
Twice daily on weekdays and once on Saturday mornings,
the boarders would walk to and from the main school
and classrooms at Havelock Street. The route crossed
George Street, through the main gate of the Barracks
(the arch still stands), up a wooden stairway and along a
Havelock Street - July 1927
diagonal path flanked by big oleander bushes, along the
side of Parliament House, then across Harvest Terrace and
up through ‘the sandhills’ and the area where the new
boarding house was to built in 1926, and finally to the
main classroom buildings on Havelock Street, to merger
with the ‘dagoes’, the despised but envied day boys with
homes in West Perth, Subiaco and South Perth.
Scrub covered the ‘sandhills’ area; hovea, leschenaultia,
smoke bush, banksia and other wildflowers were quite
profuse, and the sandy slopes falling away to Harvest
Terrace and Wilson Street (now Parliament Place) gave
splendid scope for toboggan runways for boys seated on
the polished lids of kerosene tins.
The school day began at 9.00am with all classes lined
up in ranks on the floor of the main assembly hall and
the Headmaster, masters and prefects facing them from
the raised dais. My father, Matt Wilson, would stand at a
lectern and intone the Lord’s Prayer at a brisk pace, after
which we would file over to our respective classrooms,
the youngest in the care of the cool and elegant Miss
Doris Green (‘Greeneyes’) and others to such notables as
‘Fuzzy’ Rankin, ‘Jerry’ Polan, ‘Billy’ Whitton and on to the
new wing … with its Olympian rulers, ‘Dil’ Newbery and
E.P. Clarke.
P.T., known as ‘drill’, was supervised by ‘Buckety’ Wells,
an old soldier of rather forceful mien, bristling hair and
moustache, whose annual ‘tour de force’ was the Drill
Display on the school lawn on Speech Night before and
assembly of admiring parents and families, culminating