Time for some Newman Nostalgia and a gorgeous update on an extraordinary moment, beautifully captured by Dale Neill while a student at St Joseph's College, Subiaco, 1961!
We'll let Dale tell the story...
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Clean Sock Friday
I put on clean socks last Friday. I was off to meet Miss Horrocks.
The last time I met her was 60 years ago in 1961. It was only in Miss Horrocks' classroom at Marist Brothers that boys insisted on wearing clean socks every day.
If I said I wasn’t a bit nervous and excited I’d be lying.
A brief backtrack.
October 1961: In an all male school of 400 boys, 16 Marist Brothers and 8 male lay teachers, Miss Horrocks arrived as the new Grade 4 teacher.
She turned heads. I viewed her from a considerable distance but could see she was elegant, prim, proper ... and pretty.
Miss Horrocks was a mature 24 and I was an underdone, immature 17-year-old Leaving Certificate (Year 12) student ... with a camera.
It was the feast of Christ the King. We assembled in Salvado Road, Subiaco, for the bus trip to Aquinas. I picked up my Hanimex C35 camera and felt like I had just put on my Superman cape. I walked up to Miss Horrocks and asked, 'can I please take your photograph?’
I saw her blush and tilt her head, ‘Of course, yes.’
I took a single shot.
Miss Horrocks invited me to sit next to her on the bus ride to Aquinas but I have no memory whatsoever of what was said.
I never spoke to Miss Horrocks again.
For sixty years the negative lay in my files. We were doing some archiving. I scanned the negative and published it on Facebook.
It was noticed by Newman College historian/archivist Shannon Lovelady who posted it on the Newman College site. Then it was published in The West Australian and the bolt was loosened on the farm gate.
Jemena Drennan (Miss Horrocks) wrote to The West pointing out that they had misspelled my name – in fact it was Dale not David Neill.
Then The West Australian put us in contact with each other.
Now it was Friday 8 October 2021, almost 60 years to the day I took that photo, and I was about to meet Miss Horrocks again.
As I drove north I asked Google to play me songs from the 60s to put me in the mood. Up popped Red Sails in the Sunset, Sugar Shack and then The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Good segue I thought. Burt Bacharach wrote ‘The Man who shot Liberty Valance’ in 1961, the same year as the boy with the camera shot Miss Horrocks.
Jemena (Jem to her friends) is now in her 80s and lives in small cottage with an English country garden. I found her in amongst the roses with her good friend Margaret Sommers. They were in the Army Reserve together. Jem was in the Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Corps.
I wandered through the roses and shook Margaret’s hand. As I greeted Jem she extended her hand.
‘Can I hug you, Miss Horrocks?’ I asked.
She smiled, saying, ‘I was hoping you would.'
It was memorable hug, based on forever memories.
The 45-minute morning tea went for an hour, two, three, four hours; every minute filled with stories, photographs and laughter.
Family photographs hang on the walls and a piano reflected in the window light. Jem still teaches piano.
Back in those days at the Marist Brothers the Head, Brother Gordon, asked her to teach Jo Di Camillo Italian for his Leaving.
‘Me, teach an Italian Italian?’ she queried.
‘But you did Italian at uni’ said Br Gordon.
‘All right, I’ll give it a go,’ she said.
Two weeks later Br Gordon said, ‘Miss Horrocks, can you teach Joe’s younger brother Italian as well?’
She agreed.
Two weeks after that Br Gordon entered her classroom again, swinging his tassle, saying he had a real problem as 'now all the Year 12 boys want to study Italian.’
Miss Horrocks pointed out the other boys didn't have an Italian background or heritage and asked, 'Why do they want to study Italian?’
Br Gordon replied, ‘Well, Miss Horrocks, it's not so much the Italian language, it's more they want you as their teacher.’
So Miss Horrocks taught all the Year 12 boys Italian and they all passed with flying colours.
I can’t remember so much laughter in years. Jem emailed me later to say she was surprised the neighbours hadn’t reported her to the authorities.
At one stage Jem was so doubled up with laughter I thought she might collapse. This was when I related a story about going to confession to say my sin had been a visit to the Scarbrough Snake Pit (a concrete hole in the ground where they played rock’n roll, and bodgies, widges and surfies danced). The priest asked for description of how the girls were dressed!
I said, ‘I’ll bet neither of you good Catholic girls ever went to the Snake Pit’.
They both laughed and admitted they had!
There were many poignant, heartfelt memories shared, which are not for public dissemination, but I took notes and explained I was going to expand my reference to her from a paragraph to a whole chapter in my book.
‘I want to proofread and edit your chapter on me!’ Jem smiled.
I had settled into my second coffee and third egg sandwich when Jem asked, ‘Why did you pick me to photograph?’
I replied, ‘Well, Jem, from all the people on campus that day you were the only one wearing a dress. And you looked elegant and pretty.’
Jem was adamant in saying, 'It's the best photograph ever taken of me.'
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Thank you, Dale, for sharing that wonderful outcome with us! And we think Miss Horrocks is as gorgeous now as she was then!
