Noel Clarke writes: My recollections of North Sydney contain very little of riots etc nor for that matter of terrible experiences of abominable education practices. Me thinks they've been somewhat exaggerated with time. I came from a low income family and North Sydney Boys gave me a good educational background. I recall being in a classroom when some decided to flick black ink on the back of Nancy Deane's white skirt which earned us all the dry cleaning bill. I remember going to see Little Henry to get an application for the cadet unit, being asked how tall I was and given a look of unbelief when I stretched up tall and said 4'10'', the minimum height to get in. I enjoyed my time in the unit, although I probably started as the smallest in it and recall a number of you lot betting that I'd pass out at the first passing out parade I attended. You lost when I didn't. I recall taking some lines to the staff commonroom as a first year for Lamington and when Little Henry answered my tentative knock I couldn't remember my teacher's name and Henry asked for his nickname, mortified I whispered,"Cake, sir!" Years later I remember being horrified having taken something to the Principal's office a signature and having the same Little Henry scrawl T R Mason on my form without even pretending to take it for the appropriate person to sign. I recall enjoyment in the band and orchestra, my major embarrassment being one speech day where the orchestra was seated below the stage and in the middle of the Minister for Education's speech I bumped my french horn causing the mouthpiece to fall on the bell of the instrument with a loud clatter. The Speaker stopped his speech to say "Have you finished?" I recall being concerned about a group who kept putting ether into their trombones or inhaling it from plastic bags at sport. On one cadet camp the band had to take part in a field exercise although we didn't have .303's with blanks to fire, so we equipped ourselves with cow dung and lobbed that at the incoming enemy. Since school I've been a primary school teacher for 10 years, then moved into Teachers' College lecturing, then I went to Indonesia with the Church Missionary Society lecturing educational psychology and a heap of other things at a Christian University. I returned to Australia at the end of the 80's attended Moore College and became an Anglican minister and am now at St John's North Ryde as well as being part time chaplain at Macquarie University. I've been happily married for almost 33 years, have three terrific children aged 19, 22 and 30 years. I've found in my relationship with Jesus (which took a major step forward during my high school years) an incredibly wonderful foundation to face the difficulties of life, and I'd challenge any of you atheists and cynics to show me a better way to handle the death of a daughter, severe and life threatening illness, or to help someone else who is dying of cancer or whose career or marriage suddenly disappears. I suppose that is counted as a bit naughty and long winded, but then I'm a parson so what do you expect". Blake Britton's missus writes: "Ian Kaplin seems to have a problem with his computer/program/server or something. As the opener of emails in our house, I have had no difficulty receiving the many messages you lot have sent. The hieroglyphics that appeared in Ian's email surely point to a problem at his end. We have received text in both Word and Microsoft without difficulty - what's he doing??? I have been enjoying your reminiscences as a NSGHS old girl who went to primary school with a few of you guys. Keep up the good work!" How many other NSGHS spouses (spice?) are out there? I for one married one (though we are now divorced...) From by H.M. Storey’s History of North Sydney High School (1912-1962): And as the Jubilee celebrations begin the last year in this record of half a century, 1961, will stand comparison with any of its predecessors. It has to be remembered that North Sydney is the only school which has ever scored a century of Leaving Certificate Honours. In 1961 it did this for the fourth year running, and broke all records with the amazing total of one hundred and twenty-one Honours. The school with the next best result had some seventy Honours and the schools in the third and fourth places were in the sixties, so that it is very nearly true to say that N.S.H.S. obtained twice as man), Honours as any other school. Another record was the fourteen Honours in Chemistry, traditionally a great North Sydney subject. The ear 1961 also saw the greatest number of Commonwealth Scholarships ever obtained by one school, eighty-six. The previous record was North Sydney's own seventy-seven in 1958. These are indeed wonderful achievements, and on its record over the last fifteen years North Sydney is certainly the premier academic school in New South Wales and it may well be that if comparative facts were available it would prove to be the best in Australia. At the 1961 Leaving the boy with the best pass in the State was a Falconian, Hanson Yee, who also took first place in Mathematics 1, and added one more James Aitken Scholarship for General Proficiency to the school's list. (p.39) The school does have an official war-cry, which has been shouted and chanted on many a field of sport. One can say that it sounds a great deal better than it reads. The following version was printed in The Falcon in December, 1921. "Oompah, oompah, yaki yaki oompah, Bloo-a-murra, bloo-a-murra, Ego yah, anthro popigi, uonana annagi, Wogga-wogga, wogga-wogga, yaki yaki yah. North Sydney, wogga-wogga, whiskers on his gobba-gobba, Nagasaki, Yokohama, yah, yah, yah. Who are, who are, who are we? We are, we are, North Sydney Where do we come from? Yah! yah! yahl North Sydney, North Sydney, hah! hah! . halil Ginger-beer, ginger-beer, pop, pop, pop, North Sydney, North Sydney, always on top. Mmmmmmmmmmm - boooooo Since this was printed not very long after the communal authors, whoever they were, had perfected their work it may be taken as the Authorised Version. Its spelling is perhaps unnecessarily phonetic in places. Presumably in the third line the village bards were thinking of the Anthropophagi, with tales of whom Othello was wont to beguile Desdemona ("And of the Cannibals that each other eat, /The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads/Do grow beneath their shoulders"), in graceful allusion to classical and literary studies, while "Nagasaki, Yokohama" gave expression to the commercial side in days when its distinguishing characteristic was the teaching of the Japanese language. And it must surely have been the famous Australian town of Wagga Wagga that inspired the fourth line, though the connection with the school that brought it in has long been forgotten. The part of this cry most likely to arouse memories in Old Boys is the booming "Who are, who are, who are we" that came out so powerfully after the preliminary crisp and staccato introduction. (p.53) Regards, Ron