Scotch College

Scotch History Team hard at work

St Andrews Day (30 November) was when the Scotch History Committee last met, and the choice of date shows just how very seriously they take their task.

The Committee, chaired by Dr Robin Stewardson ('54), a member of the School Council, is overseeing two projects to celebrate the school's sesquicentenary in 2001 -the writing of a school history by Dr Jim Mitchell ('64) and the compilation of a Document of Record, listing a wide range of data that is better recorded in tabular form rather than in a history.

The committee is a history workshop in its own right. Professor Stuart Macintyre ('64), Ernest Scott Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, who edited the Ormond College centenary history, has just co-edited the Oxford Companion to Australian History. Professor Weston Bate ('42), former professor of History at Deakin University, has written the history of Geelong Grammar. Dr Janet McCalman is known to many Scotch Collegians as author of Journeyings, which explores the school communities linked by the No 69 tram line. Dr Alistair Thomson ('77) of the University of Sussex, is author of Anzac Memories.

The committee's great misfortune has been to lose Dr Geoffrey Serle ('40), who long championed the writing of a sesquicentennial history, and who was a distinguished historian of Australia and Victoria, and biographer of Scotch's greatest Old Boy, Sir John Monash.

The committee also has several lay members, if we may call the non-historians that. Professor Sam Ricketson ('67), Professor of Law at Monash University, is an expert on copyright, and has written authoritatively on its history. Professor David Penington ('46), former

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, is head of the Museum of Victoria. Two other members of the School Council, Dr Barrie Orme ('50) and Mrs Pam Marshall, have both been active participants in the school's history over the past two decades. The Vice-Principal and former Head of History, Ian Savage, keeps the committee in line. Meetings of the committee are attended also by the Archivist, Dick Briggs. Ms Dana Jankovic is its secretary.

The committee has already had two previous meetings. The first meeting was last year on 8 December which, as every schoolboy knows, is the birthday of Mary Queen of Scots, and the second meeting was this year on 3 August, a date well known as the anniversary of the accession of James III.

Amidst all this, the historian is, we hope, at work, while managing to stave off the committee's supervision by provoking debate about appropriate dates for their next meeting.