Scotch College

Sod turning for our most ambitious project

It was a grey day when the Captain of Music in the Junior School, Tom Naughton, the Captain of Drama, Brendan Ferguson, the Captain of Music, and the Captain of Debating, Robert Commons, successively wielded the silver shovel to symbolically begin the James Forbes Academy project. One member of the audience was heard to say, 'If they swing the shovel with much more vigour, they might strike oil - no more fundraising, no more fees.'

Representatives of the School Council, OSCA, Foundation, teaching and administration staff, and interested boys, heard both the Chairman of the School Council, Michael Robinson, and the Principal, refer to the magnitude of the task in constructing such a landmark facility. The Chairman commented that the James Forbes Academy is the most ambitious project that the Council has undertaken since the construction of the Chapel in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

ADCO Constructions, the builders of phase one, the School for Music, has already enlarged the small hole left by the boys, into a major excavation, and soon members of the Scotch Family and nearby residents will see walls rising out of what can only be described as a wasteland. People will soon forget the tennis courts which over the next few years will be transformed into part of the Academy and a new entrance plaza into the Senior School.

The 'Sod Turning Ceremony' began in 1988 when Bob Montgomery (Class of '22) and Teddy Consett, then in Grade one, turned the first sod for the Junior School redevelopment. Other ceremonies followed. These included beginning the demolition of the fives courts by a bulldozer driven by Campbell Johnston, then Chairman of the East Melbourne Glen Chapter, to begin the Lithgow Centre, and turning the first sod for the Language and Culture Centre by Alan Shugg, Head of Languages at the time.

In 1996 disintegration of a few bricks in the wall of J Block, formerly the Science Building, by Frank Stuckey, the then oldest retired staff member and Julia Scarff, the then youngest staff member, began the Staff Centre.

When will the next ceremony be?