Scotch College

The strongest week

An Old Boy celebrates with double vision

Saturday 6 October

9.06 a.m. Since the doors first opened, 150 years to the minute (more or less - Peter Crook is running late). You somehow find an 1851 French champagne which (believe it or not) was actually bottled on 6 October. You pour it into a souvenir champagne flute from Dinner on the Main ($30 a half-dozen, you can't go wrong - call Ian Kerr and say Jimmy Forbes sent you), and you join Peter in toasting the health of the Old School, and of everyone who's helped to bring it this far. It tastes great.

2.30 p.m. Nicholson Street, Carlton.

You walk between the brand-new Melbourne Museum, designed by Denton Corker Marshall (forgetting yet again which one is an Old Boy) and the grand old Royal Exhibition Building, just a few hundred metres north of Scotch's original site. Inside, you marvel at the interior restored just for us (Royal was an Old Boy), the barrage of technology, the blaze of colour, the banners, the buzz.

You adjust the lectern and rehearse the speakers. You wonder: this is a very large space. Will we fill it, in every sense?

Event manager Mel is reassuring and freshly full of Scotch spirit. You look at the sombre black skirt round the head table and mention that for years Michael Robinson has wanted 'a bit of bunting' to brighten it up. Mel says she'll fix it. Within hours, she does.

6.30 p.m. Black tie and grey rain - very Melbourne. Two doors out of six open, a couple of security heavies allegedly from Wesley, and a long queue to get in - not very Scotch. But heroic work by Leigh, Tania and Helen soon smoothes things out. And what a night. Like 1205 collective memories, your souvenir programme is worth bottling. In singing the songs, you compete with the orchestra. Your food is a bit ordinary, but Mel will fix that next year (not a problem), and anyway everything is relative. The President's beaming, as well he might. Like you, he's looking more and more like his old man. And like you, he thinks that for consistency, momentum and (paradoxically) workload, a two-year term beats the heck out of one. You congratulate convener Bob Welch. A top sportsman at school, in pulling all this together he's just played the game of his life, instantly joining the ranks of Scotch heroes.

With his inspired roll-call of old masters (especially dear Billy), Dr Peter Hollingworth both raises the roof and brings the house down. Brendan Ferguson gives a Captain's address to be proud of (how nice to see one of the current boys up there - after all, they're the soul of the School), Gordon Donaldson yet again rises to his impossible annual challenge, Jeff Kennett is … well, Jeff (eloquent, persuasive and without a note), and Paul Sheahan is the icing on the birthday cake: well-chosen shots timed to sweet perfection. And people listen intently to all of them: the great dome - so close to the first home - imposes a tacit discipline of its own.

The huge circular video screen works brilliantly (thanks a million to the previous tenant, the Asian AIDS Conference) and Lachie's camera work has never been better, but we are blessed this year - the true one-off cost would be prohibitive.

It's your son's first Dinner, and he and his mates are impressed. You introduce him to Ron Bond, and three generations are cast in sepia. Ron is almost impressed, which is good enough for you. As always, and more than ever, representatives of our kindred schools look around them in awe.

You spot Don from Sydney, disabled but indomitable, and surrounded by classmates he hasn't seen for yonks. He can't believe he's seated with Laurie. You try to explain that it wasn't pre-arranged, or even serendipity: just Scotch.

You leave your exuberant table and 1200 other people still yakking like there was no tomorrow. For some of them, there won't be! You scarcely remember who you dropped off on the way home, but you hope they all made it.

Sunday 7 October

You call Peter, who agrees: one of Scotch's greatest quiet strengths is its mastery of ceremony. OSCA raised more than a few more friends last night, and has never been in better shape as it heads towards its centenary in 2013. Too far away!

Friday 12 October

6.30 p.m. The 7th Biennial Ken Field Memorial Art Exhibition. Quite a mouthful, but quite a roomful. The Memorial Hall is replete with loyal supporters for the second night this week.

Wednesday's launch of A Deepening Roar attracted a bumper crowd, and another 240 (where do they all come from?) have filed in to get first pickings and hear official opener and frequent Scotch portraitist Paul Fitzgerald give an acerbic but thought-provoking address on mediocrity tarted up (and touted) as excellence (not very Scotch) and excellence blindly consigned to mediocrity (ditto).

You are delighted to say that the Field Fund is heading for half a million (it gets there by Sunday), and that almost $75,000 in grants have enhanced Scotch's life in the arts over the last five years. Red stickers abound, and all 15 limited edition whisky decanters (with exquisite silverwork by Flynn, makers of the handsome Perelberg Award) walk off the shelves.

Saturday 13 October

12.45 p.m. As for the Centenary in 1951, the gods are shining - or at least not crying. Family Day hits its peak. Such is the bustle that you feel the recombined junior and senior sports should henceforth remain so. You see proud author Jim Mitchell signing copies of the history and looking suitably relaxed after four years of hard yards.

On 'Affiliated Societies Parade', you see your classmate and good friend Philip manning the Koomerang Ski Club display and ask him: how many members? 'About 700.' Blimey - let's publicise this. Five lodges, mostly in good shape. How much renovation work to be done at Hotham? 'About a million.' A lot of toil and sweat, of course, but not impossible with dedicated leadership and all hands on deck. You remember how the Cardinal Club rallied brilliantly to help build the Pavilion, and the 1858 Club's joint triumph with the Old Melburnians to fund the football sculpture as our sesquicentennial gift to the MCG Trust and the people of Victoria.

Head spinning, you walk on. Hugh sprints up to hand over a sheet of paper with detailed figures on the perennially industrious auxiliaries. The bottom line: in the last decade, the groups which make up the Family Association have raised over $1 million for Scotch. Another grand story for Great Scot.

You meet a mate whose family has been through a rough patch, but things are looking up and his son was in a few events. Did he win? You don't ask. Sometimes it doesn't matter.

You hear of another boy who was in seven events in the morning and has gone home for a bit of a lie down. The old school essay standy-by: 'Tired but happy'.

The BBQ tent was awkwardly sited (forming a barrier between the main and lower ovals), but no lasting damage. Someone will fix that next year.

You walk past the rising James Forbes Academy, and encounter a couple whose name is Mackie. They are gazing at where the Mackie Hall Window used to be. Are they related? They're not sure. You suggest they see Dick in the Archives tent: he'll find out. Either way, it feels right that the new building will feature the Mackie Window in a place of honour (facing straight down Fordholm Road) and that there are plans to name a major corridor 'Mackie Hall'. Benevolently, the name will live on.

You head for the Monash Gates and look forward to walking back in when the Academy is complete in (you hope) 2004. Passing the Chapel, you recall where Deo, Patriae and Litteris perfectly coalesce: in the great Baskerville Bible given by Winston Churchill to honour a son of your School, W. S. Robinson, for 'services manifold … beyond computation'. That seems to you the ideal of loyalty to Scotch. As with the law, be you never so high, that standard is above you.

One school for us all, one-fifty for all - one-fifty years on, fifteen thousand for Scotch

Looking back, you'd like to put a sign in Glenferrie Road: 'SCOTCH COLLEGE IS A TEAM GAME'. Too right.

Sunday 14 October

11.00 a.m. As the ever-gregarious boarding community squeezes a chapel service in between last night's revue and this afternoon's BBQ, you head for the Gold Coast. En route to a business appointment, you drop into a thriving Anglican school in the hinterland, with numbers almost as great as ours and grounds even bigger. This is your umpteenth visit to school performing arts centres, yet you never tire of seeing visionary projects of which others are proud, nor of imagining the pride in your own.

The two seen most recently have been put up in remarkably quick time and at comparatively low cost, offering extraordinary value for money. If the same applies at Scotch (and a breathtaking tour of the Academy last month reassures you that it will), we'll have the best building of its kind in the world. And hopefully the best people and programmes to make it all worthwhile.

8.30 p.m. You watch Changi on the ABC. For the first time in a week, not a Scotch boy in sight. And yet some of them were there, so many of them saw war, and too many didn't see Scotch again. You think of 'Faf' Fleming, whose memorial service was perhaps the most moving ever seen at Scotch.

You think of 'Gunner' Owen and his vivid PoW stories in English Lit.: of playing Lady Macbeth at six stone to keep his comrades' spirits up. You think of all those who have fought, down the years - and of those who are fighting this year - for permutations of God, country and learning.

Gordon Owen once said to Colin Healey: 'Sir, this school is built on service'. One of his characteristic phrases was 'superb irony'. About this week there was no irony. Assuredly one of the most affecting and memorable in a century and a half, it was - and remains - simply superb.

Campbell McComas

Editor's note

Our correspondent tells me that this essay of about 1851 words is his 150th birthday present to Scotch, and is about as well as he can do.

I believe him! If, after reading it, and before this historic year is over, you are thinking to yourself, 'Perhaps I will give that seat (or something) to the James Forbes Academy after all', you have until 21 December to call Peter Crook on Tel:(03) 9810 4300 to make your pledge and tell him what a simply superb job he's done. Let's hear those phones ringing, folks!