27 April 2007

More than half the class of 1957 returned to UNSW for a day of celebration for the Golden Jubilee of their graduation – as one speaker joked, probably a higher attendance than for many of their lectures. From young matriculants to those on cadetships to older men back from the war, plus mid-career engineers who took one of the early Masters degrees, they came together at the then-named NSW University of Technology in the sixth year of engineering enrolments.

Their experiences told the story of a generation. From the names of the major employers to reminiscences of CMF and jungle training camp at Canungra, these were engineers whose professional lives meshed with a time of enormous construction and expansion around the country.

The group, which included three Emeritus Professors, a retired Member of Parliament and a sprinkling of OAMs, spent the day on a very different Kensington campus to the one they attended, hosted by a group of present students and including a mini-bus tour of the recent improvements to campus buildings. The day culminated in a formal lunch in the Scientia building, complete with speeches from a representative of each of the four engineering disciplines.

John Higgins said his group, which included civil civils and uncivil civils, had a social life at university dominated by two factors: the female students enrolled in food and nutrition, and playing card games such as pontoon and 500 during every free moment outside classes. (Dean of Engineering Professor Dianne Wiley commented that she believes that playing cards is absolutely key to passing an engineering program.) Mr Higgins described a surveying task to find the star Canopus. All the calculations were done carefully but his group couldn’t see it at all. They rechecked the calculations – and then slowly Canopus moved out from behind the theodolite crossbar.

John Orlovich, who like many of the group described the early lectures at the Sydney Technical College in Ultimo, told of the day that thirty mechanical engineering students piled into the College’s lift, which had a clear sign stating the maximum capacity was ten people. As the lift descended, it was unable to stop at the ground floor and went at least a metre further, where they then waited for the fire brigade to come and get them out. “It’s a wonder so many of us completed our degrees,” he joked.

Mr Orlovich commented that he was pleased to see so many surviving members of the Engineering Survey Camp at the Golden Jubilee day. He described some of the antics which some of them got up to at the camp. “But for fear of litigation,” he joked, “I can’t remember exactly who was involved.” He was pleased to see that they had survived, he said, because he and another Golden Jubilee attendee, Ernie Page, had volunteered for the catering corps during the obligatory national service training camp at Canungra.

Harry McKay recalled that the chemical engineers of the time were part of the Faculty of Science, not of Engineering. The advantage was sharing laboratory space with the food nutritionists at Sydney Technical College, one of whom tipped over herself a beaker of hydrochloric acid. Harry recalled hauling the girl into the lab sink and hosing her down as she howled in distress and her stockings were eaten away by the acid. “That was my introduction to food nutritionists,” he joked. Harry also recalled turning up at lectures one day, smoking a cigar, after a night of celebrating with an older fellow student whose daughter had just been born. Bob Chapman had joined the army at 18 and been sent to the European theatre in 1941. “He was chased through Greece and Crete and the Middle East by the Germans so he went to Borneo for a quiet job as a cost watcher, and got chased around by the Japanese.”

Ernie Page OAM, the former Member for Coogee, was one of the year’s three cadets from the Sydney County Council sponsored into Engineering for the first time. He was given the word by an older mate to volunteer for the cookhouse on the first day at Canungra, he said. “It was one of the smartest things I ever did!” The electrical engineering group at the Golden Jubilee day was the smallest of the four disciplines and Ernie named and described them all, as well as others not present, such as the University’s first rugby union blue, Lance Fennell. “We were not spoon-fed at university,” Ernie said, referring to the primitive lecture conditions. “We survived as best we could, and when you finished, you really had an education, a unique chance to be good citizens.” A great hit at the lunch was the 1957 year book, which Ernie had copied for each attendee.

Others present at the lunch included Emeritus Professor John Ratcliffe, OAM, who received his Masters degree in 1957. Professor Ratcliffe had charge of the graduate engineering students from 1965 to 1978, in which time 168 higher degrees were awarded, including one to the present Head of the School Petroleum Engineering, Professor Val Pincewski. The OAM citation for Professor Ratcliffe, who was also Master of International House for two decades, referred to his contribution to engineering education, ‘as an administrator, teacher and scientist’.

Emeritus Professor Ronald Woodhead gave a fascinating glimpse into the origins of an ongoing Engineering Faculty tradition, the Great Book Club. Professor Woodhead, who also received his Masters degree in 1957, was a faculty member when the news went around that undergraduate engineers would be required to take some humanities courses. Concerned that they would be teaching better-rounded students than themselves, a number of engineering staff decided to read six great books a year, and invite a senior academic to address them on each one. “The spirit in civil engineering was unbelievable at the time,” Professor Woodhead said. “It was the nucleus of why civil engineering is still such a good school today.”

The lunch, organised by Luciano Ferracin and Marjorie Fox-Owens, was also addressed by Professor Wiley and Professor Richard Henry, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), representing Vice-Chancellor Professor Fred Hilmer. Guests were presented with a gift of wine glasses engraved to commemorate the day, and congratulated by the Dean of Engineering who presided over their 1957 graduation, Professor Al Willis.

Some of the graduates from 1957 at the Golden Jubilee Luncheon with Emeritus Professor Al Willis (front, second from left), the Dean of Engineering fifty years ago.