The Croc

Many old collegians will remember the ‘croc’. This was the two-by-two procession (resembling a crocodile) of the girl boarders as they made their way between the hostel in Wattle St and Concordia. Since the college dining room was not large enough to accommodate all students, the girls walked back to the hostel for lunch before returning for afternoon classes.   At the end of the school day they made the final trip back to the hostel. The walk between the College and the hostel took around 10-12 minutes at a steady pace, and by the end of each school day the girls had covered 4 km by foot.

A boy student from the 1940s provides a personal perspective on the ‘croc.’ He remembers how the girls ‘came up the long pathway under the huge cedar trees. The senior students sat in their upstairs study windows….. and the girls displayed a casual nonchalance, knowing full well they were being watched. There is no doubt that college life was brightened considerably by the presence of girls.’

Although these walks may have helped them keep fit, the experience was not always pleasurable. A girl student from 1955 wrote that the ‘croc’ consisted of ‘seventy or eighty human automatons ….slowly but surely flattening the path between the hostel and the College three times a day. The way is hot and dusty in summer, wet and muddy in winter… In summer our shoes are brown with dust, in winter they are brown with mud, so really there is no sense in wearing black shoes. It is the unanimous opinion of the girls that the path should be bituminized.’

In 1958 another student wrote that it was ‘quite entertaining to see just how many cars and buses we can hold up whilst crossing the road, or seeing just how long we can manage to walk in ‘three’ before the prefects send the odd one to the back of the line.’