Ash Wednesday

 
 

In 1983 Ash Wednesday fell on February 16. As temperatures soared towards 43 degrees many students were looking forward to cooling off at the annual swimming carnival that afternoon in the Adelaide Aquatic Centre.
Weather conditions worsened as the day wore on, with extreme dryness and gale force northerly winds laced with dust from the dry inland. This combined to provide perfect conditions for the spread of devastating fires in the Mt Lofty Ranges.

Mrs Chris James remembers watching the smoke haze and maintaining radio contact during the swimming carnival. She recalls that there were a number of staff with homes in the hills, including Pastor Geoff Burger, the college chaplain whose house on the side of Mount Osmond was visible from the oval. Pastor Geoff led prayer sessions as the fires continued to spread. His home was spared.
Many roads were closed, so students living in the hills were unable to go home that afternoon. Arrangements were made for them to spend the night with friends or relatives.

During the week following the fires, Forum organized voluntary offerings and collected a total of $1004.67. After widespread discussion and consultation this was donated to be equally shared between five Country Fire Service brigades.

The photo was taken from the Suaviter, formerly the chapel.
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Royal Visit

When Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburg visited Australia in 1954, it was the first time that a reigning monarch had set foot on our soil.
As the royal tour progressed through the country, excitement in Adelaide began to mount. The streets were decorated and school students everywhere continued to practise for mass dances and displays.

On March 19 Concordia’s staff and students went to their allotted space in Gouger St in the city to view the royal cavalcade and catch a glimpse of the queen.
On March 23 more than 90,000 primary and secondary school students gathered at the Wayville Showgrounds. They treated the royal couple to a thunderous welcome as their Land Rover slowly made a complete circuit of the oval. By the time the Queen and Duke reached the dais, boys had run out on to the oval to form a giant version of the word ‘Loyalty’. Primary school children dressed as kangaroos, kookaburras, cockatoos and aboriginal people then performed a colourful ‘wattle dance’.
Concordia girls took part in other items which followed. The last display to be performed was the most spectacular, as 7000 young people carrying coloured hoods swayed from side to side to give the effect of a flag or standard fluttering in the breeze.

Dress Code

In the 1950s and 1960s when most Concordia students were boarders, clothing requirements for both boys and girls were very specific.
During summer months girls were expected to have ‘two cotton frocks of regulation material and style, suitable underwear, a regulation straw bowler hat with College band and badge, three pairs of fawn lisle 60 denier silk or nylon stretch stockings, and nigger brown tie shoes.’
As well, ‘evening frocks’ were not permitted; all dresses needed to be at least knee length with a deep hem; no cosmetics were allowed, and jewellery, other than the College badge and a watch, was not to be worn.  Girls were required to wear hats and gloves at all times while off campus.
On Sundays girls wore a drip-dry white cotton frock if they had not yet been confirmed.  After confirmation a standard white ‘robia voile’ frock was specified, and white underwear and white gloves were also quite essential ‘Plain nigger brown flatties, regulation style’ completed the outfit for attending church.
Some of these fabrics are unfamiliar to us today, and we would certainly prefer to describe the footwear as ‘dark brown.’

The 1963 photo shows a group of Intermediate (Year 10) girls in Sunday dress.

Can You Imagine?

By the end of March 1981 plans were well under way for Concordia’s production of the musical version of Peter Pan. There was an air of excitement and anticipation in the school community, and 174 students had applied for a part or a role backstage. But just as musical auditions were completed and the date for the first rehearsal was set, an unexpected disaster struck. The overseas agents for Peter Pan refused Concordia’s application for performance rights.
The production team refused to give way to panic and despair and immediately considered alternatives. It was decided to create an entirely new musical around the many original songs already composed. Can You Imagine? was a fantasy adventure set in a modern musical style with a cast of nearly 80 students and teachers. The script and much of the music was written by staff members Peter Westhorp and Peter Schmidt, together with Robin Mann of Kindekrist fame and renowned musician Tim Sexton.  The pressure was intense and the deadlines unavoidable, but the process was speeded up by the use of a word processing program on the very basic and bug-riddled computer built in the College AV department. As soon as the last revision to the script was printed, the computer crashed, never to run again.

Can You Imagine? introduced the audience to many colourful and familiar characters from nursery rhymes and folk tales such as Cinderella, Punchinello, Sinbad, Aladdin and Little Boy Blue. The heroine, Mary, is a straightforward girl who becomes trapped in this bizarre world of characters quite beyond her understanding.

The show featured a number of very intricate technical effects, including a witch with exploding fingernails. Although some of the performances suffered a few memorable glitches – a poor sound system fixed only on the last night, fireworks that failed to ignite and a theatre trap-door which had been built over - packed audiences greeted this unique show with enthusiasm.

A Challenge for the Leader

1900 was a particularly difficult year for Concordia in Murtoa. Clashes involving two staff members and the college director, Pastor Peters, came to a dramatic head.
Some years previously, in 1892, Peters had employed Mr Alex Gray to teach a range of subjects, in particular, English. Gray was an Anglican, so this was a somewhat controversial appointment. A theologian was also needed for the seminary arm of the college, so Johannes Kunstmann, a 21-year old graduate from the USA joined the staff the following year. Gray proved to be a popular figure as well as an excellent teacher, attracting many new students to the college, so that it remained financially viable. However, he became rather too self-assured about his position and reputation. He began to make disdainful remarks about the Lutheran church and his fellow teachers, creating rifts between the high school students and those studying theology under the direction of his colleague Kunstmann. Unfortunately, Pastor Peters refused to listen to any criticism of his protégé Gray and labelled any complaints as ‘baseless slanders.’
Inevitably, this troublesome issue needed to be resolved. Gray was finally dismissed in June 1900, charged with open unbelief, the undermining of colleagues, neglect of duties and slander of Lutheran schools.
However, there was damaging fall-out. Although Peters had resigned as college director to concentrate on his duties as parish pastor, Kunstmann was not content to let the matter rest. He had been the main agitator for Gray’s dismissal and in the process had also lost all respect for Peters and any confidence in his leadership. Kunstmann dragged up many old grievances into the public arena, accusing Peters of acting autocratically and hypocritically. The conflict fanned by Kunstmann divided the loyalties of the whole congregation. Yet before any real resolution or reconciliation could be reached, Kunstmann took matters into his own hands, tendered his resignation and left for Germany in 1901.

The photo shows Johannes Kunstmann with his wife and family in 1899. The little boy with the long hair next to Sophia Kunstmann is Martin, born in 1897, and the older boy with the cap is Johannes, born in 1894.
(Thanks to Mark Kunstmann, grandson of Johannes, for providing these details of people in the photograph).

Music Master

On November 18^th 1929 the Concordia choral class and the orchestra staged a concert in the Adelaide Town Hall. The opening item was the orchestral selection entitled ‘Concordia’. This was conducted by the composer and singing master Hugh King who also played a group of three piano solos which were ‘appreciatively received.’
‘Captain King’, as he was known, became the college singing master in 1927. He built up a number of choirs, conducted the orchestra and was a popular teacher known for his enthusiasm, energy and good humour.
As a result of injuries suffered in the army during World War I, Captain King has lost three fingers. (This statistic is from the Brown and Gold magazine, while the history of Bethlehem Lutheran Church states that only one finger was missing!) His wrist was also partly disabled. Yet in spite of these handicaps, Captain King was a skilled pianist, having devised a completely new system of fingering. What is more, the loss of a leg and adapting to a wooden replacement did not prevent him from playing the organ.
In January 1933, while on holidays in Brisbane, he died after a short illness at the age of 39

Travelling Home

During the 1940s almost all Concordia students were boarders, with their family homes in other states and country South Australia. As a result, the long-awaited trip home at the end of term was often very drawn-out and far from straightforward.
These excerpts from two memoirs not only give an idea of what was involved, but also provide some insights into transport in the mid-20^th century.

‘Permits had to be obtained to travel during the war. To leave the hostel on a Thursday night – catch the tram in Duthy St to the city with luggage, walk to Adelaide Railway Station, board the boat train to Port Dock (Port Adelaide) and present tickets and permits to the officer on M.V. Minnippa which sailed at 7 pm for Port Lincoln – arriving Friday around 8am. The next step was to catch the 10.30am railcar at the Port Lincoln Railway Station, arriving at Minnipa at 6pm – then change to the steam train which would pick up or drop off carriages along the line and arrive at Ceduna between 8.30 and 9.30 Saturday morning.’
Val Kretschmer (Payne) Class of 1943.

‘In the early years we were in ‘dog-boxes’ in the trains: separate compartments, where passengers sat facing each other. The cases and other luggage were placed in the brass-mesh luggage rack above one's head. Obviously it was important to make sure they were firmly in place. We had more than one jerky start and blamed a novice driver. These were days of coal-powered engines, and it was a brave head which stuck out of the window in view of the flying cinders and smoke. We tried to get some sleep. There were foot-warmers on the floor, about two feet long and a foot wide and a couple of inches high. They acted like metal water-bottles.’ David Paech, Class of 1945.

By the early 1950s some students were travelling by plane. The photo shows girl boarders
at the Port Lincoln aerodrome in 1953.