Garry Gillard > Perth Modern School > alumni >
I had always intended to be an English teacher, so chose the 'arts' stream (in a small minority) at the end of my first year at Mod so that I would learn two other languages. Unfortunately, the Education Department decided that my continuing with French and German at Uni meant that I was qualified to teach them, so it sent me out as a language teacher. (I was contracted to them for three years, as a result of having a student bursary while concurrently at uni and teachers college, so had to go where they sent me, and teach what they told me.) It took me nearly ten years to recover from this predicament. Two of those I spent teaching in England. I was very likely to be the only teacher of French language in the country who had never been to France!
When Murdoch University was getting going in 1974, it invited graduates to apply for scholarships for postgraduate places, and I was lucky enough to jag one, and so I got to work where I should always have been: at universities Murdoch, Deakin, USP (University of the South Pacific, in Suva, where I enjoyed title of Coordinator of Course Develpment), and then back again to Murdoch, where I worked until I retired end 2008.
The highlights of my Mod school career were the two Gilbert & Sullivan operettas we performed. Before that there had been HMS Pinafore in 1958, in which Lois Achimovich sang "I'm called Little Buttercup". I got to sing Dr Daly in The Sorcerer in 1959 and was also in Patience in 1960. Bruce Williams sang the lead in both, with Lois opposite him in The Sorcerer.
The photo was taken in my father's piano workshop on the one occasion when he happened to have a baby grand piano in it. I'm showing this photo because I'm wearing my PMS school suit. (We couldn't afford a blazer.) The book is open at Chopin's Nocturne op. 9 no. 2, though I couldn't play that twiddly bit near the end.
Garry Gillard | New: 22 April, 2022 | Now: 27 March, 2023