One hot summer in '55: De La Salle Scarborough

Br. Hilary Walsh, now in later retirement at the Mentone Community, felt some elation to be setting off on a northern adventure in late January 1955. With Br. Gonzaga (Kiwi Kevin Brown), and Br. Leo Caldwell, Director / Principal, he was starting a new Lasallian school in outer Brisbane, on the Redcliffe peninsula. Like many new ventures, the beginnings were quite daunting.

Gonzaga and Hilary were in their early twenties and weren’t released from their annual retreat in time to start school on 24 January. Br. Leo held the fort; they arrived for the 2nd or 3rd day, after a “great exemption” from the last retreat day, coming on the train from Sydney. Two classes of primary boys were taught in a reconditioned army hut on stilts, and the ‘Sub Junior’ secondary class was underneath. The 82 students swelled to 115 the following year, waiting for a new building to be completed. It was opened in late 1959. Hilary remembers students arriving on horseback – three of them on two horses, riding their 15 miles to school.

The expansion into Queensland was one of several foundations for the Brothers’ Institute in Australia in the 1950’s. Politically and culturally the post-World War Two period was one of stability and, high aspiration. Mother Britain still held sway in people’s allegiance and regard, despite the massive influx of European refugees, and migration which energized industries. Exports boomed “on the sheep’s back” even more, and mining, especially coal was a valuable addition. The working class and hence education mushroomed.

The De Salle Brothers had a quite solid number of young men in training. This advantage helped the decision to open nine new schools in the 1950’s decade. after Scarborough. By the year 1955, the Br. Visitor, Jerome Foley, had anticipated taking a breather to “count our blessings”. - Kingsgrove, Dandenong and Caringbah followed Scarborough as Lasallian foundations before Revesby and “BoysTown” Beaudesert in 1960!

The unsophisticated and spartan times for the Brothers’ start at Scarborough is related by Br. Hilary. Their community living was beds on the presbytery’s side verandah, shower & toilets in the backyard, and a curtain dividing the chapel and the kitchen inside. This, and the immediate lack of proper school facilities, was much to the chagrin of the progenitor of the venture – Fr. - later Monsignor- Frawley, who himself lived in one room next to his parish church. (He had offered a hall for 3 classrooms, a residence for the Brothers, payment of running expenses and their retention of any school fees – an offer that Jerome assessed was too good to refuse).

Br. Aloysius Carmody, in his brief history of the Brothers, published in 1956, was more misty-eyed, perhaps from a Sydney distance:

“They (the Brothers) found a temporary school building had been erected on a magnificent property of forty acres of high ground, overlooking Moreton Bay…It is an ideal position for a modern boarding school”.

Despite the Bay being a good walk away, there was confidence as such that Br. Justin Joyce was added to the pioneer community in 1956. Three years later, the new, completed school building allowed Mons. Frawley’s dream of a boarding school to become reality with 40 boarders. De La Salle complemented the Brigidine Sisters’ girls’ school of 150 students nearby.

No longer  the experience of the unaccustomed sultry climate and the mosquitos without sleeping nets. The open welcome of the parish and parents chimed in well with Hilary’s original sense  - of trusted young Brothers engineering a thriving school for the future.

(Author: Br Gary Wilson)