Looking Back at the Years Spent at Westleigh College

Many decades have passed since I was a pupil at Westleigh College.

After I left in 1960 I went to Canterbury Girls' High School, then to the University of Melbourne and Melbourne Teachers College.

That completed my formal education.

The informal education will stop when I do!

During the years I attended Westleigh I saw so many changes in the world that it would be impossible to enumerate them.

How can one explain that one remembers the baker driving a horse-drawn cart down one's street in order to deliver freshly baked bread?

Not only that but the garbage collector, and the ice-man who brought the ice for one's ice-box also used horse-power, literally.

However, once things began to change they changed rapidly. The 1960's were just beginning.

But before all that happened I had to explain to my class mates about the rye bread and salami sandwiches that were in my lunch box and other social and cutural differences.

This was, of course, just when Australia's large intake of European migrants following World War 2 had started.

None of my class mates had ever seen anything but square white bread before.

Conversely I had never seen or tasted a meat pie or a pastie until I started at Westleigh College.

Migrants back then assimilated. They wanted to be Aussies as soon as was humanly possibly. I even tried a meat pie!

The salami sandwiches were much better! The pasties were quite tolerable. I like them more now than I did back then.

Nowadays one can get such a wonderful variety of food in Melbourne and that is certainly due to immigration policies which helped create great dining experiences and more sophisticated palates.

I could list the changes in housing and architecture, cars, fashion, entertainment and values: all those social and cultural aspects which are apparent to people who have lived through them, but it would be a very long list indeed.

Without a doubt one of the most revolutionary changes has been the internet.

We live in a world of instant communication, 24/7 news, and the ability to research and learn whatever we want and when we want it.

It is the internet that has made this 'blog possible in many, many ways: finding information for starters, posting it, and sharing a piece of Westleigh College's history that was unfortunately destroyed by fire.

This is my recollection of the facts I knew about the school as well as my childhood experiences as a pupil there.

I am hoping that other fellow pupils, who became computer-literate at a somewhat mature age may find this 'blog.

And I am also hoping that anyone interested in the history of Northcote may also find this valuable.