Telopea Park School is celebrating its 100th year – minus the nine days when it was a temporary hospital in 1927 – and there are some scintillating ghost stories and Gough stories to tell.
Few people would know that the school was a hospital for nine days during the opening of Old Parliament House and, sadly, was put to use when an ill-fated flying formation saw a plane nose-dive into the ground.
Flying officer Francis Ewen was rushed to Telopea Park School and although he died later at Acton, his ghost is said to frequent room number 22 at the school, where students say a door swings open and a strange smell is in the air.
Former head of history and English, Esther Davies, says the children’s story was that the pilot died in what was room 22, “my room”.
“The children would say his ghost is there and you can tell because the door swings open and there’s this strange smell,” Esther says. “The door swings open because there’s a cross draft from the windows, the strange smell, I say that’s your sneakers.”
Esther knows the school well, having worked at the school for 12 years, 36 years ago, and is archivist of the school’s historic records, which include 55 illustrious “Telopeans”.
None more famous than the late former Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, who attended the school’s 75th anniversary and when Esther told her what subject she taught, he replied, “I like history, after all, I made so much of it”.
“People often ask why did Whitlam go for four years to Telopea and then Boys Grammar,” Esther says. “His exact words to me were, ‘I was sent down, my dear, the headmaster thought I was impertinent. The teachers couldn’t manage me’. People who knew him told me he could be very willful when he was young.”
So fond was Whitlam of his time at Telopea Park School that in his final years, he kept a photo of himself as a student at Telopea by his bedside at a nursing home.
“I got a signed copy of [Whitlam’s biography) His Time,” Esther says, “and the author wrote “Telopea Park School, the making of a man”, and he wrote: ‘I concur’.
There are too many stories to recount from Telopea’s past, but it’s worth mentioning that Skywhale creator, artist Patricia Piccinini, attended Telopea (and later studied accountancy, of all things, at ANU). Incidentally, the ANU was originally founded at Telopea.
Another interesting tidbit, the school’s very first principal, Cecil Henry, fought against the French in World War I, a few years before leading the French-Australian School of Canberra, Telopea Park School/Lycée Franco-Australien de Canberra.
The building itself, however, represents the capital’s actual “bricks and mortar” beginnings. It was designed by government architect, John Smith Murdoch, who later designed Old Parliament House in 1927. Telopea Park School was the very first building to test the architect’s skill.
“What unites every one of us is the building and I have great affection for it,” Esther says. “It’s a building that’s built as a statement of ‘here we are, we’re going to stay and the capital’s starting’. It’s designed by a man who never married, never had children, so in some ways it’s not a child’s place.”
Telopea Park School will officially mark its centenary on 11 September 2023.
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