Isn’t it incredible how social norms have changed.
At the tender young age of 56, I sometimes hark back to my teenage years in high school.
It was 1979, disco had been all the rage but as the year rolled into 1980, fashions changed swiftly and as we prepared for the Moscow Olympics, brightly coloured jeans were suddenly hip.
I had just finished primary school and unlike all my close friends who marched off to the local public high schools, my father had grand visions of a formal education for his sons and as such, I donned my school tie, followed my older brother John and ventured across Balwyn Rd and down the ‘Golden Mile’ (Mont Albert Rd, Canterbury) to Camberwell Boys Grammar School (CGS).
Having only completed three years of primary school himself, my father, a humble taxi driver, was steadfast in his views on education and as such, unilaterally despatched me to my fate. Not unlike most Greek dads of his era, negotiation and nuance weren’t his strong suit.
Growing up in our suburban, working class microcosm the only release was going to Greek School, playing for Hellas and going to all the games, attending silogo functions and visiting relos on weekends. There was never a need for us to associate with upper middle class privileged set to the west of Balwyn Rd.
To suggest to my father that CGS was not a good ‘cultural fit’ for his hyperactive, sporty, outspoken and non-academically driven son was unlikely to yield a sensitive response.
Sadly, at the time CGS was a cultural backwater, stuck in the Australia of the 60’s before the abolition of the White Australia Policy in 1972.
I was and remain intensely proud of my Greek heritage and I wasn’t ashamed to say so. If that wasn’t enough, I was a soccer freak and in the Anglo centric mindset of CGS, footy and cricket were revered beyond which lay the abyss.
Well, didn’t that go down well. I was the kid that loved wog ball. More than that, I was the “greasy wog”, the “slippery wog”, the “f#*@!n wog”.
There were so many variations hurled at me on virtually a daily basis. This invariably resulted in matters being settled in the school yard with bare fists. Admittedly, this was a ritual in which I was only too happy to partake and I can report that I never came out second best.
Before long, the boys in my year level learnt that it was deeply in their best interests to bite their lip as I progressively worked my way through the boys in the year levels above me who mistakenly, had the temerity to hit my tripwire.
I will concede that my school yard moniker, ‘Kapper-snapper” was well deserved.
Thankfully, it was an era where a bit of school yard biff and bang were tolerated by the school authorities. After all we had just come through the 70’s where our footy heroes were players like Carl Dietrich, Ron Andrews and the ‘ebullient’ mad-dog Muir.
Further, if boys brought these issues up with their fathers’ they would invariably be confronted with the question, “what did you do to deserve that (a beating)?”
After confessing to their sins, their parents would politely advise their misguided sons “well, you won’t do that again, will you?”
They were, bless their souls, old school Aussies.
Come Saturdays, I would catch the 42 tram into the city to go to Greek School – Tsoussi – in Flinders St. There, all my class mates came from inner suburban Melbourne, mostly Prahran and Richmond. They attended schools like Prahran High and Richmond High where the school population was so heavily majority Greek, that ‘spot the Aussie’ was a favorite school yard activity.
Their school day experience seemed other worldly to me. It was almost as removed from my daily reality as Joe (weekend at Bernie’s) Biden is from his.
At Hellas (yes it was unashamedly Hellas in those days) I was the team captain and we played in the Super League – the highest league in the State at the time. Again, all the other boys lived in the inner city migrant enclaves of East St Kilda, Prahran, Albert Park and Richmond. Balwyn may has well have been from the dark side of the moon.
If I ever used a word greater than two syllables at training – inspiration, distribution, predictable – I was immediately accosted by howls of disparaging abuse. My (derogatory) nick name at Hellas was ‘College Boy’.
To say that I grew up as a bit of an outcast, is not hyperbole.
It is almost unfathomable now but in the early 80’s, only 30 per cent of students finished high school. In 1983 the Hawke Labor Government came to power and elevated education and training to a position of primacy. Led initially by the reformist Education Minister, Susan Ryan, the Labor Government revolutionised high school participation and by 1996, when Labor was voted out, more than 90 per cent of students were completing high school across Australia.
They were the days when the Labor Party stood for something. But I digress.
I was acutely aware of my privilege in attending a ‘good school’ and did my best to restrain my zeal in the school yard to see out my six years at CGS.
Upon leaving, I swore that I would never step foot in the wasp nest (pun intended) ever again.
Twenty years later, I attended a reunion and to my disbelief, witnessed that CGS had modernised and changed almost as much as broader society. So much so, that I had no hesitation in electing to educate my three sons at CGS.
All three completed their high school at CGS in an amicable environment having retained robust friendships and without ever once finding the need to resort to their father’s ‘negotiation skills’.
My only hope is that as they approach their own 40 year high school reunion as I do mine next year, they can look back upon their high school days with the same fondness that I do.
That may sound contradictory at first glance but after four decades, I have well and truly forgiven my fellow CG school mates but also myself for our litany of indiscretions.
Today, I operate Southern Cross LIMOMATE and employ 40 staff and drivers who hail from 20 different nationalities and proudly boast the highest retention rate in the Industry. We are the United Nations of Southern Cross.
We are one, but are we are many and from all the lands on earth we come. And we are all Australian.
The years of institutionalised racism are almost a fading memory as being Australian allows us all the privileges of living out our Greekness on a daily basis, without repercussions.
I sincerely believe that this is the daily lived experience of the vast majority of Australians.
As we prepare for the 2024 Paris Olympics, I feel wondrously blessed to have had all the opportunities to evolve with the broader Australian society and the great fortune to live in and raise my family in an open and tolerant, modern Australia.
One that encompasses a kaleidoscope of colour and is unrecognisably removed from Laura (ABC) Tingle’s recent outrageous aspersions that Australia is a racist country.
