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Sea Pictures of a Convent Boarding School Sea Pictures of a Convent Boarding School: Oral Histories of Teachers and Students at St Ursula’s Yeppoon 1917-1997 Submitted by Maree Lillian Ganley Bachelor of Arts (Hons) and Bachelor of Education Studies A thesis submitted for the total fulfilment of the requirements of Doctor of Philosophy School of Arts Faculty of Education and Arts Australian Catholic University 1 July 2019 Statement of authorship and sources Statement of authorship and sources This thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma. No parts of this thesis have been submitted towards the award of any other degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgment in the main text of the thesis. All research procedures reported in the thesis received the approval of the Australian Catholic University Human Research Ethics Committee. The production and storage of transcripts and audio recordings of interviews of participants in this study complied with the requirements of the Australian Catholic University Human Research Ethics Committee. All transcripts and recordings are in the author’s possession. ………………………………….. Maree Ganley 1 July, 2019 ii Acknowledgements Acknowledgements I wish to express my deep appreciation to the people who made the completion of this thesis possible: Dr Marguerite Nolan, my principal supervisor, for her expert guidance and active support of my research and writing. Professor Shurlee Swain, my co-supervisor from 2015 who advised me wisely. Dr Kathleen Ahern and Dr Rosa MacGinley RIP for their expert editing advice and encouragement. The Presentation Sisters and the many past pupils, teachers, priests and bishops who granted me interviews, and whose recollections and perceptions of St Ursula’s gave life and authenticity to the study. I am grateful to the Queensland Presentation Congregational Archivist Sister Theresa Stewart for her assistance and a special thanks to the library staff of ACU Brisbane for their professional and unwavering support. My husband Phillip for his strong support and patience during this study, to my family Brendan, Kathleen, Liam, Patrick and Caitlin for your encouragement. iii Prologue Prologue Australian historian, Inga Clendinnen stated: It is a preposterously ambitious enterprise, trying to make whole people, whole situations, and whole other ways of being out of the dusty fragments left after real lives end. But that is what the best historians set out to do. Their core narrative is always their struggle with recalcitrant, evasive sources. As they interrogate those sources before our eyes, we have a fleeting sense of what it would have been like to have lived a different life, in a different place, in a different time.1 Clendinnen’s reference to making whole people and whole situations out of dusty fragments is an apt description of the task of producing a history of St Ursula’s Yeppoon. The motivation for this project stemmed from my attendance as a past staff member at the ninetieth anniversary in 2008 of the founding of St Ursula’s, when I discovered that there had been no continuous record keeping of the progress of the college until the late 1980s. It became obvious that the details of what would constitute a history of the college, its daily routine, organisational structure and historical landmarks, what it was like to be a boarder, personal stories of achievement, struggles and hurt, were stored in the memories of past students and teachers, who were keen to tell of their experiences at that event. 1Inga Clendinnen, "Pardon, Your Ethics Are Showing," The Age, 30 September 2006. 16. iv Abbreviations Abbreviations AMEB Australian Music Examinations Board ATCL Associate of Trinity College of Music BCAA Brisbane Catholic Archdiocesan Archives BSSS Board of Secondary School Studies CEO Catholic Education Office CFC Christian Brothers DP Deputy Principal ICPA Isolated Country Parents Association Fr Father FTCL Fellowship Diploma of the Trinity College of Music LTCL Licentiate of the Trinity College of Music NSW New South Wales PJP Public Juridic Person PBVM Presentation Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary PSCA Presentation Sisters Congregation Archives PP Past pupil PNG Papua New Guinea PT Past teacher QLD Queensland QPA Queensland Presentation Archives QTU Queensland Teachers Union RCIA Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults SA South Australia TAS Tasmania TCS Tasmanian Catholic Standard VIC Victoria WA Western Australia WWPA Wagga Wagga Presentation Archives YCS Young Christian Students Movement v Abstract Abstract This thesis is a history of St Ursula’s Yeppoon, a Catholic boarding school on the central coast of Queensland that was established in 1917. The provision of adequate education in the scattered settlements of remote Queensland was low on the list of government priorities for the first hundred years of settlement in the colony and state secondary schools in those areas were not established until the 1960s, hence St Ursula’s played an important role in the education of girls in Queensland. The arrival in western central Queensland and eventually Yeppoon of a community of women religious known as the Presentation Sisters was a cultural clash in lifestyle, dress and curriculum for many children who had never seen nuns before and, in many cases, had not even been inside a classroom. Through interviews with eighty-five past staff and students of St Ursula’s, this thesis yields new perspectives on the complex interactions between gender, religion and class in the education of girls in religious institutions in remote Queensland through much of the twentieth century. The history’s main threads and themes of origin, leadership, formal education, culture and faith are viewed through the lens of personal memory as a multiplicity of experiences, perspectives, interpretations and subjectivities. This thesis employs the basic technique and the goals of oral history and incorporates oral history testimonies of a collection of stories and reminiscences of staff and students of St Ursula’s. This is in keeping with qualitative research methodology where there are multiple approaches as well as multiple types of oral history.1 The findings from this study challenge the widely held assumption that the teaching sisters were always complicit with the church’s view that a convent school education was ultimately a preparation for the role as a good Catholic wife and mother. In so doing, this thesis provides a richer and more nuanced account of the operation of the power and challenges facing religious educational institutions as they negotiated 1 Valerie Janesick, J., Oral History for the Qualitative Researcher: Choreographing the Story, 1st ed. (New York: The Guildford Press, 2010). 2 vi Abstract the rapid changes taking place in remote parts of Australia in the twentieth century. Its aim is to contribute to Australian educational history and to the history of secondary education in the vast remote regions of Queensland. vii Table of contents Table of contents Statement of authorship and sources ...................................................................... ii Prologue ................................................................................................................. iv Abbreviations .......................................................................................................... v Abstract .................................................................................................................. vi Table of contents .................................................................................................. viii List of tables ......................................................................................................... xiii List of figures ........................................................................................................ xiii Chapter one ............................................................................................................ 1 Setting the scene .................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1 Aims and purpose ............................................................................................... 5 Synopsis: The Presentation Order, its structures, systems and mission ............ 6 Structure and systems of Queensland Presentation schools ........................ 10 Teacher training for sisters in Queensland Presentation schools .................. 13 Teacher training for secondary schools ........................................................ 16 Synopsis: The history of St Ursula’s in the Presentation tradition ..................... 18 St Ursula’s co-education history .................................................................... 21 A poetic metaphor for a challenging project ...................................................... 23 Literature review ............................................................................................... 24 Boarding school education ............................................................................ 24 Boarding school life: a universal perspective ................................................ 26 Incorporating religion into the writing of women’s history .............................. 29 School
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