'The Principal' - 

Mother Margaret Mary 

She was a splendid presence in her black and white standing there at the end of the long colonnade with its symmetry of arches, their shadows cast on the polished surface of that walkway. Only her face was visible.

Then her hands emerged from the long black sleeves to clap resoundingly. Twice. The sound reverberated  and we all stopped  instantly. We froze motionless as in the child's game of statues. We stood attentively, listening to her speak her  instructions about classes perhaps or information for our common good. And we obeyed. Sometimes it was a fearsome rebuke for  someone's misbehaviour such as : “Bold as brrrass, and savourrring of the gutterrr”. 

Mother's 'r's spoken in her cultured voice with a long roll, were very memorable and  I can still do a fairly good imitation.

“Common” was a pejorative term and a state to be avoided.  Fringes were 'common' and therefore forbidden. Hairstyles with fringes could never be considered as acceptable for a Kilbreda student. One reckless girl dared to disobey only to have bobby pins employed to secure the offending hair firmly away from her forehead in a deliberately horrid way ensuring an  embarrassing lack of style which had to be endured until hair had grown longer again.

“Marrrlainaa”. She always spoke my name with this correct Germanic accent. I can still hear her say it.  We knew she spoke several languages and rumours abounded about her abilities and background. She knew just about everything we thought...including  German, French and Italian which  were all taught to us but by different teachers. 

Bells signalled the start and end of classes. The bell was a large brass one with a resounding tone. It was kept in a place on the colonnade near the Leaving classroom and was rung by the bell monitor.  Bells were also used as a signal. One strike if Mother Superior was needed, two strikes if Mother Margaret Mary's attention was required. The other nuns had different codes. The language of bells is ancient.

It sounds so strict at this school and yet our naughtiness abounded in many ways, with often irrepressible exuberance. Mother Marg  knew the difference between that and behaviour which needed to be changed and guided into different directions. She seemed to know which students needed just a word and the ones who needed a firmer get-out-the-whip approach.

She was Mother Margaret Mary, our Principal, an austere woman with dignity and authority emanating in an unseen  force field around her. We were in awe of her presence, and there was a consensus of opinion that she was definitely of the European nobility in some way. Her speaking was cultured and her intonation and expression were finely judged with great effect on her listeners. 

Her ability to assess character bordered on uncanny. Not only to assess it but to evaluate, then respond.   I couldn't believe that my extremely bigoted and true-to-the-Protestant-culture-of-the-times, vocally anti-Catholic Mum,  was charmed by her and willingly became completely under her spell.

In years after we all had many Mother Margaret Mary stories. And I confess to using her 'clap' in many a class-room, not as effectively though.

One afternoon, sunny outside, the class was gathered  in the drowsy after-lunch period. “Good afternoon Mother”, we chorused, then the prayer which began every lesson followed. "Please be seated” . As we sat  there was at once a resounding, piercing, explosive bang in the classroom. Calmly and with incisive precision she commanded, “Would the girl who placed the cherry pips under that desk please stand ?” New to the school, Colleen  stood, and was thoroughly rebuked for her unseemly, 'savouring of the gutter'  behaviour. In later life she became such a proper pillar of the community that perhaps it was too severe a rebuke! But we all admired her ingenuity then. This trick was new to us. 

Of happy mischievous memory was the day after Sister Canisius' biology excursion to Ricketts Point rock shelf when an enterprising girl placed  a brightly coloured chocolate box lid masquerading as a gift on  Mother Aquin's desk. It concealed several crabs which were revealed with satisfying shrieks as she lifted the lid and they scrabbled and skittered in many different directions falling to the floor with some making for the door. Mother Aquin was a good sport about it, only saying “Girls, what if I had a bad heart”. 

One day, Irene Murray hid in the narrow cupboard which was the occasional home of the folding doors between two class-rooms when they were pulled back. Fierce , scarily strict,  deaf Mother Consuelo came in to teach our French class and Irene was stuck there for the lesson while we were condemned to hysterically stifling our almost uncontrollable giggles while desperately attempting to maintain M. Consuelo's very high standards of knowledge and behaviour.

At the end of our Leaving year, Denise and I  smoked a cigarette in the Science room hanging out the window chattering with two St Bede's boys standing in the lane, Basil and Rupert. It would surely have been a hanging offence if caught.

There was an incident of hiding  in the hedge to change into 'civvy' clothes (bathers under a white dress that had a tiny green pattern) to go wagging down the beach. In the school grounds we went on sneaky expeditions down through the out-of-bounds trellised courtyards to the laundry area so we could giggle irrepressibly at the nuns' big bloomers drying on the clothesline or hide around the chook-yard.   

One day, with our boarder-friend, Lynette  we sidled through the huge boarders' dormitory knowing we had to creep past the nuns' quarters  to aim  for a risky climb up the even more  totally forbidden territory of the Tower.

We suddenly heard the warning clink of approaching Rosary beads.  Panic! 

Helter-skeltering, sliding under the beds on the smooth polished floor, we held our breath as we peered under the quilt and eventually saw  the black-laced shoes and black serge hem go past without observing us.  Then we realised it was benevolent Sister Paulinus, the boarders' matron and music teacher of the piano pupils, so our hearts started beating again, knowing she would be lenient if she spotted us. But luckily she didn't. Whew ! 

So Mother Margaret Mary stood at the end of the colonnade, or glided through our classrooms, this woman of austere appearance, a  woman of dignity with authority emanating from her  presence. Her skills at assessing girls and situations were those of a career diplomat with the added advantage to us that her vocation ensured our true best interests. Knowing every girl, knowing every parent. Skilfully achieving what are now known as best outcomes.

I was misbehaving in an outrageous way for my dis-respected and kindly Year 7 teacher and Mrs Bray was now at her wit's end with this rebellious adolescent pupil. Drumming my fingers on the desk to signify contempt, raising the eyebrow, answering sullenly... I'd been sent into Mother Mercedes next door classroom as punishment. Standing there as uncaring as I dared  in those different circumstances of M. Mercedes classroom it was more than disconcerting to see Mother Margaret Mary come through the door. How had her antennae alerted her to my transgressions ? I was sent back to Mrs Bray with instructions to apologise and request to be re-admitted to the class. I was also instructed and  Summoned : To Be In The Parlour at 1.30pm to speak with Mother.

Wisdom in action. It was 11.30am when I was given this ultimatum. I had two hours of unspeakable tension and suspense to endure before what I presumed would be some sort of execution. I couldn't even begin to think about putting on a brave, insolent face for my friends during lunchtime in the playground down near the chook-yard under the peppercorn trees. I simply wilted and hung my head over the  peanut butter sandwiches I was unable to eat. It was a timeless agony.

The Parlour was  one of the formal rooms of great solemnity in the front part of the convent beneath the tower. The beautiful painted windows were in the stately entrance hall nearby. The furniture was antique and firmly upholstered for improvement of posture, if one dared to sit. The chairs were arranged primarily around the walls with a small grouping in the centre conveying a cold formality. The Sacred Heart of Jesus gazed at me from over the fireplace but I wasn't capable of praying. Faint and happy school noises from untroubled sources outside exacerbated the remorse that had been building in my heart and mind, and the longing for forgiveness was overwhelming. I was now  aware of how foolish my  nonsense had been, and how unkind. I burst into tears as Mother quietly entered the room, her hands as always, encased in her sleeves across her waist and beneath the Brigidine silver heart pendant. 

After assessing me in less than a glance, then speaking with me, Mother Margaret Mary accompanied me back to the Year 7 classroom 'Stella Maris' (with the pictures of the 'Building Of The Pyramids' on the back wall) and instructed me to tell my class the story of “The Hare and the Tortoise” – Aesop's fable explaining how natural talent made lazy can easily be overrun by plodding steadiness and discipline. There was a clear message here for me as I spoke this old tale knowing that the class all knew what it was about too. The shame was great but I also knew that I was forgiven. I was never insolent or discourteous to a teacher again.

One of my major ambitions as a teenager was to have curly eyelashes and much attention was paid unsuccessfully to achieving that aim. In the 1950s, a large proportion of students left school at fourteen or fifteen so at the end of  Intermediate/Year 10, when my Mum organised a dressmaking apprenticeship for me at Georges, a classy department store catering for the Toorak crowd, I was happy at the thought of no-more-study. There would be  money in my pocket for makeup and clothes and possibly ways to help achieve the eyelashes !  It was a delightful new prospect and I quelled the uncertainty I couldn't describe or even  name.

Mother Marg somehow got wind of this plan. Mrs Watkin was invited, or summoned perhaps, to come to the school. The three of us sat formally in The Parlour, always extremely disconcerting. Discussion followed, Mother asked for my thoughts. A satisfactory solution was reached. Mum was convinced to keep me at school, Marlene was convinced to stay. Mother Margaret Mary had presented me with an achievable ambition : to complete Leaving Certificate then obtain a studentship to become an Art Teacher. This would involve doing Nothing But Art for three years – bliss !  And be paid for it too ! The unbelievably distant prospect of actually ending up at the front of a classroom had no reality for me – too far away to imagine as ever happening. Meanwhile, I was bribed with five shillings a week pocket-money. 

Mother Marg had chosen me to be a teacher, had seen a direction for me and proceeded to guide me to reach it. So at the end of 1954 I entered the teaching profession and at the end of 2014 I left my last classroom ! Teaching on and off for all those years I thank that wise woman yet again.

In 1963 Mother Margaret Mary had contacted me  and asked me to return to Kilbreda as an Art Teacher for Intermediate and Leaving classes, so that was for one or two years only as I had to return to full-time work to support my family and went to the Department and a new job at Beaumaris North State School – another story.

In 1983, Sister Angela Ryan was Principal and employed me at Kilbreda again. Then known as Jan,  Angela had been a class-mate throughout secondary school and was also an outstanding person and principal. She was part of the class that heard my telling of 'The Hare and the Tortoise'.

Mother Margaret Mary was an exceptional woman. I give constant thanks for her guidance, the beneficial influence she exerted over my life and the gifts that were so wonderfully and freely given to us during our education at Kilbreda by all those Brigidine Sisters without exception.

Marlene Wall (née Watkin) 

Class of 1954