Sydney Grammar School
Cadets stand around a towed field gun in the school yard. A rugby team passes the ball mid-stride on a winter field, bare trees and a church behind them. Boys in blazers work a chemistry bench crowded with gas taps and glass apparatus, one taking notes while another handles a length of tubing. These come mostly from a single year — 1954 — an unusually complete look at what a school year there was like.
The school itself is a century older, and stands on ground that was already a school before it. Sydney College had occupied the College Street site since 1830, its foundation stone laid by Chief Justice Sir Francis Forbes; when it closed in 1850, Sir Henry Parkes petitioned for a successor, arguing that the young University of Sydney needed a "nursery" to prepare its undergraduates. Sydney Grammar School was founded by Act of Parliament in 1854 and opened in the Big School on College Street, facing Hyde Park, on 3 August 1857.
On a wooden stage that same 1954, students in doublet, hose and an academic gown perform a production nobody troubled to caption by name. Look for the boy in the hooded gown, hand raised mid-line, and the field gun's wheels still muddy from the yard.
