5 - �Kathleen Gee - oral history interview

Kathleen Gee

Teacher, music specialist

and choir accompanist

Date of Interview: 1994 Interviewer: Robyn Buchanan This interview is available on CD

Track 01

Interviewer: When I was a small child at Blair State School, Miss McGuire and Miss Gee used to come once a week to give us music lessons. For most children, that was our real introduction to music in Ipswich. Could you tell us about how it all started?

Lyla and I were great friends for years. It started when she took a little Bundamba choir - a little state school choir - down to Brisbane for some function or eisteddfod or something, and they sang so beautifully that they won their piece. Now, Mr Llew Edwards was there, and he was so enraptured with the music of these little people, he became great friends with Lyla. It was through her friendship with him, I think that she asked for me as her pianist. [Note: Not Sir Llew Edwards - this Lewis Edwards was born in Silkstone and later became Director-General of Education]

Now I wasn’t qualified with Letters or anything, but she knew I could do what she required. And without any further ado, I was appointed from Girls’ Central to be her pianist.

I was a teacher at Girl’s Central, Girls and Boys it was then, and I was allowed to go with her. I had been at Girls’ Central for 9 years and I went as pianist with Lyla for 11 years.

We did the rounds of Ipswich schools, 16 all together... small schools and large schools. Big schools, we went to weekly, but the smaller ones we went to once a fortnight. Because we had a variety, we walked, and we went by bus and by train .

Interviewer: So you didn’t have transport or a car, you just had to find your own way there?

We just had to find our way there, Shank’s pony came to the rescue. [ie walking]

Interviewer: What sort of lessons did you give? What did you teach the children?

For music? Oh well, I just sat at the piano and they learned the Soh Fa names. They always had a little exercise, and they worked out the names, and had to be able to sing it perhaps. Well that was quite an easy little exercise, then she did the theory with them. Then there were the songs, they kept a copy of them and they would build up quite a program.

Interviewer: I remember particularly that we used to sing a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan at certain times of the year... how did that come about?

Well at that time she was doing the Gilbert and Sullivan with the senior Cambrian Choir, and she was very interested in Gilbert and Sullivan so that’s how it came into the school work.

Interviewer: And when you went from school to school did you do much the same with each school, or was it a different program for each one?

Oh, no, different programs, to suit each child, each style of child and we had a different program for each school. After 11 years, I was recalled to the academic staff, so I wasn’t with Lyla. It was ‘57 I think I was recalled. I don’t

Kathleen Gee and pupils on retirement day from Central State School 1972

5 - �Kathleen Gee - oral history interview

think we had the Junior Cambrian’s going then, I think we may have stopped a little while before.

Interviewer: Can you tell me about the Junior Cambrians?

Yes, we started the Junior Cambrians. We used to go Saturday morning, about 9 o’clock until about half past 11 or 12 or something, and we just went through songs, not too many exercises, just singing, for the love of it. We did that every Saturday morning for many years.

Interviewer: They seem to have done a lot of interesting things – you have photos here showing the Amateur Hour.

Yes, we sang on radio on the Amateur Hour, and then we had other radio concerts. In those days, Mr Bill Johnson was at 4IP [the local Ipswich radio station], and he let us make some tapes and sing some of our programs. But by the time the next concert came round, they were [recorded] on top of the last ones, so they weren’t kept unfortunately. We had some wonderful concerts and it would have been lovely if they’d been able to keep them. The concert tapes were played over the air.

The choir became a very large choir. [Looking at photos] You’ll find Blodwyn Edmunds in there, you’ll see there are names on the back of the photos.

I still go to all the Cambrian Concerts, I saw “Call Me Madam” just the other day. I love the concerts, I think whatever they have is going to be good.

We didn’t go away for Eisteddfod work, but we used to go to Brisbane, we went down to hear the Vienna Boys

Choir, and at odd times, we’d take them by train for an outing for something that was on in Brisbane. We didn’t do much train travelling, it was such a crowd of children.

The rehearsals were held at the Cambrian Hall, Everything was at the Cambrian hall, it was in South St then. We had parties, with the children, the Junior Cambrians, it was very nice.

Track 2Interviewer: You said you didn’t have formal letters in music. When did you learn piano?

When I was very young, I went to St Josephs. [at North Ipswich] I had two brothers ahead of me, they were learning violin or piano. Later on there were two sisters coming to learn music, so I just learned every week, I’d have a lesson over at the school.

But thanks be to God, I must have got some tuition that stuck to me. I only went for two theory exams, and the second one, at the Technical College night, I got a prize from the Governor, Sir Hamilton Goold-Adams.

Sister, she had such confidence in me, one time she was getting a concert ready - this was quite a few years on after I was learning - and she wanted a quartet, she had the violins and the piano, and I learned the cello, “Simple Ave”, and “Perfect Day” - I learned that on the cello and I sat there and played them and I wouldn’t know a note.

In those times, the boys were singing the darkie songs, minstrels, so I learned on the banjo “Swanee River” and

Junior Cambrians singing on radio, date uncertain but about 1950

5 - �Kathleen Gee - oral history interview

Coronation Day in Ipswich, June 1954. Lyla McGuire can be seen conducting, Kathleen Gee was pianist. Outside the Old Town Hall, Brisbane Street

Kathleen Gee (left) and Lyla McGuire (right) with the Junior Cambrian Choir

5 - �Kathleen Gee - oral history interview

some of those pieces for them. I’m just trying to tell you how the little bit of tuition I got stuck to me.

Interviewer: You must have had a lot of natural talent.

Well, it might have been a bit of talent. I was teaching there then and one of the girls there was going for the ATCL on the violin and her cousin was an ATCL player and she was going to be her accompanist but the two fathers - brothers - had a disagreement and she wasn’t allowed to play for the little violinist. So what did Sister do? She got Kathleen. So away I went and learned it. She got her letters, thank God I had that power about me that I could do it.

Interviewer: Did you take part in a lot of concerts with the church? Did they have a lot of musical functions?

Oh not too many, I can’t remember them but whatever they had, I was always taking part - oh they had dances, I should tell you that and they had St Patrick’s Concerts and things sort of celebrations, but not many.

Interviewer: You mentioned St Joseph’s, was that at North Ipswich?

Yes, Liverpool Estate was the name of the district. In Sister Mary Carthagh’s admission book, I was down with a lot of others at the age of six. But I was still at St Joseph’s when I was 20 - not too many can skite about their schooldays lasting from six until 20. I just finished the ordinary tuition and there were a few of us that Sister had studying for pupil teachership, so I did four exams for pupil teaching, then I did my classification, so I did all that at St Joseph’s before I tried to get admission to the State School.

Interviewer: You learned to be a teacher actually at the school? You didn’t go to Training College.

No, I didn’t go to a training College, there’s not too many had done that. Of course, these days, it is all Training College and University and everything else. But that was like that in those days.

Track 03Interviewer: So at the end of the time at St Josephs, you joined the State School system?

That’s right, I was admitted to North Pine State School at Petrie - that was the name of the school, there was no Petrie School in those days.

These days, girls in their teens go overseas, work in different countries and everything else, but there was I at 20 and my Mother went with me wherever I started, to see where little Kathleen was going to live and what she was going to face! I was very happily placed there at Petrie, I was there a few years then I was transferred to Bajool up near Rockhampton.

Mum went to Bajool with me for the first day, can you imagine that! just to have a look and see what the place was like and they’d be satisfied. That’s a terrible admission

to make these days when young people are doing so much travelling and working elsewhere now, but that’s just how it was those days.

From Bajool, in the next year, I started in a one-teacher school at Kentville. Now Kentville is a small school outside Forest Hill and it was beyond Glenore Grove. I was there at Kentville for four years and I drove a horse and sulky with some of the school children in the family where I was boarding and I picked up another little boy [to take to school].

Interviewer: Had you ever driven a horse and sulky before?

As a family, we always had a horse and sulky when we were young so I didn’t think driving a horse was anything. Well, I was there for four years but it was a different life altogether, I was the only teacher there.

You get wrapped up in the children, you get so interested in them, and I had some funny little experiences apart from teaching. The children used to come along on their horse, such a lot of horses, and later on we got bicycles but with the school, you are teaching so many different classes.

This particular time I am going to tell you, it was not very far off the New Year and those were the days when you had a wall sheet “a cap, a rat and a mat”, all those things.

From one of the bigger classes, I asked one of the girls to come down and look after five newcomers and I asked her just to keep them going and she was a nice girl and she was following the chart and she was taking me off when she had heard me teaching, “Now have you a cat somebody”... and she got to this little boy and she said “Have you a cat Gerard” and he said “What” He let out a mighty “What “ and he said “You ought to know, you’re living in the same house, ain’t ya?” It was his sister, she was no teacher, she was his sister, the poor little fellow, that was the end of the lesson, school was bedlam, everyone having a good laugh.

Track 04The next year, I was transferred to Oxley and I went down by train every morning but in the afternoon, there was a difficulty about returning to Ipswich, getting a train that would get me back to Ipswich - there was no Ipswich train stopping at Oxley. The first train I could get in the afternoon was the Mail train, I think they called it, which stopped at Corinda.

Other teachers would have gone home and I had to spend my time racing out on the verandah to see if the bus was coming from the bacon factory, a busload of men, so I got out into the bus and on to Corinda and sometimes I’d be still in the bus and I’d hear the train, then there was panic. By the time I got out, I would run to the station and someone would open the door, the train had just pulled in and I’d fall in, the whole year was spent like that so I was a bit of a nervous wreck.

5 - 5Kathleen Gee - oral history interview

The next year, I was transferred to Central Girls and Infants and I taught nine years at Girls Central, in the various classes, mostly with a split Three/Two. That was when I went teaching music with Lyla, I stayed with her then 11 years so that made 20 years program.

I had many happy years at Girls’ Central, being involved with everything that was going. I finished on my 65th Birthday in 1972.

At this age, I can still play a tune, nothing classical. I did have a little classical playing but not much, it was mostly popular music. I had music with me all my life.

I still play for singalongs here at St Mary’s Hostel, I can’t play the way I used to. It was my birthday last week, I was 87.

Chronology:

Kathleen Veronica Gee born 20th September 1907Started at North Pine School July 1928Transferred to Bajool October 1929Started at Kentville January 1932.Started at Oxley January 1936Started at Central Girls School Ipswich January 1937Appointed pianist to Lyla McGuire April 1946Transferred back to Central February 1957Retired from Girls Central September 1972Pianist for Junior Cambrians 1947 to 1951

Lyla McGuire (at rear) and Kathleen Gee (rear right) with Junior Cambrians at Ipswich Railway Station,on their wayto Brisbane to hear the Vienna Boys Choir c1950

Program cover for the first Junior Cambrian Concert. Details of items are on the next page.

5 - �Kathleen Gee - oral history interview

5 - �Kathleen Gee - oral history interview

Queensland Times article June 1965