Fifty years of teaching and learning
11 March 1961 - The official opening ceremony. Image courtesy of Monash University Archives. Photographer: Jack Lawrence.
Monash was officially opened on Saturday 11 March, 1961 by the Premier, Henry Bolte.
Monash had been called the ‘university in a hurry’.
Originally planned to open in 1964, it opened its doors in 1961 with five faculties - science, engineering, medicine, arts, and economics and politics. The campus was still under construction.
The University's Foundation Vice-Chancellor Louis Matheson recalled that the paving of the science courtyard – where the ceremony was to be held – had only been completed the night before. He and his wife Audrey completed the sweeping that morning, the cleaners having abandoned the task at 2am.
Despite the rustic conditions and the weather, which was uncomfortably warm and windy, the proceedings began with the pomp and ceremony of an academic procession, followed by formal speeches from a number of dignitaries.
A bronze bust of Sir John Monash was also created for the event, which was attended by 2000 guests including enrolled students and their families.
At the critical moment, when Bolte rose to declare the University open, the crowd was distracted by a figure on the rooftop overlooking the proceedings. It was a life-sized model skeleton, dressed in academic gown and mortarboard and waving like the Queen. Out of sight, an unknown person manipulated the skeleton on its wheeled stand, making it dance. The crowd was then treated to the spectacle of watching security staff trying (unsuccessfully) to catch the skeleton, which disappeared with a final wave and bow.
It was later revealed that the prank had been engineered by Foundation Professor of Biology Jock Marshall (the same man responsible for dubbing the Notting Hill Hotel ‘the Vicarage’).
Monash’s first students – 363 of them – began classes on the following Monday, 13 March, picking their way past bulldozers and shouting to be heard above the noise of the building works.
The crude conditions of the Monash site lent additional meaning to the label ‘pioneers’ coined by the local media to refer to these intrepid students. The students called Monash ‘The Farm’, because of its isolated location and the fact that cows still grazed on campus. As winter set in, the site turned to mud.
A letter to the first student newspaper, Chaos, said that ‘The thick oozing mud, often many inches deep, has ruined students footwear, trousers, stockings and hopelessly bogged cars.’ Female students complained that it was useless to wear high-heeled shoes. But pioneering had its benefits. The small size of the community meant that students from different faculties all got to know each other. Many of the first students share a lasting bond based in their experience at Monash.
These are just some of the memories captured in a book to commemorate the opening of Monash. The book will be published early next year by historians Professor Graeme Davison and Dr Kate Murphy of the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies in the Faculty of Arts.
The authors can be contacted at:
historyofmonash@arts.monash.edu.au