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CHRIS TOLA
THERE WAS a time when Chris Tola was slightly embarrassed about the university facility named in his honour.
The amenity, a urinal in the Shortland Union, highlights Mr Tola’s time as a student throughout the 1980s.
It was a different era, and Mr Tola spent eight years endeavouring to complete an arts degree as he looked to make the most of student life.
His tertiary career began after he passed his HSC at his second attempt and made the decision to leave his home town of Terrigal and attend Newcastle.
“I came to Newcastle, which was the big city. This university where the world was your oyster. Bright-eyed and bushy tailed I thought ‘I need to take advantage of all this’,” he says.
Mr Tola threw himself with verve into a variety of the university’s clubs and societies, which included long stints on the student representative council and the sports union.
Joining the Surf Riders Club was the “best and worst thing” about his university experience.
“The best thing was that I got to see the world,” he says. And the worst thing?
“Eight years of doing my degree, and another 15 skirting around the periphery of a traditional job.”
He ruefully admits that academic and financial pressures often mean students now don’t get the chance to fully immerse themselves into university culture, something for which he was grateful.
“I was there for a long time and I got involved,” he says.
“My ability to communicate and relate to other people definitely has its background in those years at uni.”
The naming of the urinal came after a series of student union meetings where Mr Tola’s peers agreed his unique academic pathway deserved recognition.
The honour of having a facility named after him only dawned after a meeting with his University of Sydney counterpart at a student union president dinner.
“He said, ‘I’ll never have anything named after me’. When you think about it, it is an honour. A dumb honour, but an honour nonetheless.”
PROFESSOR GODFREY TANNER
THE INCORRIGIBLE Godfrey Tanner passed away in 2002, yet the professor’s legacy resonates throughout the university.
Tales of his exploits are emblazoned in university folklore, and his remarkable persona often blurs the lines between fact and fiction.
Professor Tanner came to the University of Newcastle in 1959 at the age of 32 after educational stints at the University of Melbourne and Cambridge.
From then on, the professor’s charisma and style left an indelible mark on students and staff at Newcastle.
Whilst internationally renowned for his grasp of language and the classics, it was his eccentric and engaging personality that contributed to his place in university legend.
His work in gaining autonomy was complemented by the tale of him sanctifying the land upon which the newly consecrated university rested by pouring wine on the ground at a celebratory bonfi re at the site of the Great Hall.
The professor was well-known for his love of red wine and scotch, and, fittingly, the Godfrey Tanner Bar is named in his honour.
His love of sport manifested itself in long-term commitments to the university rugby and rowing clubs, and he was a legendary vocal supporter of both.
He was affectionately known as The Beast, the term originating from the establishment of a scholarship in his own name funded by a local winery. The most popular drop from the winery was Sanguis Bestiae, “the blood of the beast”. Thus, Professor Tanner became The Beast, and his house on The Hill was dubbed “The Bestiary”.
Running through the plethora of stories that surround the man is his commitment to the education of students.
That is why he is etched into the very fabric of the university.
DR EDWARD BRIDLE
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE project archivist Edward Bridle is better known on campus, and to the world via Facebook, as The Dapper Gentleman.
Based in Cultural Collections, Dr Bridle originally moved to Newcastle’s Auchmuty Library to handle the part of the archival holdings that come under the State Records Act.
“I did my PhD in English, but it was in Anglo-Saxon,” says Dr Bridle.
“The short version of my thesis title is The Anglo- Saxon Chronicle. That was at the University of New England.
“The full title is The 10th and 11th Century Continuations of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Their Relationship to the Chronicle Attributed to John of Worcester.
“My role in the library is not a perfect fi t because there is not a lot of Anglo-Saxon here, but the background in the use of historical documentation is fairly good preparation for working in archives.”
The impeccable attire becomes of secondary importance when conversing with Dr Bridle because he is such an interesting person.
“I attended Cobar High, which was quite a good school with a lot of enthusiastic young teachers,” he says.
“I was an undergraduate and postgraduate at UNE, which is where I got into archives as well. I went up there in ’78 and came down to Newcastle in ’02.”
There is a neat historical symmetry at work because UNE ran an arts degree on behalf of Newcastle in the early 1950s when momentum for the university was building.
Dr Bridle didn’t expect to gain notoriety for dressing in what he considers is a quite normal fashion.
After all, he attired himself in this way throughout his PhD.
“Some of my colleagues have referred to my dress code from time to time,” he says. “The first I knew about the social media notoriety was when someone came up to me in the courtyard outside the library and said
‘Do you know there is a Facebook page about you?’ I did go online and have a look.”
Unassuming but interesting, quiet but intriguing, well mannered, well spoken, and obviously well dressed, the Dapper Gentleman is indeed dapper, and indeed a gentleman.
DR BERNIE CURRAN
WHEN IT COMES to student life in the 1960s, there are no shortage of yarns regarding wild experiences and near misses.
Today’s respected and probably best-known alumnus, Bernie Curran, tells a story about the infamous “scavenger hunt” that took place every Autonomy Day.
Students would meet early in the morning and be given a list of items they had to procure, with points awarded depending on the item.
Often the items were public property, meaning students had to think up “ingenious” methods of obtaining them.
One such item Dr Curran and a mate were tasked with getting was the flag of a well-known milk bar called Dairy Farmers.
“It was like a landmark in Newcastle,” Dr Curran says.
He and a mate donned overalls and a few buckets of paint as part of their inventive plan to acquire the flag.
“We said to the lady at the desk, ‘We believe you’ve got a flagpole that needs painting,’ and she said she didn’t know about that. We said, ‘Well our instructions say flagpole, Dairy Farmers, and we’re happy to paint that if you give us the key to upstairs’,” Dr Curran says.
The two were subsequently granted access to the flagpole where they hastily splashed some paint around before pocketing the flag in question. But it didn’t take long for the absence to be noted.
“By the time we got to uni with the flag it had already been reported. The guys said to us ‘you’ve got the points, now get out of here as quick as possible’.”
The duo went back to Dr Curran’s house, showered and donned suits, before heading to Newcastle police station.
“I said there’s a rumour that you’re looking for the flag of Dairy Farmers,” Dr Curran recounts. “We stated to the police we had found out what happened and had brought the flag in on behalf of the culprits.
“The police said, ‘Thank god there’s some decent blokes out there at the university’,” Dr Curran laughs, adding that the pair cringed as the police blasted the anonymous thieves.
Such pranks were part and parcel of the time.
“There was an expectation that students would be radical,” Dr Curran says, noting the lower number of assessments and essays left more time for involvement in student activities.