Teacher quits plum job and gets the bird
The tropics agreed with Oxford mathematician C. H. Hodges, who overcame illness to lead Townsville Grammar School from 1889 to 1900
TOWNSVILLE
Grammar School’s first headmaster, Charles Henry Hodges, owned a cassowary called Black Prince.
At least that’s how nature writer James Devaney saw the Oxford- trained mathematician’s relationship with the big bird, years later.
The Black Prince was always hungry, Devaney recalled in the Townsville
Bulletin on October 25, 1934. “At first he would only eat bananas, of which he consumed some ten shillings worth in a week.
“The feeding operation resembled nothing so much as the posting of letters in a pillar- box, unlimited bananas disappearing one by one into the dark cavity.
“Later on he learned to feed on potatoes and bread.
“He would poke his head into his master’s pocket, where he expected, not without warrant, to find something to his advantage. His delight was to creep under the house and to watch a hen which resorted to the same quarters; and as soon as she had laid an egg he would take and eat it.”
The Hodges’ menagerie also included kangaroos and a cockatoo.
Mr Hodges reluctantly banished the Black Prince for kicking the kangaroos “with the force of a horse”.
Mr Hodges took charge of the school in January 1889, nine months after its official opening on April 16, 1888.
In 1890 The Cairns Post described the school as a handsome brick edifice with a an excellent gymnasium and headmaster’s residence, situated on a 10- acre reserve on the lower slopes of Castle Hill, overlooking Cleveland Bay and cooled by the prevailing sea breeze.
Mr Hodges, an Oxford graduate with first- class honours in mathematics, had quit a plum job in England trusting the Australian climate would cure his chronic lung complaint.
Recruited in 1888 by the Church of England Bishop of North Queensland, George Stanton, he was wooed too by Sydney Church of England Grammar School but chose Townsville on doctor’s orders.
He was an all- rounder, having rowed in the Oxford trial eight, excelled at intervarsity athletics and served as an officer in voluntary military corps attached to England’s famed Rugby School, where he had worked for 10 years.
This equipped him to lead Townsville Grammar School through the 1890s with what the Sydney Morning Herald described in December 1900 as conspicuous success.
In 1901 the patient board of Sydney Church of England Grammar School appointed him principal of their school, his heath having fully recovered in the tropics.
He died in 1921, aged 69, with a glowing tribute from the Sydney Morning Herald.
“As a schoolmaster he had every gift for his task,” the report read.
“He could identify himself with the life of the boys, as he never patronised, but always led, and so he drew out the best in the boys’ nature.”
He would poke his head into his master’s pocket, where he expected, not without warrant, to find something
to his advantage
TO W N S V I L L E BU L L E T I N