Old boy moved to escape school bully
in South Townsville, and he enrolled at Ross Island State School.
But after two weeks he transferred to Central State School, in North Ward, after what he described as a run- in with the school bully.
Mr Hollins later lived and worked all over Queensland, making saddles and bridles, growing sugar cane, buying and leasing properties and once narrowly failing to be elected to State Parliament.
In 1969 he was the oldest member of the Australian Sugar Producers Association.
The Bulletin reported on March 12, 1969, that other exstudents at the reunion had included Mrs Leslie Alexander and Mrs Elsie Rickerton, daughters of James Gordon ( Junior), the first pupil to enrol at Townsville’s first school
That will teach you for being a pimp. You had
better not pimp in future
when Central March 1869.
James Gordon, later a pioneer of the North’s cavalry horse export trade, was a son of Townsville’s first police magistrate, James Gordon ( Senior).
His classmates included James Morrell, 5, [ also spelt Morrill], son of the late Jimmy Morrill, a true pioneer having been adopted by the first people of Mount Elliott after surviving a shipwreck in 1846.
opened
in
The school taught boys and girls separately between 1876 and 1936.
A reader contacted the Bulletin recently with the following story from the mid- 1930s, when he was a boys’ year four/ five student.
Their classroom was next to the scholarship class, taught by a World War I veteran who occasionally passed out, an aftereffect of being gassed.
“We used to play sport on Friday afternoons and one particular Friday Central was playing in the rugby league grand final against South Townsville,” the reader said.
“I heard the grade sevens asking the teacher if they could go out and barrack for the school team and he said ‘ no’.
“Then the teacher passed out and the boys snuck out – there were separate boys’ and girls’ classes then.
“But one kid stopped behind. When the teacher came to there was only one boy left in the classroom.
“I heard the teacher ask him what had happened and the boy saying he had told them they couldn’t watch the football. ‘ Come out here,’ the teacher said.
“He grabbed the cane and gave him a couple of cuts on each hand. ‘ That will teach you for being a pimp,’ he said. ‘ You had better not pimp in future’.”