Kalgoorlie-Boulder has much to feel proud about – apart its gold and the many sporting champions that it has produced over the past 125 years.
The twin towns have also produced gems in many other walks of life, among them acclaimed international concert pianist Eileen Joyce, Nobel Prize laureate, Barry Marshall*, and no fewer than four Rhodes Scholars.
EILEEN JOYCE
1923 was a year to remember. It was when visiting London music examiner Charles Schilsky identified the precocious talents of Eileen Joyce, then a 15-year-old. So moved was he with what he saw and heard that he wrote to the Kalgoorlie Miner newspaper that she “bids fair to become within the next very few years a pianist of sensational order and will take her place in the very first ranks among her contemporaries”. At the time Joyce was a student at St Joseph’s Convent School in Boulder, where she was taught music by Sister Mary Monica Butler. Eileen was born in Zeehan, Tasmania.
Money raised on the goldfields provided a two-year scholarship for her to attend Osborne, a Loreto Convent school in Perth, where she extended her general education and was guided in piano by an extraordinarily gifted teacher. In 1926, the last year of Joyce’s scholarship, a committee was formed to raise funds for the young pianist’s training abroad. Joyce left Australia in December 1926 to study under the director of the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Hochschule für Musik at Leipzig, Germany, the pianist Max Pauer. The rest is history with Joyce emerging as a concert pianist of international acclaim.
Dr Eileen Joyce (1908-1991)
CYRIL MURPHY
1923 was significant for another reason. It was the year that former Eastern Goldfields High School student Cyril Murphy became the Western Australian recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship. Murphy had been a student at EGHS from 1915 to 1919, and graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Science degree.
On 21 November 1922 the Kalgoorlie Miner newspaper reported that the Headmaster of EGHS, Mr A.J. Irvine, ordered that the school flag be flown in honour of Murphy’s achievement.
Cyril Murphy
Interesting is the fact that two years earlier Murphy’s brother Vernon also became a WA Rhodes Scholar recipient. A Daily News article dated 4 August 1920 spoke of “Boulder City boy” Vernon Murphy receiving news of his scholarship to study at Oxford University. His earlier secondary and tertiary education had been undertaken at Scotch College and the University of Western Australia.
JOHN W HORAN
The goldfields inaugural Rhodes Scholarship winner was John Horan in 1908. The son of a Kalgoorlie Post Office letter sorter, Horan was farewelled by the Mayor of Kalgoorlie Mark Rosenberg in July 1908, before heading to Oxford.
Horan received his primary education via the sisters of St John of God in Kalgoorlie, in particular Ignatius Lynagh, a pioneer religious order sister from County Sligo, Ireland, who arrived in Kalgoorlie in 1897. Later, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Perth, Matthew Gibney, saw potential in Horan and organised for him to attend the Christian Brothers ‘teaching Institute’ in Perth. Besides being a brilliant student and athlete, his CBC teachers in Perth lauded Horan for his “outstanding qualities of manhood, truth, courage, devotion to duty, sportsmanship, compassion to others and fellowship”. Horan continued his studies at Adelaide and Oxford universities. He later became a highly respected eye (disease) specialist in Perth. Dr Horan died suddenly at his Mt Lawley home in January 1945. He was aged 54.
A youthful John W Horan
VICTOR R C BROWN
Kalgoorlie-Boulder’s fourth Rhodes Scholarship recipient was Victor Brown in 1929.
The Kalgoorlie Miner of 3 December 1929 reported that “The parlour of the Council Chambers at Kalgoorlie Town Hall was the scene of a pleasurable function last Tuesday afternoon when the goldfields Rhodes Scholar, Mr Victor Brown, was entertained by the Mayor and Mayoress, Mr and Mrs B. Leslie, in the presence of a large number of ladies and gentlemen”.
Victor Brown
An older Victor Brown
Brown was educated at Eastern Goldfields High School and the University of Western Australia (where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree) before he headed off to Oxford University.
After working as a schoolteacher in England, Brown became headmaster of Ivanhoe Grammar in Melbourne from 1948-74.
During his period in charge of the school Brown emphasised the importance of higher academic standards. He introduced many innovations and encouraged his staff to focus more on the scholastic progress of the students.
This shift was met with resistance in some quarters, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. These were decades that saw the rise of rock-and-roll, James Dean, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Vietnam War. Young people questioned the values and beliefs of their politicians, parents and teachers. Carefully and skilfully, Victor Brown guided the school through these sometimes tumultuous years while placing enormous trust in his students to interpret them broadly, beyond the immediate thrill of rebellion.
Ivanhoe Grammar had become a very different and interesting school, and today is a leading multi-campus, co-educational Anglican school in Victoria with a proud history of academic achievement.
Perhaps the goldfields can claim a fifth Rhodes Scholarship winner, because in 1994 ex Wesley College and Curtin University (School of Mines, Kalgoorlie) student Matthew Crockett was also awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.
*Barry Marshall was born in Kalgoorlie on 30 September 1951, before moving to Perth by the time he was eight. In 2005, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Marshall and his long-time collaborator, Robin Warren, “for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease”.
— John Terrell
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