Nuzweek - Cranbrook School 'muck-up' magazine. Click to enlarge.

This magazine was found in a trunk of junk by Peter Vogel at his home near Katoomba in 2010. I have scanned the pages and had a chuckle at each one. I hope you do the same. Click on the page to enlarge and then for full screen fidelity click on ikon at lower right (4 arrows and square) which appears after a few seconds. Patience prevails! "To seem, rather than to be" ... a GREAT motto!

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Cranbrook muck-up days.

Cranbrook muck-up days.
Trouble a-brewing at Bellevue Hill.


Yes, that bloke (anon) went to my school, a few years behind me. One rarely knows boys in lower years but he probably knew of me as I was such a visible trouble-maker. My brother Richard, ten years younger, even heard second-hand stories about me although I left the school 4 years before he started!

The headmaster apparently used my stunts as the ‘anecdotes’ for a talk many years later about how one could invoke maximum havoc without causing permanent harm or damage to property, something which must have been sub-conscious in my case.

Three years in a row I was involved in muck-up-day things … we locked a telephone in the school grand piano, causing it to ring in the middle of the headmaster’s speech. Only the music master Mr Charlie Colman had the key ... which I had ‘borrowed’ for keyboard practice a few hours earlier (which rather pointed the finger at me!). You can guess the rest. The next year we rigged up a bubble machine high in the stage rafters of the War Memorial Hall. It was only marginally funny as the wind was blowing the wrong way for maximum effect.

The final year we intercepted the cable which carried the electric current to the school bells and connected it to a carrier frequency relay controlled by a transmitter built into a soap box which fitted neatly into my school coat pocket. The school had out-grown the War Memorial Hall by then and the final assembly was held on the lawns in front of Rawson House. All through the head master’s speech I rang the bells at appropriate and extremely irritating times - just when he was about to open his mouth again after the previous interruption, for example.

Despite moon walks and other signs of technology, the reality of a remote controlled device in 1971 was still quite beyond most people’s imagination. Thus, since I was present in the assembly, they knew I could not be ringing the bells.

Unfortunately, the aerial was up my left sleeve and I had to raise my arm to about shoulder height before the thing would work, initially to cut their feeder and next to connect our own 18 volt supply. We had set up our transformer and radio receiver in the lighting gallery of the War Memorial Hall high above Dangar Oval and below room 15 of the Perkins Building in plumb real estate overlooking Rose Bay and (what was) the flying boat base. The main part of the school including the boarders’ dining room faced northwest towards Fort Denison, Mosman and Kirribilli. The Opera House and Warringah Expressway were still under construction at the time.

Back to the bells: the biology teacher (and senior master) Mr Dan Massey had noticed my odd semaphore signals and assumed I was giving instructions to someone else watching on. It took another six hours of carillon havoc before I was cornered in the Mansfield Library. Mr Massey said with his booming Yorkshire brogue: “OK Byrne, just hand it over … or are we going to have to strip search you?” He was a bit slow, but it dawned on him eventually that a transmitter was the only solution in the circumstances. Peter Vogel from Maroubra was my partner in crime. His father had joined the other European Jewish refugees on the famous MS Dunera. He made the hardware while I “wore” it (and took the rap). I was told that the pink plastic soap box stayed in the headmaster’s desk for many years afterwards as a ‘principal prop’.


Written by Andrew Byrne (left Cranbrook in 1971)

"Physics House" - Science Block. Experiment failed!

Nameless teacher sketch

Unidentified teacher in dog collar - by Clive Lovell

Andrew Byrne's hasty exeat from Sports Carnival - by Philip Cornell

Warwick Stuart

Mike Alexander, Andy Parsons and Howard Barker

What happened to those guys?

This is definitely Jay *****. The father had a car business in William Street.
All the family left the country suddenly, running from the police. Jay was at school one day and gone the next. It made the front page of the newspapers. I thought it was 6th class?? He's probably changed his name many times since then. Interpol may give us a lead!

Nick Brettingham-Moore was with us from prep school. I remember him well. I don't recall if he finished year 12.

Geoffrey Wentworth you would remember well Les. Wasn't he in Davidson? Very good at Maths. Had a brother John 2 years older who was quite slow mentally who died during September holidays when he was in year 11 or 12, we were in year 9 or 10. I haven't heard from Geoff since we left school. Would be keen to catch up with him.

[sent by another school colleague]

Remember 'Peanut' Wilson from Inverell?

Well, the 'Peanut' Wilson I remember was definitely from the country, but can't remember which town.

Halfback size & blonde hair. Lovely parents & his mother was very good looking. I think there was an elder brother as well.

He was involved with me & John when we got 6 of the best from Mark Bishop for our part in a 'cherry belly' ritual at scouts. Can't remember who the 'squealer' was that dobbed us in. And of course we got thrown out of scouts.

John got a pair of sixes during the course of his career. I only ever got the one. There were four of us at that 'cherry belly' incident but I can't remember the fourth scout. Me, John, Peanut & one other. John would remember. At the end of 4th year, John & I were level pegging at 54 of the cane each (in 4 years). Many from Jim 'Red' Connolly.

John rec'd the other 6 from Mark Bishop when he was discovered AWOL one night.
He used to visit a girl at Point Piper. He was Captain of the Cricket 1st Eleven at the time & Mark Bishop was the coach. After the caning Mark made John sit down & begin picking the team for that weekend. When it came to Hugh Bishop for selection John said, "Sorry sir, but he is too expensive as a spin bowler, so I am going to drop him." Hahahaha - only John could pull something like that off!!

But I have a feeling that 'Peanut' did not return after year 4 or 5. Too long ago for my memory. I do remember visiting his parents' apartment at Milson's Point one Sunday when we were on a rogue Exeat.

Wayne Burgess most likely took the position of Head of House - Street, from J North. We were really keen to find out who got the nod in our year, when we saw Wayne returning. So I think we just decided to continue on our wayward ways. Maybe Wayne was asked to come back so that a difficult decision need not be made!!

Wayne has not revealed too much in his emails so far. I do remember that he had a very serious car accident outside Cooma not that long after school. Possibly a broken neck. I will ask if I get the chance.

[sent by a school colleague]

Remember the early days of Eric's music career. Jamming in Vaucluse with Rick Howell-Price, me & a couple of others in Rick's garage. 'Smoke on the Water' was one tune I think we were trying to work on.

Didn’t your parents own a weekender in a National Park near the beach? Where a bunch of us went bush walking once. Maybe you even met the troop that day because you were staying at the hut? [sure did! It was Little Marley Beach, just an hour’s walk south of Bundeena]

[sent to Andy Byrne by Peter Richardson]

Rawson 1969

Palmer, Alexander, Sawyer, Mudie, van Wensveen, and (front and centre) Parsons.

Tim Sanders, Roland Lim, Andy Parsons, Duang Mongkolsmai, Matt Sawyer

Mongkolsmai, Leahy; Lim, Stacey Woodman, Wilson, Quek; Sanders, Parsons, Sawyer

Tim Sanders, Andy Parsons, Matt Sawyer

Table tennis in Rawson

Message from Barry Thiering in Texas. May 2011

Dear Andrew,

What a pleasure to hear from you! It's a bit of an honour to be still remembered. It's a long shot but I will give serious consideration to organising my way to come back to Australia for a few weeks around 17th Sept. Though I am over 80 now, I am still pretty fit. It would be great to renew memories and meet you young fellows, no longer quite so young.

I enjoyed reading the NUZ magazine in your email. I feel a couple of times you all were very gentle with me but the long haired padre smoking a pipe was not me. It could have been my immediate predecessor, though I am pretty sure it was none of my assistant chaplains during my 27 years tenure. I don't smoke- which probably accounts for my being still alive!

It would give me a chance to visit my two sons, Paul and David, (both Old Boys), my brothers, and Harry Nicholson and Noella Bishop. Though I am still working as a hospice chaplain, and part time for Food for the Poor, my Cranbrook experience was a very precious, and I hope meaningful, period of my life. My study wall is full of Old Cranbrookian momentos, staff, theatre, football, so I have a glimpse of the old days every day.

I hope you are well and still doing good. Love to John North, et all.

God bless,

Ft. Barry