Chapter 3. Dookie College: 1886

Based mainly on extracts from Aldridge and Kneen's, 1986 history "Dookie College: The First 100 years",© 1986 VCAH.

• Pre-History
• A New Beginning
• The Crash and the Scots Professor
• The Quiet Man
• The Last of the Old School
• Mullett and Birks
• Albert Cameron Drevermann
• The Enfant Terrible
• The Principal as Politician
• Women at Dookie
• Days of Wine and Roses
• Thomas Kneen and Ian McMillan
• The Recent Years

Pre-History

What is now Dookie College formed part of the old Benalla Pastoral Run, (taken up by Edward Grimes in 1842) and the Gowangardie Run, (taken up by George Allen in 1848). The Benalla Run was of 48,000 acres, extending for eight or nine miles north of the Broken River, to the southern slopes of Mount Major. The only part of the Gowangardie run included in the College is the River Paddock, south of the highway. Both these runs changed hands several times before they were broken up as a result of the Land Acts of 1860 and 1862. The Land Acts of the 1860's and subsequent legislation were aimed at enabling the less wealthy to purchase small holdings 'for agricultural pursuits'. Under the Acts, a large area adjoining the 640-acre Benalla Homestead block was subdivided into allotments and thrown open for selection. The land was made available at £1 an acre with 20 years to pay, subject to certain residential conditions and to improvements of a stated value being carried out.

Twelve years after the district was thrown open to selectors, an irregular parcel of land running from the peak of Mount Major to the Broken River, remained unselected - along with a number of other unselected quantities in the district - at £1 an acre, it was considered too expensive. It was this land that the newly-appointed Secretary for Agriculture (Mr A. R. Wallis) requested be withheld from the reluctant selectors in 1874. The with-hold request was converted into a temporary reserve order on October 11, 1875 'for the purpose of establishing an experimental farm'. This land, with a number of subsequent additions, became what we now know as Dookie College (refer to box: What's in a name?).

It is commonly held that the land reserved at Dookie was reject land, scarcely worth having. True, the selectors had not taken it up, but bearing in mind the availability of prime land elsewhere in the State for £1 an acre, the Dookie land was relatively expensive for what it was, and therefore had not yet attracted freehold buyers. In fact, Dookie was carefully selected from a wide range of still available parcels of land. Wallis and the Benalla District Surveyor (Mr Nixon) had scoured the area for a package of land 'sufficiently extensive for a full-blown college' and large enough 'if the greater part be worked for profit, to prevent the cost of the experimental portion becoming a charge on the public revenue'. Wallis 'departmentally stayed from selection' four sites in the Benalla district.

The farm was mostly timbered with box trees and the slopes of Mount Major liberally sprinkled with bulokes 'so that in appearance the farm possesses an advantage over the district in general and the view of the Strathbogie ranges is one of the best in the locality'.

Work began clearing and fencing the land (roughly 4500 acres) in May 1877 with a government allocation of £1500, and continued for more than 18 months before the appointment of a farm manager, John Low Thompson. A clerk of works had superintended the early fencing.

When Thompson took up residence he found the farm fenced around the perimeter, with 50 acres of land cleared, grubbed and rough-ploughed. Pasture growth was luxuriant following good spring rains and bushfires threatened as a result. There was only one dam completed and water was short. Thompson and his wife lived in a tent and bark-hut settlement with the contractors for the first nine months, during which time he supervised the cleaning of another 247 acres and the ploughing of another 120 acres, 10 of which were also subsoiled in preparation for the vineyard and olive grove.

In March 1886 a plan of the proposed College buildings was approved and a tender for £2095 was accepted. A subsequent tender for outbuildings for £749/10/0 was also let. The total with extras for equipment, plumbing and the like, brought the cost of the original College buildings to £2973/13/8 - a far cry from the Young-Wallace proposal of £5000 down and £20,000 altogether! The buildings designed by architect McDonald of Numurkah were widely criticised as being 'adequate for a farm property, but not for a collegiate institution'. They were framed in Oregon to prevent white-ant attack, and clad in weatherboard. The main building was 160 feet long and comprised a spacious lecture hall with raised stage, dining room, studies, library, teachers' quarters and sleeping apartments for the students. The outbuildings comprised kitchen, laundry, store-room, bathrooms, lavatory, servants quarters and a laboratory (which was not built until some time later). Regarding students, the Council said it was 'of the opinion that 14 was the earliest age at which a lad should be put to labour' and set that as the minimum entrance age.

A New Beginning

Thompson arrived back (refer to Chapter 2) at the new College on September 2, 1886. The following day his strong and sometimes flamboyant handwriting appears in the farm diary as if he had never left. He notes that the farm stock numbers were 'correct, but in very inferior condition.' By the time the first students arrived, Thompson had the place humming: the stock were all recently mustered and tallied, the vineyard and olive groves freshly cultivated, firewood laid in, furnishings arriving from Melbourne, experimental plots of mangold, corn, millet, peas, sunflowers and sorghum recently sown. Dookie Agricultural College - as distinct from the old Dookie Experimental Farm - opened on October 4, 1886, with the arrival of 23 new students. Another 17 arrived on the following two or three days. They were greeted by the founding Principal, Mr Robert Leaper Pudney, and the farm manager, Mr J. L. Thompson. The farm comprised 4846 acres, fully fenced and subdivided into a number of grazing paddocks. Some 400 acres were now under cultivation for cereals, hay and experimental purposes. There was an orchard, and on each side of the main entrance drive was a vineyard and an olive grove.

The first students arrived from Melbourne at Shepparton on the midday train, October 4, 1886, but did not make it to the College until evening . . . the 'lorry trip' of more than 20 miles took some hours. About two thirds were from country towns or districts, mostly in central, western and northern Victoria. Most of Gippsland was still being pioneered and the only lads from east of Melbourne sprang from Warburton and Yarram. Ages ranged from 14 to 21.

They were quite a bunch. Gamble went on to become Farm Manager, later Principal at Dookie and finally Chairman of the Council. Dowie, the College's 'gun' shearer, went on to be the first graduate elected to the Council of Agricultural Education (he was later Chairman). Dow happened to be the Minister for Agriculture's son, who later became Australian Trade Commissioner to the United States. Writing from an address at 25 Broadway, New York, in 1936, Dow related how he became the first student enrolled at the College:

'At a meeting of the newly-formed Council of Agricultural Education, following discussion of the endowment lands, the acting Secretary for Agriculture (David Martin) had said to the Minister, "We have the College buildings well under-way, but what about the students?" My father lifted his pen and wrote my name on a sheet of paper, saying: "There's one to start with."'

The impact of (Principal) Pudney upon the College is hard to assess. If he was totally ineffectual it is unlikely he would have been asked to advise on the setting up of Longerenong, and invited to be its first Principal, or as is reputed, to have chosen the site for Hawkesbury Agricultural College at Richmond, NSW. Pudney's strength probably lay in his abilities as an administrator and diplomat. He was a fast man with a euphemism and generally obeyed the rule: if you can't say something complimentary don't say anything at all. In a field as contentious as agricultural education, riddled with name-calling politicians and journalists, he was a model of restraint. Thus it may have been Pudney's pliability, rather than his practical strengths, which motivated the Council to ask him to inaugurate the second agricultural College at Longerenong after only a year's service at Dookie.

Thompson was the obvious choice to succeed Pudney and his five-year reign began with a decided swing towards the practical and physical sides of agriculture. Which is not to say academic subjects were neglected, for Pudney's replacement as science master was Hugh Pye, a man destined to become the State's greatest cereals researcher and a future Principal of Dookie College. Despite all the talk of 'a proper College' and free reference to it as Dookie College, Dookie was still officially designated a 'farm school'. Its official title did not change until Thompson's first term as Principal, when the Council officially designated it Dookie Agricultural College.

Thompson's views on students' ages and their physical fitness for the course were strongly held and he lobbied the Council more than once to increase the minimum age; but to no avail. He did succeed in another way; Council accepted his proposal, late in 1890, that lads of 17 years with a farm background and the ability to pass an examination in first-year subjects, could be admitted direct to second-year in the three-year Diploma course. Thus began the practice of 'new second-year students' under which the past Premier of Tasmania, Robin Gray gained admission to Dookie.

For the last few years of the 1880's money flowed like water and many of those who controlled the tap were Council of Agricultural Education members or friends of the College. Three prominent Parliamentarians' sons were students at Dookie. The endowment lands were leased out profitably and the prospect of more than adequate income was excellent. The railway line had reached Dookie in 1888 on its way to Katamatite and the Postmaster General (a Council member) had assisted in linking Dookie to Melbourne by telephonic communication; the old isolation was a thing of the past. With its modern dairy, its exemplary ensilage techniques, its stud stock and its intensive and very successful horticultural practices, Dookie College became one of the nation's showplaces. The visitors' book of this time is filled with glowing references to Thompson and the farm.

Two signatories to the visitors book at this time are worth noting: the Director of Agriculture for NSW, who signed in March 1890; and one William Brown, of Guelph, Canada. Within 18 months of the NSW Director's visit, Thompson was in the employ of the NSW Department of Agriculture as founding Principal of the new Hawkesbury Agricultural College at Richmond - and Brown was the new Principal at Dookie.

The Crash and the Scots Professor

Indications of the crash of the 1890's appeared as early as 1888, when pointed questions from the London Banks were not satisfactorily answered and overseas funds began to dry up. Loans due for renegotiation were not renewed and investment in the new colony suddenly became suspect. Council of Agricultural Education members J. L. Dow (Minister for Agriculture) and F. T. Derham (Postmaster General) were thrown out of Cabinet as a result of their financial deficiencies. Former Minister, Joseph Levien, was later publicly chastised by a Royal Commission for his part in the failed Chaffey Brothers venture at Mildura.

It is unlikely that J. L. Thompson saw this coming, but his resignation and departure from Victoria in early 1891 could not have been better timed. In the aftermath of the crash, income from the endowment lands fell dramatically as many of the lease-holders failed financially. The enthusiasm of several Council members also waned as they applied their time and energy to more pressing personal matters, such as financial and political survival. Thompson's resignation was followed by 15 years of Council stringency, punctuated by one act of sheer economic folly, when in 1896, nearly 20 years after phylloxera struck in Victoria, the College winery was built. It could be said that the incumbent Principal, William Brown, (a Scot about whom little is known - refer to Chapter 4) asked for what he got in more ways than one.

Brown took over from Thompson early in 1891 and almost immediately Council minutes began to hint of friction between Brown and his masters in Melbourne. In early 1892 Council resolved to inform Brown

'...(we) are disappointed to find that with a property of nearly 5000 acres, provision has been made for placing only 128 acres under cultivation.'

Obviously the depression was beginning to bite, for soon after, Council charged Brown with the responsibility of making the farm pay. It instructed him to put as much land as possible under crop, then attempted to justify the move saying

'unless this can be done sufficient practical teaching necessary for the large number of students cannot be given.'

The depression deepened during this time and to complicate matters a run of droughts began, further impairing the ability of endowment landholders to pay their rents. In February 1894 Council resolved that the Principals at both Dookie and Longerenong be 'dispensed with' at the end of March, each with a gratuity of two months' salary. In line with the Council's apparent uncertainty about the future of anybody's job, science master Hugh Pye was appointed acting-Principal, although he quickly became Principal, a post he held for 22 years.

The Quiet Man

If one man can be said to personify the Dookie College of the first half of the Twentieth Century, it is Hugh Pye, the science master who took over as acting-Principal from William Brown in May 1894. Pye, who had already served seven years as science master, was to be principal for 22 years. He presided over the completion and maturation of what must be termed 'the old College', establishing traditions of approach, management and excellence which reached into the early 1960's. His influence, rarely exercised directly, was cumulative and far-reaching; two whole generations of agriculturalists and farmers passed through Dookie during his association with it. Two future Principals (Gamble and Drevermann) worked under him during his term. While Principal he gained world recognition for his pioneering work in wheat-breeding and established Dookie as a research centre of national importance. In later years he became so engrossed in his experimental work that he chose to be 'relieved' of his duties as Principal and appointed Government Cerealist, a post he held for another 15 years. He retired, aged 72, in 1931 after a 43 year involvement with the College.

After the magnificent Thompson and the larger-than-life Brown, Council was probably seeking a tractable Principal; a biddable person without the temerity to challenge them, someone who would take a 'steady as she goes' course in keeping with the times. And hard times they were, for 1894 was the beginning of the long grind back to order and some form of prosperity. Horrific though they were, the years of the crash had the virtue of excitement: who would fall next, owing how much, to whom and for what scandalous reason? Fortunately for Pye, his ruling passion was a pastime which, for the price of a camel-hair brush and a pair of tweezers, could yield astounding results. With genetics and plant-breeding in their infancy, the first great discoveries lay on the surface like nuggets of gold, obvious to those who knew what to look for.

Pye's interest at this time lay in pasture improvement, where he sought to select and develop native grass species. It was by pure coincidence that Pye met William Farrer in 1889. In the very same year Farrer began his cross-breeding experiments at his property 'Lambrigg', near Canberra. Farrer influenced Pye to specialise in cereals and the two became life-long collaborators (Farrer died in 1906). Pye was also motivated by a newspaper report that France had called a tender for high gluten wheat which Australia, despite its ideal conditions, could not supply.

According to the 1927 Dookie Collegian Pye produced his first crossbred wheats at Dookie in 1888, although it was not until 1894 that wheat breeding became an official part of the College's activities. Currawa and Major resulted from Pye's predilection for the so-called club-headed wheats (Triticum compactum), which he was the first to cross with common bread wheats (T. vulgare) to produce high yields combined with drought resistance. By the 1920's his best wheats were yielding 14 per cent gluten; two per cent above the French requirement that first motivated him. In Pye's time virtually the whole of Northern Victoria and Southern New South Wales wheatlands were sown to his varieties, notably Currawa, Major (in wetter areas) and Warden. At the time of his retirement it was estimated that his contribution to increased yields had been worth a minimum of £1.25 million over the previous 10 years alone.

By the time the College was more than 10 years old and routines were firmly established, some 500 acres were under cultivation, with another 350 cleared for the plough. There were 35 acres of grapevines, 15 of which were in full production, including about five acres of table grapes. There were 18 acres of orchard and four acres of olives. Pye's experimental plots comprised 28 acres below what is now called Lake Brooke, opposite the Hays paddocks.

Life went on, much the same as in Thompson's time, but with each year subtle and not-so-subtle changes were wrought. The boom-times of the 1880's were receding into history, while the roaring days of the gold rush were more than a generation away. Federation - the birth of the nation - was exciting, a new form of patriotism and a new breed of politician (accompanied by a new breed of bureaucrat) was in the ascendancy. The age of the common man was dawning.

However, delusions of grandeur persisted among the agricultural establishment. Council still carried the vision splendid of establishing five regional agricultural Colleges, plus a central College and dairying and viticultural schools as well. Council believed, early in the 1890's that Dookie and Longerenong would both soon pay their own way (a spectre which Ministers have visited upon Principals and administrators ever since), freeing endowment funds for other projects. Council's belief that the Government was about to grant it £25,000 for future development in mid-decade fuelled its optimism. Its timing could not have been worse, for 1895 was the first of a series of seven bad years, culminating in the worst drought the State had yet seen. In the summer of 1897 temperatures in the Mallee reached 116 deg in the shade, the Murray was too low for irrigation water to run through the channels and the State's average wheat yield was around 4 bushels per acre. The temporary closure of Longerenong College and the transfer of its few remaining students to Dookie eased financial pressure on the Council, but the drought deepened until 1902, when, in August the Goulburn river at Murchison was running at 12 per cent of its normal flow; the River Murray fell to 6 per cent normal in December. During the 1890's pressure from agricultural societies in dairying districts for a dairy college continued to build, fuelled, of course, by Council's earlier boasts. Unable to fulfil its promises, Council in 1897 announced its intention to re-develop Dookie's dairy branch 'pending the erection of a properly equipped dairy school.'

The evidence given before the Fink Commission of 1899 gives us the best picture available for the state of affairs at Dookie at the time. Pye said there were 41 students at the College, ranging in age from 15 to 24; more than half the lads were eighteen or over. Educational standards had ranged from Schools Certificate (grade six, State school) to university graduates. There were students from five Colonies (States) and some from the United Kingdom. Only 30 to 40 per cent of the students were farmers' sons, but the majority of graduates went on the land. Inquiry for a place at Dookie generally, but not always, exceeded the accommodation available.

The pass-rate that year was 50 per cent in the Diploma class, 57 per cent in the third session (term), 55 per cent in the second session and 40 per cent in the first session. The Diploma could be gained in two years, which was the equivalent of four sessions or terms. Actually 376 students had passed through Dookie, 98 of them gaining their diploma - a success rate of 26 per cent. Explaining this, Pye said many of the students came for one year only, for experience or to gain ideas they would not be exposed to at home on the farm. Some could not afford any more than a year. He said that while short courses would be useful, if they were run in parallel with the Diploma course the effect would be to discourage other students from going on with the longer course.

The Commission praised Pye for his 'zeal' in experimental work, but said his time would have been better spent devoted to College duties; it had been a great strain on his energies and without it the education of students might have been more efficient. It continued:

'The members of the Commission are of the opinion that the experimental work . . . should be managed in conjunction with similar work elsewhere by an officer appointed by the Department of Agriculture . . . if such work should be continued at Dookie.'

Fink notwithstanding, the dairy, including an extremely modern butter factory, was built and in 1900 a dairy instructor (D. G. Cameron) was appointed. Fink's recommendation on minimum age and educational requirements were ignored until 1905, when demand for places again exceeded supply and Council re-opened Longerenong. Minimum entrance requirements were increased by two years, that is, the minimum age became 16 years and the minimum education standard became the Merit certificate (grade eight or form two).

By 1905, Dookie was again so well established and in such demand that Council decided to re-open Longerenong. To do this they robbed Dookie of one of its best men, the Vice-Principal G. A. Sinclair. Sinclair had become Pye's right-hand man since his appointment in 1889 as English, mathematics, book-keeping and surveying master. A qualified surveyor, he had laid out virtually all Pye's experimental plots and taken a keen interest in plant breeding too. Longerenong's gain, though, was short-lived, for after six years Sinclair resigned and joined the 'Australasian' as 'Yeoman Editor' (effectively, agricultural editor), a position he used to defend Pye and Dookie on many occasions before his death in 1926. He became a member of Council in 1917 and served as Council's representative on the University's Faculty of Agriculture (refer to Chapter 6) for some time. Sinclair was largely responsible for the establishment of women's classes at Dookie and pressed, unsuccessfully, for much wider-ranging education programmes for women in agriculture.

The year Sinclair left for Longerenong, the new Minister for Agriculture (George Swinburne) met with the Council 'to consider the question of improving Dookie College'. He said he wanted a College that would house 100 students and intimated he could produce £8625 independent of the Endowment Lands income, to achieve this. The plot thickens a little when it is known that Swinburne was also having discussions with members of Melbourne University, on the role Dookie might play in a proposed Faculty of Agriculture. Certainly a proportion of the promised £8000 would be used to provide accommodation and upgrade scientific teaching facilities for future Agricultural Science students, who, it was planned, would spend some time at Dookie. As it turned out, the money was spent almost immediately, but the university students did not materialise at Dookie until 1912 when there were four.

A mid-1906 Council meeting saw the appointment of none other than Theodore Fink to Council. Since his inquiry into technical education, Fink had headed another Royal Commission; this one into Melbourne University, whose finances were in some disarray. His appointment to the Council of Agricultural Education as a Government nominee was followed by his appointment as Council's member of the fledgling Faculty of Agriculture at the university. There is heavy irony in the fact that Fink used his position on Council, a body whose abolition he had recommended, to win position as member of a faculty, whose establishment he had recommended against. Donor's son or not, Fink's stepping stone to university gave way under him when, four months after his appointment, Council threw him out. The minute reads: 'Theodore Fink, through non-attendance, to be advised he has forfeited his seat.' Fink was later appointed independently to the University Council and served with distinction for 17 years.

In 1904 a University Council committee - including Dr Thomas Cherry (refer to Box) - began to confer with the Council of Agricultural Education on the establishment of Agricultural Science courses at Melbourne University. Council took the view, predictably enough, that theoretical learning in an intensely practical subject such as agriculture, could not be separated from simultaneous 'hands on' experience. They plumped for a course comprising three years at Dookie followed by one year's pure science at University. The University, predictably enough, took the opposite view, a proposed course of three years science at University followed by a year's practical experience at Dookie. University representatives visited the College, accompanied by Council, and reported that the buildings and staff at Dookie were inadequate for a university course, re-stating their preference for three years at University and one at Dookie.

The Royal Commission did not recommend the immediate establishment of a Faculty of Agriculture, drawing attention to what they termed 'the costly failures of Longerenong and the Viticultural school at Rutherglen'. The Victorian community, it judged, was not ready to support such a course. Given the difficulties experienced by Council in filling Dookie and Longerenong in the late 1890's and early 1900's, it would be reasonable to expect that a thumbs down from a Royal Commission would kill the idea of yet another agricultural education institution. The opposite was the case, and Cherry was to have his day. The reasons are complicated. They lie in part, in Fink's valid criticism of the level of 'scientific agriculture' taught at Dookie, the State's only specialist agricultural school. But they also lie with the advent of a State Premier committed to making university education available to 'the children of the working classes with brains'. That Premier was Thomas Bent. Bent committed his Government to opening the university to courses in agriculture (and mining) for 'selected State school boys' and he adroitly used the university's financial embarrassment to achieve his ends. Soon after his appointment in 1904 Bent announced that £14,000 would be allocated to the University, for equipment and buildings to be used for 'special agricultural and mining classes', yet to be established.

Bent got his pound of flesh. He won not only his promised university course in agriculture, but also forced the University to accept students from state schools who had not matriculated. Only Leaving certificate was needed to enter the diploma course. The vanquished Council's pride was somewhat salved by the University's invitation to the Principal (Pye) and a Councillor to sit on the new faculty committee. That committee further decided that the Principal of Dookie should be the sole judge of success or failure of university students in their practical year at College. In 1917 it was decided that university students (refer also to Chapter 6) should spend their second - not fourth - year at Dookie because...

'it was undesirable that they should spend the final year of their course away from the influence of their university teachers'.

In the microcosm that constituted Dookie College, a college style was evolving far removed from the relatively primitive institution of the pre-telephone and pre-railway line days. Dookie had become a social centre of considerable repute. An invitation to the College ball was highly prized by the local young ladies and the Shepparton News printed not only the guest list, but also a detailed account of what every lady wore. All the gentlemen wore evening attire, including white gloves. No-one smoked.

College was increasingly run along Public School lines, evident in events such as the 'boat race dinner', where former general public school lads held a dinner - to which State school lads were not invited - to celebrate the Head of the River boat race. Place settings included fancy hats in old school colours, the 'cock house' sat at the head of the table. The schools were toasted in succession, school and games songs were sung, war cries were uttered in unison, speeches made and the winning school lionised. Auld Lang Syne and God Save the King were sung and, according to one report, the students then formed a crocodile for a 'triumphal entry' to the dance which was held concurrently in the assembly hall.

In March 1911 the 'Farmer and grazier' reported there were more than 100 students at Dookie, including several from inter-State, nearly 20 on an exchange scheme from the United Kingdom and five final year university students.

Dookie old boys were beginning to make their mark. Connor's son, a former Thompson student, was appointed Agricultural Commissioner for West Australia at a salary of £750. J. C. Lewis, who studied veterinary science after leaving Dookie became chief Inspector for the Northern Territory on £500 a year, and L. Bidstrup had become Chief Chemist for the Mt Lyell manure works at Adelaide. Another student, Winneke, was congratulated by Council on his appointment as a County Court Judge. Rudduck, the College's first veterinary science lecturer, was a graduate of the privately-owned Melbourne Veterinary College, then situated in Fitzroy. He was paid four guineas for his monthly visit to College, where he conducted a lecture followed by a practical demonstration of his topic, such as castration, speying, and conducting a post mortem. The Veterinary College offered a one-year scholarship to Agricultural College graduates. Scholarship or not, many Dookie graduates attended the two year Veterinary College course to become what was known as Licentiates in Veterinary Science. The Ruddock family established a line of commercial veterinary products which were popular in Victoria until the 1960's.

During Pye's time the college winery thrived for a relatively brief but glorious time under its designer, viticulturalist G. B. Federli. At its height - around 1904 - it was producing material from around 35 acres of wine grapes which yielded as much as 200 gallons an acre, unirrigated. The problem was that the winery came on stream at a time when hundreds - possibly thousands - of other growers had the same idea. Despite its excellent reputation for quality, College wine did not sell well in a market that was over-supplied and an economy still recovering from the depression.

In June 1915 the Council Chairman, a Captain Herring and a Mr Stubbs addressed the young men of College on the war. Thirty men, many of them students, answered the call. In the final examinations of March 1915 students virtually walked out of the examination room and into the enlistment booth. As if things were not bad enough, Pye had another drought on his hands. The State's oat crop in 1914 was reportedly the lowest since the 1850's and the average wheat yield for the State was 1.38 bushels per acre. Downstream from the Swan Hill the Murray was said to be dried up and most of the College livestock was sent to Gippsland on agistment. The next year was not much better.

Council saw that they must defend their position, for at least two Ministers since Swinburne had expressed dissatisfaction with it and intimated its abolition. The fact that Council finances were badly in the red lent wings to their fears. Shortly before his death in 1914 Langdon told the finance committee that Council's overdraft was around £5,000 and that scheduled expenditure would soon take it to £9,000 on which six per cent interest was payable. Despite efforts to prune it, the overdraft grew to more than £7,000 and the State Treasurer was called upon to guarantee the debt. Income, not expenditure, was the problem. At this stage endowment land tenants, crippled by the drought and the loss of manpower to the war, were more than £5,000 in arrears, making the 'real' deficit only £2,000. But there was no guarantee that the struggling tenants would pay what they owed. When Pye could not come up with major economies it was Dowie who moved that Council 'dispense with' the College rabbiter, fencer, waggoner, stockman, groom and married couple. The same motion lowered the Principal's salary from £600 to £500, with commensurate cuts in wages and salaries for the remaining staff.

Although the broad picture was one of turmoil, things were coming to a head. Pye had been embarrassed and shown to be out of touch. His salary had been cut, his management had been questioned and his attempt to defend himself had been criticised. Student and staff numbers had been decimated, College students were complaining about their replacement lecturers and the food, university students were complaining about non-essential work (refer to Chapter 6) and there were press reports about student behaviour. The Minister was invited to see the College for himself and the minutes of a conference held at College during that visit record:

'The Minister expressed the opinion that in order to bring the College into a state of greater usefulness it would be necessary to affect a change in the Principalship ... the change should be effected by the end of the present session.'

Clearly the Minister had offered an 'either or' proposition and in order to save itself, Council jettisoned Pye.

Having thrown Pye overboard, Council threw him a lifebelt; in a deal with the Minister the position of State Cerealist was created. The position carried a salary of £600, half of which was provided by Council, the other half by the Department of Agriculture. Pye accepted with dignity and grace. The matter of principle aside, it would have been an easy choice: his beloved cereals plots were much more inviting than the in-fighting, politicking and number-counting that would have accompanied a decision to fight.

Having identified Pye as the problem, and removed him, Council was at a loss for a replacement. As an interim measure, Farm Superintendent Gamble was offered the position of 'officer-in-charge' on the understanding that he revert to his old post when a Principal was found. His salary was increased by £100 per annum. Pye vacated his residence at Dookie College in early 1917, but shilly-shallying over the Principalship continued until mid-year, when, after knocking back the application of a Mr A. H. Renard, Council appointed Gamble Principal 'until termination of the war'. He was to remain Principal until 1922.

The Last of the Old School

William Gamble was the first of only two Dookie graduates to become Principal of the College and, apart from J. L. Thompson, the only practical farmer to hold that position.

Pye and Gamble were very different people. Pye, the son of a schoolmaster, was a gentle and reflective man who followed his scientific speciality for virtually the whole of his life. Gamble was a son of the soil with wide practical experience and a military background who liked to be described as 'stern but just'. Gamble's advent as Principal coincided with the return home of the first troops from World War One and the establishment of

farming short-courses for the returned men. Gamble's military approach to administration was reinforced by the presence at Dookie of a number of retired army men, pressed into service 'for the duration' to replace staff members who had enlisted and were absent on active service.

The military atmosphere was heightened by the return from the war of (now) Lieut. A. H. Stranaghan, the former English and House master who had been senior master and right-hand-man to Pye since his appointment in 1907. Stranaghan, somewhat of a martinet, had experienced disciplinary problems with students in pre-war years. His return in 1919 from occupied Germany with 'experience in handling men in the lines' lent him confidence and authority which bluffed the lads for as long as 'Stran' remained at Dookie - which was another 22 years.

The returned courses paralleled the recovery of student numbers at Dookie, beginning in 1916 when the four returned men increased total student numbers to 26. In 1917 there were 63 students - their numbers swelled by liberal scholarships and a further lowering of the entrance age to 14, and 25 returned men. Gamble was forced to scour the State for ex-students who would fill in as lecturers to supplement his war-depleted staff. In 1919, the year of Stranaghan's return, 118 students passed through the College, but the returned servicemen component was not available. The 'Farmer and Grazier' noted elsewhere that 237 returned men passed through Dookie during Gamble's time.

The returned men tended to form their own community at College - although many of them would have been no older than the students - and this association would have been extremely valuable in cushioning their re-entry into society. The College Honour Roll was published in full in the College magazine for four years after the war ended. Student and staff enlistments totalled 355. Deaths totalled 82. An accompanying list of distinctions included 10 Military Crosses, a Distinguished Flying Cross, a Distinguished Service Order, eight Military Medals, a Croix de Geurre and two Distinguished Conduct Medals won by ranks ranging from Colonel (W. H. Scott) to private.

In late 1918 Council investigated the possibility of women's short courses at Dookie. Subjects would include fruit preserving, domestic economy, first aid and hygiene and also book-keeping, milk testing and the like. The motion was carried and a committee went to work. The finished product was a nine-day course conducted during the College vacation and attended by between 30 and 50 women of all ages who were accommodated in the temporarily-vacated student quarters. The course began in 1919 and included: lectures, lantern slides and demonstrations in cooking, poultry-raising and dressing, dairy practices, pruning, dress-making, plant breeding, needlework, cuts of meat, fruit preservation, home hygiene and the kitchen garden.

The women's classes continued for about 10 years and encompassed the Principalships of Gamble, Birks and Drevermann. There was an unnamed problem early in the history of women's classes which caused Council to decree that the Principal must remain at College at all times during their course. Why the courses were discontinued is not recorded, but there followed a 20-year hiatus which ended in 1951 when they resumed at the disused Rural Training Centre with the additions of meetings procedure and child care courses.

In addition to the short courses for women and returned soldiers, the immediate post-war era saw the introduction of special courses for farmers' sons and the expansion of field days to encompass all aspects of farming

In a rare fit of generosity the Government of the day granted a considerable sum for agricultural extension (education) work and followed it up with the offer of grants for capital works. This cornucopia became slightly clogged when the Government refused to advance the funds for capital works until the money allocated for extension work and new courses had been spent. Council vainly pointed out that it could not carry out the proposed extension work or institute new courses without the necessary capital works expenditure. Following what had become a time-honoured practice in times of peril and misunderstanding Council invited the newly-appointed Minister for Agriculture (Harry Lawson) to visit the College, which he did the month after he took office in November 1920. Dookie College, in December has a special magic and it certainly worked on Lawson, who was able to announce a mere six weeks later that Cabinet had freed £11,775 for improvements and capital works. The mid-year budget saw a further £15,000 granted to the Colleges.

Gamble presided over the renaissance of Dookie College, from a threatened and nearly bankrupt institution with a handful of students, to a College with a full complement of scholars and lecturers, a budget surplus and an apparently unassailable public image as a result of its role in the rehabilitation of Australia's returned war heroes. Through all this, Gamble stands out as a practical, no-nonsense agriculturalist and manager whose oft-quoted motto was 'dogged does it'.

Mullett and Birks

There were 26 applicants for the Principalship vacated by William Gamble in early 1922. The post carried a salary of £600 to £700 and a furnished residence with free fuel and lighting. Applicants varied widely in place of origin and qualifications. At one extreme was a Master of Agricultural Science and Doctor of Philosophy from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. At the other 'Edgar Ward, farmer, Sydney'. Council short-listed only two for interview. They were Walter Richard Birks, a former Dux of Roseworthy and Bachelor of Science (Agriculture) from Adelaide University and Hubert Arthur Mullett, Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Melbourne) who was then Chief Field Officer for the Victorian Department of Agriculture. Birks and Mullett were interviewed by council in February 1922 and Birks was appointed.

Mullett's application is worth noting; it was a specially printed document setting out his curriculum vitae and his practical qualifications which were most impressive. The sixth and final page was headed 'A Policy for Dookie' and intimated that the existing College course 'was not providing the kind of training farmers know is worthwhile'. This sort of comment from a 31-year-old University type would not have won votes from the men who prided themselves on making Dookie what it was. Mullett's letter of application closed with the following words: 'I regard the policy and the definition of the responsibility outlined as vital to success at Dookie. In the event of the Council not being in substantial agreement with it, I beg to withdraw the application.' Although expressed a touch arrogantly, Mullett's words on the relevance of the course were prophetic, Mullett later became a Director of Agriculture and a Councillor of uncommon good sense.

Council was jolted into the realisation that Birks was no traditionalist or tame cat when at its first meeting with Birks as Principal, he stated he was 'not prepared to accept the present curriculum as adequate training'. Councillors went home each with a copy of Birks' recommendations for wide-ranging administrative and educational changes to be discussed at the following meeting on May 9, 1922. In mid-1923 Birks reported to Council that four students were 'incapable' (the minutes, as usual, do not give much away). Instead of allowing Birks to act appropriately, Council called for an assessment of the lads' practical capabilities from the Farm Manager and expressed anxiety 're further depletion of students'. Such recourse to a subordinate for a second opinion must have rankled Birks, especially in view of his military background. He would have been further disappointed by Council's implicit message that it would rather have poor students than no students. The whole issue suggested that future attempts to raise standards would be similarly queried.

The following month (August 1923) Birks informed Council he was an applicant for the position of Principal at Gatton Agricultural College in Queensland. Birks had done the honourable thing in informing Council of his intention, but it was an act of political naivete, and left Birks with severely impaired authority when it became known he did not get the job. Henceforth Council was free to waive considerations of loyalty to a Principal who had demonstrated he would rather be elsewhere. Birks lasted another four years under this debility, but like any good bureaucracy, Dookie College continued to function with apparent normality. The promised Government funds were spent upgrading staff and student quarters, installing a new septic and water supply system and building new engineering, saddlery and machinery demonstration premises.

Dookie still did not have its full complement of students, but the farmers' classes that year were at capacity with 83 enrolled and the women's classes were oversubscribed by at least 50. Meanwhile Birks continued to push for higher educational standards at Dookie and sent in 'unsatisfactory' reports on a number of students. Council's response - in 1924 at least - was to seek consultation between its education committee and the parents concerned.

In 1925 when Birks recommended that three students 'not return' he was asked to furnish copies of their previous term's reports and to prepare a 'special report in each case ... and that this be done in all future cases'. This, despite the fact that in 1925 Dookie College had a full roll of students for the first time since the War, when student numbers had been supplemented heavily by returned men and age and educational entrance standards were considerably lower. There were 94 full time students that year, a total second only to Pye's remarkable, and very over-crowded, record of 108 students in 1911.

A notable Birks era appointment was Farm Manager Harry Park, who took over from C. S. Munro who went to manage Rupertswood, the grand Sunbury property originally built by Sir Rupert Clarke and owned at that time by H. Victor McKay of Sunshine Harvester fame. Harry Park remained as Farm Manager, then Farm Superintendent, for 33 years.

Towards the end of Birks' era Dookie College was probably in better shape than it had been at any time since the halcyon days of Pye's reign, which peaked in the years 1910-12. Despite the relative inferiority of College soils to the renowned black soils further north, Dookie College consistently outyielded the local farmers. Literally all of Dookie's wheat was sold for seed and under a system worked out by Birks and Pye, the wheat from many local farms was also accredited and sold as seed. Dookie's sheep flock was around 3,000 head and included purebred Lincolns, Border Leicesters and Merinos, the latter based on Boonoke blood and very largely established under Birks. The clip averaged 100 bales, worth around £2,000. The dairy herd of around 40 Ayrshires averaged around 310 lb of butterfat per cow; well above the State average. College and district milk were processed in the College dairy into butter and cheese. The piggery ran some 200 pigs, including first-class show stock. The college boasted that some of its 40 breeding sows returned an average of 30 shillings a week, year round, from the sale of their individual progeny. College fees were £35 a year. The College was self-sufficient in meat, milk, eggs and most fruit and vegetables. The poultry branch ran 2,000 birds returning a gross £1,500 per annum. The College estate totalled 5,930 acres - 1,600 arable - and the sale of its produce yielded around £12,000 which a College pamphlet boasted 'left a handsome profit over and above the cost of operation of the farm'. The College was at last paying its way.

Birks had intimated to Council that 'he may be an applicant' for the position of Principal at Roseworthy. On May 24 Council accepted Birks' resignation with alacrity and resolved to offer the Dookie Principalship to Longerenong's Principal, A. C. Drevermann at £800 per annum. Birks' salary had been £650.

Albert Cameron Drevermann

Drevermann, who had reached adulthood before the turn of the century was, like Pye and Gamble, very much a product of the College system, having spent only five years of his adult life outside it. Although partial to Longerenong, Drevermann was universally known in the world of agriculture and agricultural education and, along with Pye and Gamble, was regarded as a 'favoured son'. Council was certainly far more comfortable with the 'insider' Drevermann than the 'outsider' Birks despite Drevermann's German origins and Birk's impressive war record. Having a German-born father named Frederick Wilhelm at the time of the Kaiser's war could have been an embarrassment, to say the least, in this period of near-hysterical patriotism, especially if one did not rush to enlist. Drevermann was cushioned by his father's marriage to a Scots woman and his record of community service as Bairnsdale's first Shire President.

Dookie College had been in existence for more than 40 years when Drevermann took over in July 1927 and a pattern of boom and bust was discernible; it had boomed under Thompson and bust under Brown, it had boomed and bust under Pye and despite the problems with Birks, it was a booming College that Drevermann inherited. The farm was virtually paying its way, scholastic standards built up by Birks were higher than ever before, College amenities (septics, water supply, staff and student accommodation) were much improved and student numbers were at capacity.

Things continued to boom during Drevermann's first three years. Dookie was connected to the 'Yallourn current' and negotiations were completed with Melbourne University to recognise the upgraded science component of the College curriculum and grant exemptions to Dookie graduates going on to study for the BAgrSc. This process took about two years and resulted in exemptions for Honours College graduates from the mandatory 'practical year' and certain units in the disciplines of chemistry, botany, zoology, entomology and agriculture. These exemptions were granted to selected students from 1932 onwards.

Drevermann was strict, fair and there was absolutely no compromise. Discipline under Drevermann was administered, for the most part, by the prefects, with the approval of the student body. Bullying of the weak and the different until they broke or conformed was one of the uglier traditions of the old College, but it had its reverse side. It is related how one new first-year student was bullied unmercifully by senior students until they learned it had been this lad's life-long ambition to attend Dookie and that he had financed his ambition by selling rabbit skins and saving the money from the time he was old enough to set a rabbit trap. He was the only student at Dookie who had paid his own way. On learning this, third year had adopted the lad and from then on 'he could do no wrong'.

The best of times was followed by the worst of times as the depression deepened in 1930-32 and a long slide began which was not fully arrested until the new college of the 1960's. Wool and wheat prices fell by almost half and the effect on Council income from the endowment lands was immediate and severe. As the marginal farmers who rented the endowment lands began to feel the pinch, rental income fell accordingly. Council minutes for 1929-31 follow the pattern set in the hard times of early 1890's and the early 1910's: Principals were asked to report on College carrying capacities; on how jobs could be 'reorganised' and staff numbers 'rationalised' in the name of 'improved efficiency'. Council waited on the Minister re funds for 'urgent works'. The Minister of course was helpless. The Government of the day passed a number of Acts including the Financial Emergency Act and the Public Service Payments Reduction Act which reduced not only funds but also wages for literally everybody employed at College. Casualties included the women's courses, Hugh Pye's position as Cerealist and that of his former assistant Lillburn, leaving Farm Manager Harry Parks to conduct the experimentals as best he could.

Another casualty was the research programme into caseous lymphadenitis (cheesy gland) of sheep, being conducted at Dookie in conjunction with the CSIR (later, CSIRO). This appears to have been the first scientific animal research conducted at Dookie. In 1931 Council decided, due to financial pressure, to 'enter no further arrangements with CSIR as it interferes with the work of the stock branch.' This decision put an end to original research at Dookie College for the following 25 years. The ban still stood when Ian McMillan, then Zoology and Animal Production lecturer began work in 1957 on supplementary feeding with molasses and urea under the guise of collaborating with Melbourne University's Dr Derek Tribe for the benefit of BAgrSc students at Dookie.

In his 1931 Principal's report Drevermann said:

'The People of this country seem to have conducted their affairs, both public and private on the assumption that they are not subject to the economic laws that operate everywhere else. The depression, however severe, will in the end prove a blessing in disguise if it teaches us to conduct our affairs in such a way as not to fly in the face of these economic laws'.

He went on to suggest that the Rural Economics subject should be upgraded and taught to second year students as well as third years.

Council chairman that year was James Menzies MLA for Lowan, whose son Robert Gordon was to make such a mark on Australian politics. Menzies was initially a store-keeper from the Wimmera town of Jeparit. He also was a partner in a stock and station agency and the local agent for H. V. McKay farm machinery. He represented Lowan from 1911 to 1920 and served on a number of Parliamentary committees although he did not distinguish himself as a politician. When he moved to Melbourne he retained control of a farm near Jeparit and kept his place on Council which he occupied from 1917 to 1945.

Dookie marked its 50^th anniversary with a Jubilee year in 1936, still well and truly in the grip of the depression. Shortage of funds notwithstanding, it was a gala event as many of the original student and staff members were alive and well to celebrate it. Foundation student and former Principal, William Gamble was Chairman of Council, nominated for the position of his life-long friend foundation student Arch Dowie. J. M. B. Connor, son of one of the three Parliamentary 'founders' of the College was President of the Old Collegians. Ex-students included in their numbers a County Court Judge, a Director of Agriculture, Australia's Trade Commissioner in New York, two Dookie Principals, a doctor, and a host of senior business and public service executives, not to mention practising farmer graduates. The Jubilee Souvenir published by Council noted that 2,050 students had attended College and 607 had received their Diploma. Thirty eight agricultural science students had attended and 251 returned men had attended short courses before going on the land.

Letters from two ex-students to Dookie in its Jubilee year are of note. One came from foundation student, David Dow, who had become Australia's Trade Commissioner in New York. The letter, although containing mostly humorous reminiscences, urged upon students the importance of soil conservation and erosion prevention in the light of America's 'dust bowl' experience. Several different people have been credited with initiating and executing the conservation scheme which saved much of the College's grazing and cropping land, but it was probably Dow - then around 70 years of age - who publicly blew the whistle.

College at this time had 1,000 acres under a wheat, oats, fallow rotation and the entire wheat crop was sold as certified seed. There were 50 horses and two tractors. Pasture had been improved by broadcasting subterranean clover and topdressing with superphosphate. Small areas had been sown to improved pasture species.

To celebrate the Jubilee, Council lashed out with funds for a new sports oval with turf pitch and 'modern fence' at the foot of the College entrance drive. The cost was £230. This is the only capital expenditure mentioned in Council minutes for some years, although Drevermann and others were pushing for a new biological laboratory to keep up the standard set by the university's recognition of Dookie science subjects. In fact the College property had run down considerably in the years since the crash. Council's economic stringency had precluded virtually all new works. Essential maintenance only was carried out on buildings, fences, machinery and equipment. Soil erosion, partly the result of overstocking during the depression years, was becoming a major problem which was simply not addressed.

In the closing months of Drevermann's Principalship the economic scene began to brighten. Council decided in 1937 to buy a new Fordson tractor from Malcolm Moore Machinery Limited - although it deferred a decision to replace the old Thorneycroft truck which had long served as the College 'bus'. More importantly a gift of £1,500 from Mrs Gavin Gibson of 'Boorinda', Dookie, towards the proposed new biological laboratory was matched pound for pound by the State Government. The Senior Science Master W. J. 'Spider' Webb is believed to have designed the laboratory in conjunction with the Board of Works. The laboratory was not finished during Drevermann's time as Principal, although he attended its opening in 1938. Nor did Webb stay to enjoy the fruits of his labour; he resigned two months before the laboratory was opened and his successor, G. T. Levick made it his kingdom until the early 1960's.

As the 1930's drew to a close events were occurring overseas which were to have far more effect on the average Australian than a tired Principal and a spot of soil erosion at Dookie. At home the Hume Dam - the largest public works programme yet attempted - had been opened, the crack 'Spirit of Progress' train was newly in service, and Australia had recently played host to the Commonwealth Games as part of the nation's 150^th Anniversary. It was against this back-drop that Drevermann, early in 1938, resigned 'for reasons entirely private'. Council accepted his resignation and went quickly about the business of appointing a successor who, with unanimous Council approval, took over in July 1938.

The Enfant Terrible

Drevermann's successor was Harold Ambrose Jacques Pittman, without a doubt the most controversial Principal Dookie College has seen. His 19 month reign split the College, giving rise to animosities which lasted for decades and marked the beginning of the end of the Council which had administered agricultural education in this state for more than 50 years.

Pittman was the most highly-qualified Dookie Principal Council had yet appointed, but the Dookie College that awaited him was at a cyclical 'low'. Starved of funds for almost 10 years and administered by an ageing and ailing Principal, Dookie College was a shabby and outmoded institution. Its tradition dated back to Pye and its heroes were yesterday's men. Further, north-eastern Victoria was in the grip of a drought said to be worse than that of 1914. Ten and a half inches of rain fell in Pittman's first-year following the previous season's fifteen. Most of the college's dams were dry and stock had been reduced and pulled in to paddocks served by the water main from the river to the College reservoir.

Into this comfortable, largely complacent rural scene sprang H. A. J. Pittman, 35, academic, educationist; a 'thoroughly modern Harry' not prepared to accept Council's word as holy writ and anxious to revolutionise what he saw as a moribund institution. In an era when the prevailing philosophy was 'be thankful for what you've got', his attitudes alarmed, then outraged the College establishment. Further, he was as stubborn and tactless as they come.

Stranaghan, the patrician disciplinarian now over 60 years of age fell out with Pittman almost immediately over a range of issues centred, for the most part, on student discipline and staff responsibility.

The drought, heightened by a phenomenal heat wave during the end of year examinations and the unprecedented bushfires of February 1939, added to the pressures working on the protagonists. And above all loomed the gathering clouds of war in Europe. There was a series of escalating misunderstandings between Pittman and the staff, culminating in allegations that Pittman had questioned the propriety of the relationship between students and the wives and daughters of staff members.

It was three weeks after the outbreak of World War II that Council conducted an Extraordinary Inquiry which close-questioned Pittman and Stranaghan in the presence of a Government stenographer. Several Councillors were present, but the leading inquisitors were the Chairman M. E. Wettenhall (MLA) and James Menzies. Hubert Mullett, by then Director of Agriculture was present for the Minister. Pittman's final address to the inquiry reveals his total unsuitability to the position of administrative head of an institution such as post-depression Dookie. He was highly qualified, intelligent and able, but a leader, he was not. Council adjourned the inquiry, enjoining all to secrecy, and resolved to meet again after the transcripts had been distributed and considered. Predictably enough, it recommended that 'subject to the approval of the Minister, the services of H. A. J. Pittman be determined by giving him one month's calendar notice . . .' The Director of Agriculture, Hubert Mullett abstained from voting on the issue. Council was accustomed to Ministers rubber-stamping Council decisions, but Minister Hogan was not your common or garden Minister. Council was not to know that Pittman had written personally to the Minister putting his own side of the story and asking for a public inquiry into 'conditions obtaining at the College'.

Hogan then proposed that Council meet with him on site at Dookie. No record of this meeting exists, although Pittman refers to it in later correspondence. What happened is unknown, but, as observed elsewhere, once Council got a politician on its own turf, it tended to get its own way. In this case the Minister was not won over completely, but his attitude softened. Therefore, he advised Cabinet that it should recognise Council as the administrative body of the College and that if Council believed the trouble could be resolved by removing Pittman its opinion should prevail.

Pittman meanwhile had printed and widely distributed a four-page leaflet in the form of an open letter to the Premier titled 'The Real Truth about Dookie Agricultural College' which called for a 'full public inquiry'. Whatever happened next happened quickly and, it could be argued, marked the beginning of the end for a Council which had proven itself to be obstructive, reactionary and less than diligent in monitoring and conducting the affairs of its main reason for being, Dookie College.

G. B. Woodgate was officially Principal the day College re-opened. He was still there in 1944 when his friend Premier Dunstan introduced the new Agricultural Colleges Act and abolished Council forever. The following year Woodgate became the State's first Superintendent of Agricultural Education, and Hogan became permanent head of the newly-established Soil Conservation Board.

Soil conservation works at Dookie included the netting of the worst gullies on the property, on the theory that excessive run-off would carry plant material which would build up on the wire and form dams to decelerate the water and cause it to drop its burden of soil. Washaways were planted with a variety of trees, shrubs and grasses to ascertain their effectiveness when the drought broke, which it did on February 16, 1939. Six inches fell over 12 days and the year's rainfall totalled more than 36 inches. The rains provided spectacular proof of the growing erosion proneness of the drought-denuded and overgrazed district soils, which in some cases piled up three-feet deep against netting fences. Pittman's netted gullies, for the most part, did not worsen while other smaller gullies became ravines and scores of new gullies came into being. The sheet erosion from bare fallow paddocks was spectacular and virtually destroyed the many months of work with horse and scoop that students had put in cleaning out the drought-emptied College dams.

In 1939 as the Pittman-Stranaghan drama built up, College became home for a group of young Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany. A group of wealthy Sydney and Melbourne Jewish men formed what was known as the Jewish Welfare Guardian Society and paid the fares to Australia for twenty boys stranded in English refugee camps. Ten went onto farms in the Wangaratta district and 10 were sent to College. One of the lads was Paul Justus Baxter, 16 years, an apprentice furrier and son of a fashionable dressmaker, formerly 'by appointment' to the German Emperor, in Wiesbaden. He arrived, bespectacled and wearing clothes bought the day before at an old-fashioned mercer in Melbourne. Although Baxter did well academically - he topped the second-year class in English - he never did well in practical work. Farm Superintendant Park told him 'If ever you go on a farm you won't earn enough money to keep you in tobacco.'

Park was right. Baxter failed his practical work and left College to join the State Research Farm at Werribee as a plot assistant under his former Principal H. A. J. Pittman who was breeding ergot on rye as a source of ergotin, urgently needed by the war effort as a blood clotting agent.

Baxter, the Jewish refugee, was accused by the farm manager at Werribee of being a German spy when he was seen identifying United States planes from a booklet as they landed at Laverton. So to complete the farce, he joined the army where, as an 'enemy alien' he was used initially in a labour corps. Later he was a volunteer for malaria control experiments. On naturalisation he was allowed to serve overseas - as a batman to the commandant of a detention barracks in New Guinea. Baxter returned to Dookie after the war and got his diploma, rejoined the Department of Agriculture. Another of the Jewish students from this group, Harry Somers, became a painter. He is internationally-recognised for his 'point painting' and three of his works now adorn the walls at Dookie College's administrative office.

It has been said that Pittman went determinedly backwards through his career with the Department of Agriculture. When he retired in 1968 he was still senior plant pathologist at the Plant Research Institute, Burnley, the position he was appointed to following his 'determination' in 1940. Colleagues at Burnley remember his prodigious memory and his ability to integrate subject matter from a wide range of scientific disciplines when making diagnoses and recommendations on plant health.

The Principal as Politician

George Bartlett Woodgate was almost certainly not Council's choice to succeed Pittman as Captain of its flagship, Dookie College. He was not only a university man like the troublemakers Birks and Pittman, but also an educationist. Further, his degree was in arts, not agriculture. True, he had been an excellent Principal at Longerenong, but Council, given its head, would have gone for a 'favoured son' from the establishment, a Dookie old-boy at least.

Dookie received Woodgate as a saviour. Granted he was an educationist without a specifically agricultural background, but he was also as stern and Victorian as they come, and a first-rate administrator as well. Nor, at 51 years of age, did he threaten senior staff members with pointed comments about his comparative youth as Pittman had done.

Within months of Woodgate's appointment Dookie was on the road to recovery and he was making his mark with some of the first and most effective erosion control measures the State had seen. Further, he was liaising with educational authorities to upgrade and standardise the academic requirements of both Colleges and coordinating these with the State system. He also laid plans for a vastly-expanded retraining programme for the returned men of World War Two. In short, his was a productive and innovative time as Principal. But history will not remember him for this as much as for the fact that he presided over the demise of the Council of Agricultural Education.

Ministerial patience with Council over the 55 years of its existence had worn perilously thin on occasions. Council had been threatened with abolition at least three times over varying issues; notably student numbers, educational standards and the sometimes lax administration of the endowment lands. On these occasions solidarity between Council and its Principals had pulled it through. Even Hugh Pye remained loyal when Council sacrificed him to a bloody-minded Minister. Unlike Pye and the others, Woodgate was not a son of the system. Common decency aside, he owed no allegiance and would have seen all too clearly what an autocratic and reactionary body Council had become. In his 21 years of service to Council he had developed strong and well thought-out views on agricultural education and had kept up his contacts with fellow students and teachers, who were by now in positions of power in the University and the Department of Education. Many of his ideas on administration paralleled those of A. R. Wallis, who first formulated a policy on agricultural education for his Minister in 1870s.

As expected, the Dookie College that Woodgate inherited was a depressed and depressing place. Student numbers had fallen dramatically with the onset of war; in 1939 there were 41 first-year students, the following year it was 21 and the year after, 11. At its nadir, 1942, College accommodated ten diploma year students, 11 second years and no first years at all - they were all sent to Longerenong. In 1943 there were four diploma year students although second year jumped to 19 when the lads came back from Longerenong. In 1942 Dookie temporarily became home for 140 students and staff from Melbourne Grammar under a wartime evacuation scheme. Dookie's first-year applicants were sent to Longerenong. The scheme only lasted a year and the lads from Longerenong did their second year at Dookie as usual. Aside from getting College into shape again, Woodgate's two immediate tasks were to institute a soil conservation programme and to ready the College as a rehabilitation centre for returned soldiers, many of whom were College students who had interrupted their course to go to war.

With students numbers reduced by as much as 75 per cent in the first two or three years of Woodgate's time, it is a wonder that so much soil conservation work was carried out. How the rest of the farm fared is not clear because after his first year the College magazine discontinued the practice of publishing the Principal's report, which traditionally included a full account of farm activities and production.

Nineteen-forty-three saw the return of University agricultural science second year students. Administrative and reputed discipline difficulties had made their accommodation at Werribee impracticable. A university memorandum to Dookie staff pointed out that the arrangement was 'for 1943 and probably for the duration of the war'. It said:

'The scheme recommended is intended as a wartime measure. Neither the Council of Agricultural Education nor the University nor the Department of Agriculture should view it in any other light.'

At the end of the war, Faculty recommended that Dookie become the permanent residence for second year students. The students were to live and work on the same basis as Dookie students, pay the same fees and be subject to the authority of the Principal who was 'hereby appointed as disciplinary officer of the university in respect to such students'.

The following year's eight University students included Pierre Gorman, who was completely deaf. Gorman was trained in lip-reading from the age of 18 months. This, and later speech therapy enabled him to communicate well enough not only to pass his Agricultural Science degree, but also to go on to win his PhD at Cambridge and become senior lecturer in special education at Monash University. He was the first completely deaf student to graduate from an Australian university.

Council minutes are strangely mute about the new Agricultural Colleges Act of 1944 which was to abolish Council the following year; it was as if Council had been nobbled. And perhaps it was, for Council Chairman Wettenhall retired owing to ill health in mid-1943 to be replaced by a strong Dunstan man, the influential and ambitious Sir John Harris who was Minister for Health and Public Instruction. Harris who had served on Council since 1925 was a Doctor of Medicine with a midwifery practice at Rutherglen. He was also a maker of a range of excellent fortified wines. His appointment completed one of those rare alignments of forces which combine with the spirit of the times to bring about significant and lasting changes. In this case the alignment of reform-minded forces comprised the Premier (Albert Dunstan), the Minister for Agriculture (E. J. Hogan), the Director (Hubert Mullett), Council Chairman (Sir John Harris) and the Principal, Woodgate. Woodgate's excellent standing and contacts at the University and the Department of Education supplemented the effectiveness of the drive for change.

The first mention in the minutes of the proposed Agricultural Colleges Act appears in May 1944, nearly a year after Sir John's appointment as Council Chairman. The minute simply notes that Council 'resolved to await a report from the Minister for Agriculture as to the government's proposal for reforming the council.' Obviously Sir John as a senior Government member would have been privy to what the Premier and the Minister had in mind for the post-war future of the colleges, yet it was five months before Council met again at a special meeting 'to consider the Bill relating to State Agricultural Colleges.' At that meeting council was presented with its own abolition as a fait accompli and died with a whimper. Council met on routine matters for the remaining six months of its tenure before fizzling out at its last meeting in May 1945, almost exactly 60 years after it was formed under the Chairmanship of Jonas Levien in June 1885. Its last act was to advise that Council 'did not approve the acceptance of Indian students until adequate provision is made for local students'.

If Woodgate was successful in securing Council's demise, he was only partly successful in engineering the structure that replaced it. Instead of the autonomous governing body that Woodgate envisaged, Council was replaced by an 'advisory committee' of six which was under direct Ministerial control. Woodgate thus found himself as Superintendent of Agricultural Education, a position he had sought, but ruled by the Director of Agriculture and not with the direct responsibility to the Minister and Cabinet that he had envisaged. Addressing a Dookie College speech day audience in January 1945, soon after the new Bill was passed, Sir John Harris, said the Council had not only guided and administered the Colleges for the past 60 years, but also 'enormously increased the value of the endowment lands in various parts of the State'. Under the new Act the college lands (those selected by Wallis in the 1870's as possible College sites ) were transferred to the Department of Agriculture while the endowment lands reverted to the Crown. All funds held in trust were transferred to the Treasury.

Robert Gordon Menzies told the assembly he regarded education, particularly agricultural education, as a 'number one priority' and an 'absolute essential to our existence'. He said it was a gross reflection on the present system that the shortage of funds and staff at Dookie threatened to reduce student enrolment. Five years later he was Prime Minister and never returned to Dookie. One of Woodgate's first acts as Superintendent of Agricultural Education was to recommend his successor as Principal at Dookie. He passed over applications from Harold Pittman and two of Pittman's opponents at Dookie, as well as a number of others to give the job to J. L. Provan who succeeded him in early 1946. Provan took over and implemented Woodgate's plans to establish a Rural Training Centre for returned servicemen and in the years up to 1948 put through more than 1,000 men, either as Diploma or short-course students. In the nine years that Woodgate served as Superintendent he raised admission standards to the Colleges to Intermediate certificate level, considerably upgraded the Diploma course and oversaw considerable improvements in the staff, buildings and equipment of the Colleges. He also became a member of the Melbourne University Council, the Faculty of Agriculture and the Council of Public Education.

Women at Dookie

In 1884, two years before Dookie opened its doors as a College, Catherine T. Rickarby, in a letter to 'The Age' drew the Colony's attention to 'the necessity of including agricultural colleges for females'.

'She opined that 'it (a girls' College) would not cost anything like the same amount to start with and keep in order for girls as it would for boys and for every girl educated in this manner now, in the next generation it would count six at least, for the girls of the present day are the mothers of the future and their sons will benefit by their teachings as well as their daughters...'

In May 1886 - the year Dookie was established - Council actually appointed a committee...

'to take into consideration the propriety of establishing a farm school for the purpose of educating young women in all the duties appertaining to the dairy, the keeping of farm accounts and any other duties whereby at a future time they might assist in the agricultural interests of the Colony.'

Fourteen years elapsed before Ms Rickarby's next recorded foray into the field. It was 1898 and with Longerenong closed by depression and the drought, she wrote to the press suggesting the College could be used to provide instruction in agriculture to girls and young women. Council minutes record her name and suggestion as 'acknowledged'. No action was taken. The year after federation, the Women's Progress Leagues Union asked Council if women could be admitted to Dookie. Council formally replied it was 'unable to accede at present...there being no provision for women students.' This early version of the 'no toilets' argument represented, perhaps, some advance; at least the answer was not a flat 'no'. Women do not reappear in the college or Council archives until 13 years later when there was some consternation about one Irene Lowe (refer to Box: Rene Lowe), a third-year Agricultural Science student at Melbourne University, who sought admission to Dookie for her mandatory final year's practical experience.

Australia emerged from the war with a new respect for women and their capabilities as nurses at the front and managers at home. It was in this new

climate that Council, led by Councillors Sinclair and Dowie, instituted the first women's short courses. The nine-day courses which began in 1919, were conducted during end-of-term vacation for the full-time male students. The women's classes continued until around 1928 when almost certainly lack of interest by women themselves caused the classes to peter out. Council minutes in June 1930 record that 'provisional arrangements' for women's classes that year were dependent on there being 60 or more applicants. In fact there were 78 and the 1930 class was run, but it was the last such class until 1951 when renewed interest, sponsored largely by the Country Women's Association, saw them begin again for a three or four year period.

It was not national emergency nor impassioned campaigning that resulted in Dookie accepting its first full-time female diploma student. It was the simple fact that the then Vice-Principal's daughter wanted to do the course and the old excuse of 'no accommodation' did not apply. Thus it was that Jean Levick, daughter of science master and Vice Principal, G. T. Levick, enrolled in 1947 and became the first female diplomate.

Post war, a number of female university students passed through the College when the University resumed its old system of a practical year at Dookie. They were accommodated in a specially-built flat located next to the matron's residence. When the university decided in 1964 to move its second year students to Derrimut for their practical year, this flat became vacant; a fact quickly seized upon by Mrs Joan Houghton, an agricultural science graduate who had campaigned for many years to have girls admitted to College. Mrs Haughton and others wrote several letters to the press, and the Country Women's Association took up the issue, pointing out the logic of the move and the opportunity to do something about it. Toilets, of course, would have to be installed all over the farm! How had the university girls managed?

The conservatives held out until 1971, when the combined forces of logic, and the new awareness brought about by the women's movement, prevailed. The following year saw Longerenong open its doors officially to full-time female students. Dookie followed in 1973.

Days of Wine and Roses

James Leslie Provan's 23 years as Principal saw Dookie College cast off its 19^th Century form and take on the appearance of a modern institution. Pittman aside, he was the first Principal to have been born this side of Federation and he was the first of four (so far) consecutive Melbourne University BAgrSc graduates to hold the post. To most students Provan was a closed man, distant and aloof. His deputy G. T. Levick and Farm Superintendent G. D. Brooke seemed, to the outsider, to administer College and farm respectively with apparently minimal input from Provan. His 23 years at the helm is a record not likely to be broken and his achievements during that time had the whole-hearted admiration of men such as I. S. McMillan who was not known to suffer fools or feeble effort gladly.

When Provan took up duty as Principal at Dookie College in March 1946, the first major task confronting him was an administrative one; how to cope with the enormous influx of returned servicemen expected under the Commonwealth's Rural Reconstruction Training Scheme. It is hard today to visualise the difficulty of getting things done in the immediate post-war era. There were chronic shortages of materials, skilled tradesmen and money. A booming black market meant that goods and material despatched, seldom reached their destination intact. Nevertheless on October 1, 1946, one year after general demobilisation was commenced, the Rural Training Centre at Dookie College opened its doors to 102 returned men embarking upon a Diploma course designed to compress the usual three-years into two.

Simultaneously College accepted back into its normal classes servicemen who had interrupted their Diploma studies to go to war, plus a number of returned men who enrolled as ordinary students. Further, College established a short-course facility for returned men who already had considerable agricultural experience. This provided a concentrated refresher course on farm management, rural economics, and some scientific aspects of agriculture.

College numbers, excluding the returned men at the Rural Training Centre, exploded post war. In 1945 there were 18 third-year students. The following year there were 46 and the following year, 44. University student numbers grew from 15 to 34 in the same time. In 1947 Dookie College and the Rural Training Centre graduated, between them, 120 Diplomates. Notes provided for the Minister's Speech Day address in January 1951 state that overall 119 ex-servicemen completed the Diploma course and 1035 attended the eight-week short courses in the previous four years.

Soil conservation measures continued apace and in early 1947 between 600 and 700 people attended a soil conservation field day, conducted in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture and the International Harvester Company, which virtually sponsored much of the College's early erosion prevention programme. Geoff Brooke was by now Farm Manager and in charge of the erosion programme. In 1948 he was able to report that erosion prevention measures had been carried out over 1500 acres. This work included 23 miles of contour furrows and grassed waterways constructed, established and fenced.

As the 50's unfolded, the style of student began to change subtly. Fifteen years was still the minimum age of entry, along with the Intermediate certificate, but since the average age of intermediate students was 15 to 16 years and since many students had their leaving or even Matriculation certificates, the average age crept up, as did the education standard. Students arriving in the late 1950's were born outside the depression years and scarcely remembered the war. They were the sons or nephews of soldiers and the fore-runners of the baby boom. Although some of them had known hard times, most of them had not and for many of them Dookie was little more than an extension of high school. They were older but softer, slower-maturing lads from mostly comfortable backgrounds to whom pre-war values were increasingly irrelevant, although most were still from agricultural backgrounds.

Their apparent lethargy baffled and sometimes outraged the older, more traditional staff members. Students from public schools and the better high schools were in turn disappointed and sometimes disheartened by the standard of teaching and the condition of many of the farm branches. Seen through their eyes, Dookie College was a tired, run-down place still largely in the horse and buggy era. Woodgate's revolution, far reaching though it was, meant little to them because it had little impact on the physical side of College or its day-to-day routines. Teachers and instructors who had successfully taught the highly-motivated and adult returned servicemen in the 1940's were by now out of date, under-skilled and under-qualified. The post-war boom, with its fierce competition for development funds, materials and qualified manpower saw Dookie slipping back in comparison with institutions funded by the Department of Education.

As Woodgate's influence waned and he approached retirement the fearsome Einar Beruldsen rose to prominence. Beruldsen was a giant Scandinavian of Scottish birth who was employed by the Ministry in 1945 as Deputy Coordinator of Rural Training. He held a BAgrSc from Edinburgh University and had pre-war experience with the Department of Agriculture as an irrigation officer. He was employed specifically to organise and expedite the Department's role in training ex-servicemen under the Government's rural reconstruction scheme. He remained as Inspector of Agricultural Education after the servicemen's departure and succeeded Woodgate as Superintendent of Agricultural Education in 1954. Beruldsen was an autocrat who gave orders and expected them to be obeyed. He was capable of acts and kindness and consideration, particularly to returned men and he was genuinely interested in young people in general and the Young Farmer Movement in particular. But he had no direct experience of running an institution such as Dookie College and was determinedly unaware of the administrative and staff relations problems faced by a Principal.

With the superintendent at odds with the Principal, and most of the staff, who resented Beruldsen's magisterial way of doing things, Dookie College lost the capacity to change direction. The effects of being tied to the Minister for funds and to the Public Service Board's classification system for promotion stultified initiative. The fact that all income from the sales of produce went into Consolidated Revenue meant that successful branches were not rewarded. Into this relatively moribund scene sprang a second enfant terrible, complete with BAgrSc and DipEd, science master Ian McMillan. His teaching load was a phenomenal 32 periods a week, including university-standard instruction in genetics and zoology, plus the usual dining room roster and other staff duties. In 1958 McMillan was created Senior Lecturer and proceeded to upgrade his subjects and widen his scope. The fact that he lectured university students enabled him, with Provan's tacit agreement, to re-introduce research projects as a College activity, while Departmental policy still limited staff College activity to teaching.

The Parliamentary Party, now under Premier Bolte, had an active and very powerful Rural Committee and the Party itself had an Agricultural Colleges Committee stacked with influential members. Both bodies were concerned about the direction of the Colleges. They were worried by the apparent toothlessness of the Advisory Committee and saw the Colleges being left behind in the education explosion fuelled by the fruits of the baby boom. Both committees met with Beruldsen and Professor of Agriculture, Forster in the mid 1950's to formulate policy and by 1957 State Cabinet had approved a building programme for Dookie which included a completely new main building, assembly hall and accommodation block. Working drawings were completed by mid 1958 and tenders were due to be called a month later.

With the increase in inquiry came a corresponding improvement in educational qualifications. In 1959 some 66 per cent of that year's intake had done the Leaving Certificate (not all successfully) despite the fact that the minimum entrance requirement was still the Intermediate Certificate or its equivalent. Well aware of the dramatically improved educational standards of new students, the Advisory Committee was hard at work revising the syllabus in consultation with the University and the Department of Education. While the emphasis was still on producing a graduate farmer, the sciences were upgraded to tertiary standards.

In 1966 - despite a rear-guard action fought by the Old Boys' Association - the entrance standard was raised to Leaving Certificate. The Diploma of Agriculture was upgraded to a Diploma of Agricultural Science. Dookie's former stated aim had been 'to teach the principles and practice of agriculture to the sons of farmers and those who intend to adopt farming as a vocation'. It was then stated as : 'To train agricultural technologists in the basic technical and scientific principles underlying all aspects of agriculture'. Students studied one year at 'secondary level' and two at 'tertiary'.

Einar Beruldsen retired as Superintendent of Agricultural Education in 1967. Despite his image at Dookie and Longerenong as a conservative tyrant with no appreciable educational background, he had presided over the physical and educational metamorphosis of both Colleges. Beruldsen's contribution extended beyond Dookie College. He was Chairman of the Senior Young Farmers' Advisory Council from 1954 to 1967, a Member of the Melbourne University Council from 1955 to 1967 and Chairman of the University Building Committee from 1957 to 1959. As he left the job he was asked to draft a statement of qualifications which his successor should possess. He wrote,

'... the Chief ... should preferably have some academic qualifications in education. My extensive reading in educational subjects never quite made up for my lack of basic training in teaching ...'

Provan retired in September 1969 after serving a record 23 years and six months as Principal. During his time $1.95 million had been spent on new buildings and equipment at Dookie College. Hugh Pye would have recognised only four structures from his era: the winery, the Principal's residence since demolished, the old science laboratory (now the College museum) and the wool shed. The College's annual budget in this time had gone from around £50,000 under the new Act to $540,000, one quarter of which came from the Commonwealth Government. Student numbers had gone from 108 in 1946 to 234 in 1969 while staff had increased from 68 to 118. More than 20 new residences had been built, the College roads had been sealed, kerbed and channelled, the Hypar piggery established and a new shearing shed. Virtually every drop of rain that fell on the college now soaked into the pastures and cropping lands or was harvested by the scheme of waterways and dams which complement the soil conservation programme.

Thomas Kneen and Ian McMillan

Tom Kneen moved from Longerenong to Dookie in 1969 in the wake of J. L. Provan's retirement and took over as Principal with 'Arch' (Archibald Charles Kidman) Beviss as his Vice.

Kneen's arrival came after the peak of the baby boom had passed and inquiry for enrolment was on the decline. While he presided over the largest graduation ceremony of the College proper when 70 lads graduated in 1969, it was the peak of the graph. Three years later enrolments were at their lowest level for 10 years. The University no longer sent its second-year students to Dookie for their practical year; they had moved to their own facility at Mt Derrimut in 1964 (refer to Chapter 12). The loss of the relatively stable and mature university component, the raised entrance qualifications for Diploma students and the greatly-reduced practical work element of the course (barely 20 per cent of students' time was now spent on the farm branches) had changed the style of student attending Dookie as the 1970's loomed.

With a higher entrance requirement and the change in direction from producing a scientific farmer to producing a neo-technologist, fewer and fewer of the new breed of student came from farm backgrounds while only some 25 per cent went on to the land after graduating. Coincident with these changes was a run-down in Department of Agriculture spending on Dookie and the imposition of staff cuts. Subjects as important as animal husbandry, economics, agronomy and plant pathology had no specialist lecturers.

Protest, when it first arrived at Dookie, was orderly enough. In 1969, a visiting Parliamentary delegation was met by students bearing a huge banner stating 'Dookie College Needs lecturers'. A student spokesman wearing blazer and tie, hand delivered a letter to the Minister listing the student's grievances and an impromptu conversation took place. Surprisingly, the student tactic worked and within months of Kneen's arrival a number of new lecturers had arrived. Among them was Barry Croke BAgrSc, who lectured in animal husbandry and also managed a family farm near Numurkah. He was to become Principal in 1984 in the wake of Ian McMillan. Kneen was a patient man and his approach to student demands was to discuss them, often at great length, on the basis that if something was to be changed, it should be changed for the better.

With more and more students living off-campus, the University contingent gone and enrolments down, the old wooden dormitories near the tennis courts fell into disuse. Short courses at Dookie disappeared during the boom years and were never resumed. Thus it was a departure when Kneen agreed to lend one of the dormitories to accommodate a departmental in-service training group. He was embarrassed, on walking past the dormitory, to notice men of mature years squatting on the steps and in the grass outside during a break in lectures. Obviously they had nowhere to go in their spare time. As the accommodation was upgraded, demand for it grew and within a relatively short time, the College had a lucrative sideline in short-courses; conferences and in-service training groups. What began in a small way under Kneen, continued under McMillan with the establishment of a Short Course Trust Fund which was ploughed back into furnishings, equipment and teaching facilities. The College itself began to initiate short courses which grew, in some cases, to 'certificate' standard. During McMillan's time the fund was to grow to around $500,000.

Further, reforms discussed at Longerenong by Kneen and McMillan were introduced at Dookie by Kneen and followed up by McMillan when he succeeded Kneen. Kneen, by then Chief of Division, was able to facilitate such change. It has been said that Tom Kneen made Ian McMillan possible. McMillan succeeded Kneen at Dookie College in early 1974. At 46, he was young but was already well respected for his achievements during his early 13-year stint as lecturer and 'experimentalist'. Unlike Kneen, his earlier years had been spent in service at the agricultural (and not horticultural) colleges and his specialty was in the active field of animal production. McMillan exuded competence, was articulate, intellectually rigorous and demanding of those about him.

Kneen's promotion to Chief of Division, meant that agricultural education in Victoria was headed by a man with experience as Principal, at both Colleges and Burnley as well. With a new go-ahead Minister (Ian Smith), the stage was set for the changes which McMillan Desired.

Ian McMillan remained as Principal at Dookie until December 1983. McMillan became Manager of Educational Services for the Victorian College of Agriculture and Horticulture (VCAH), a position which virtually parallelled that of G. B. Woodgate.

McMillan's achievements in his nine years as Principal were on a par with those of any of the 11 who went before him. Aside from his role in the VCAH revolution (refer to Chapter 11), the upgrading of the Diploma and the introduction of the Certificate in Farming, he did much for the College and its standing in the district. With the disappearance of the short courses under Provan and the later demise of College as a sporting force, Dookie was in danger of losing its local identity. Following Kneen's initiative, McMillan and the Registrar (Derm Kerlin who retired in 1986 after 35 years) developed short courses into a profitable enterprise, which also provided support to local education programmes such as the farm apprentice scheme. McMillan upgraded and sought increased local participation in the College's annual beef cattle field day; a subsidised event when he returned to Dookie.

Speaking as Manager of Educational Services of VCAH in 1986, the centenary year of Dookie, Ian McMillan said Dookie was 'vastly better off' since the change. Government funding in that year totalled more than $2 million, of which 80 per cent comprised wages and salaries. Gross farm income for 1985 was around $850,000 while residential courses brought in another $500,000. There were 103 people on the payroll. He said staff were now 'only one step remote from their governing Council which determines campus policy and regulates employment'. While philosophy and policy were framed by an Academic Board which comprised a majority of staff-elected members. In the words of Ian McMillan, a midwife to the new Dookie Campus, 'there is an absolute reality about the farm operation which could never be achieved with Government accounting'.

The Recent Years

One hundred years of agricultural education at Dookie was celebrated on 4 October 1986. Tributes were provided by educational institutions from across Australia with the convocational address being delivered by Dr Graham Allen, Victoria's Director of Education at the time.

Barry Croke resigned as principal in 1989 leaving a legacy of a "hands on" approach to all aspects of college operations. The tools in the back of his utility gave a clue to his readiness to tackle any farm crisis at the same time as educational issues. The principal's position passed to Peter Ryan who held a Bachelor of Agricultural Science from the University of Melbourne, a Diploma of Education and a Master of Administration. He had started his career as a chemistry teacher at Colac before moving to McMillan Rural Studies Centre as a Rural Education Officer, then to Gilbert Chandler campus as Principal.

As well as being the centennial year, 1986 brought approval to offer a degree program at Dookie; the Bachelor of Applied Science (Agriculture). These developments arose out of a review in 1985 by Dr Howard Brown, an agricultural educationist from California. His recommendations led to the development of a three and a half year applied science degree. It included core subjects in the first two years followed by a three semester independent study program, including a semester of industry placement. With the introduction of the degree program the Certificate in Farming was transferred to Longerenong College in 1987.

Discussions were held with Frankston College of TAFE to develop the Advanced Certificate and Associate Diploma of Resource Management for training of Department of Conservation and Environment staff. Subjects were offered on a block timetable until 1993 when the arrangement with the Department ended and the program was then offered to school leavers. This program was replaced with a two-year diploma in 1997. Planning for an agribusiness course was undertaken with the David Syme Business School at Chisholm Institute of Technology in 1987 but it was not until 1991 that the first group of 19 students attended Dookie. By then, Monash University had absorbed the David Syme School and the arrangement was for the students to spend the second year of the three and a half-year Bachelor of Business (Agribusiness) at Dookie where they would be given a "practical" orientation. Monash discontinued the degree in 1993 with the last group of 20 students attending Dookie in 1994.

Nurse education through La Trobe University at Wodonga provided a new positive outlook for staff and students that went with studying and working with people from different backgrounds and with different career aspirations. The nursing course was first mooted in 1987 and closed in 1995 when the program moved solely to Wodonga.

In 1994, Dookie broadened its degree program to include agriculture, agribusiness, production horticulture, natural resource management and food technology. The first intake into these programs occurred in 1996. TAFE programs substantially altered over the last decade, moving from a wide selection of short courses and accredited programs to a limited number of specialised accredited courses. The Diploma of Natural Resource Management, the Certificate in Food Processing (Viticulture) and the Diploma of Rural Business Management now form the basis of Dookie's TAFE offering in 1997.

Until 1986, most staff came from the Department of Agriculture. With the introduction of the degree course came a need to broaden the staff profile to include internationally trained and industry funded persons. The broadening of staff expertise also included the appointment of Greg Brinsmead, a rural geographer, as Deputy Principal in 1992.

Over the decade, management of the college's assets has changed with the establishment of discrete commercial entities. Low commercial viability enterprises, including the vegetable farm, the poultry unit and the butchery were closed down. Academic staff were freed from the day-to-day operation of the units and managers were employed on a bonus basis to manage the commercial operations. Further commercial orientation was achieved with the establishment of an industry liaison committee for each farm branch.

In 1990, support from the National Soil Conservation Project, allowed the establishment of the Dookie Farms 2000 Project which aimed to make the college farms a model of sustainable commercial production. The Dookie Farms 2000 Committee works to attract projects and research linked to sustainable production. Another aspect of sustainable land use has been the development of the protection and management of 200 hectares of Box forest, used over the last century for grazing and fire-wood collection. Landcare and Environment Action Program schemes have involved planting thousands of trees on the college and surrounding farms.

One notable change over the last ten years has been a shift in the profile of students from the former 'ag' student, to one who is equally at home in the library and in the shearing shed. This transformation has been hastened by the new mix of agriculture students, who now share experiences, attitudes and aspirations with resource managers, agribusiness persons and food technologists.

The period of 1986-1996 has been a period of expansion and improved efficiency. Student numbers have more than doubled, while staff numbers have been reduced. A range of courses have also been developed. Present courses show high rates of employment of graduates. Staff are increasing their expertise through study for higher degrees and taking up research opportunities. Dookie enters the new world of agricultural and natural resource management committed to providing regional coordination and leadership in partnership with regional industries, communities and other research, education and extension providers.

Dookie College Buildings, 1927, with the old chemistry laboratory (now the computer room), left and Swinburne Hall (now the library) far right.