Peter Balmford
Recollections, 1946

To be honest, I think the students work harder, but they do not do all that much better at sport. No one plays bridge, but some sort of cards are played in lower Jeopardy. Part of the College is still devoted to women students (to adopt the touching phrase of the Janet Clarke Hall Act 1961).

We, too, used to complain bitterly about the star boarders on High Table and about the fees, which were £131/5/- in 1946 (£315 next year).

It is true that Melbourne's leading atheist of the 1890s no longer harangues us as we come out of Chapel on Sunday mornings, and it is true that the College is, on the whole, more religious than it was. But even though Chapel is no longer compulsory, we're still obliged to go.

We still have sherry in our studies, even though it is no longer forbidden. Politics are not a live issue any more, but space travel provides a substitute for supper-time conversation.

Admittedly in 1946, butter was rationed and the commissariat was in the hands of a matron. Beds were still made, though boots were no longer cleaned. Behan was still a gentlemanly world of single studies, but even then the back door of Clarke's lured the visitor with promise of umbrageous nooks beyond and evoked an article from B.R.M. [Barry Marshall (TC 1946), later College chaplain] in the Fleur-de-Lys.

When the College opened in March, 1946, the war had been over for seven months. The mind had grasped the fact, but was not yet properly adjusted to it. Nevertheless the future was now something worth thinking about, and the immediate future was academic study.

A hundred and seven of us were in residence, of whom only fifty had been here the year before. The other 57 had come from school, from the navy in the Pacific, from the army in the islands, from the air force, and a few had been prisoners of the Germans or the Japanese. Trinity (for it is convenient to personify what is in truth a good deal more than merely the sum of its parts) began the job of making us one body of students.

At first, we were all rather frightened. Those of us who were ex-servicemen did not know whether we would be able to cope with the process of learning and we were depressed because the senior people in College seemed to know so much: perhaps things always seem that way to the freshman, but that never occurred to us.

For a day or two some of us still wore uniform, which seemed much more natural than the academic gown with which we struggled for the first time. It was all very strange. One did not need a leave pass to visit Johnny Naughton's and there were no palliasses that needed to be folded just so. The corporal sat next to the wing commander in Hall. The Warden's notices: "Gentlemen are requested ..." were very different from the familiar "Personnel will ..."

But the senior College gentlemen had their problems too. How were they going to be treated by all these men yellowed with atebrin and so much their senior in age and experience? Would they be ostracised because they were not entitled to wear the badge of a returned soldier, could not swap stories of the days of the "do" and winced at being addressed as "sport"? The freshmen straight from school had his answer ready if he were asked what he did in the war, but what about the other fellow?

In fact he had his answer too, but he was never asked the question. The 55 ex-servicemen and the 52 civilians all had something to contribute and it was not long before these worries were forgotten. Sometimes we talked about what a problem it might have been and perhaps we were too smug about the fact that there was none. But it was the fact, and even the problem of settling down to work was largely solved.

The College buildings had been carefully repaired and furbished after the departure of the Air Force in December 1944. The Upper Bishops' Barn (Lecture Hall, Museum) was no longer an officers' mess, but was inhabited by Wardrop "my Tutor". The Warden had moved from the Lodge to the Deanery, and the Lodge, now known as Leeper, had its own aristocracy of students: "Clarke's? What's Clarke's?" one of them is reported to have said.

Dr Behan was raising funds for a Memorial Building (the path to the University ran where Jeopardy is now) and for a new Warden's Lodge. His portrait was painted, and at the hanging in the Hall, he said he had posed with a plan in his hand because that was how he wished to be remembered. Then the College realised that the Warden was about to retire and wondered what sort of a fellow his successor would be. At the end of first term, a figure was observed to be wandering round the College with the Warden, and the word was passed that this was He. On the night of the end-of-term dinner, the old Warden was burned in effigy outside his former Lodge and a tiny photograph of the new Warden was hung on the east wall of the Hall between the oils of his predecessors, labelled "Postera Crescam Laude".

Remembrances of Peter Balmford (TC 1946), provided back to Trinity College in 1961.