Leslie and Coralie went to the same secondary school, ‘Mod’, as Perth Modern School was affectionately known. Coralie explained:
It was then a very up-to-date secondary school to which you had to win an entrance by scholarship […] which I did and Leslie did too. But he was two years ahead of me all through our secondary education at this co-ed school and he was not one of the senior boys with whom I fell in love. I was absolutely unaware of his existence and he was with mine.
Perth Modern School is still Western Australia’s only fully academically selective co-educational high school. As it was in my parents’ day, the entrance process is by exam, now managed by the GAT (gifted and talented) state education program. In its history of over a hundred years the school has produced a galaxy of alumni who have made their names in the world, including Labor prime minister Bob Hawke and two senior Liberals: leader of the opposition Billy Snedden and Paul Hasluck, who later became governor-general.
Leslie described it as ‘a good school that could have been better’. Whatever the school’s failings, a number of his contemporaries made significant contributions in fields as varied as ornithology, biochemistry and agricultural science. He counted among his high school friends three who became professors, and one vice-chancellor. Nugget Coombs, his lifelong buddy, was also a student at Mod and went on to become governor of the Commonwealth and Reserve banks and economic advisor to successive prime ministers. More importantly, as far as my father was concerned, Nugget involved himself in cultural projects and was committed to the advancement of Indigenous Australians when few in positions of influence took any interest.
When asked to contribute to the school magazine, The Sphinx, teenager Leslie prophetically came up with a piece titled ‘How to Write a Book’. He was beginning to excel at manipulating the language just as Coralie was, though she put her efforts into poetry. In her final year she co-edited The Sphinx and in her Leaving exam was awarded the English and history exhibition at the University of Western Australia. The scholarship paid for books and expenses and her parents were able to keep her at home, which meant she could do her degree as a full-time student.
On the other hand, Leslie, after finishing school – the first among his siblings to have had that opportunity – would have loved to spend all day at the university indulging his new passions for literature, philosophy, economics and the history of fine arts. But he had to earn a living while he studied. He began his career as a cadet journalist on The West Australian, Perth’s only daily paper, and worked his way up to being its art and drama critic. It took him five years as a part-time student and full-time journalist to complete his degree.
From the challenges of his own experience Leslie formed the view that being a full-time student is an absolute luxury. When my sister and I began our university studies, our father made it clear to us that if we enjoyed that privilege and flunked our exams, we would be reduced to part-time study. The rule was invoked. For Megan it was after her second year at Sydney University when she had been diverted from her studies, partly by her love life but mainly by her devotion to the student newspaper Honi Soit (the following year she became a cadet journalist on The Sydney Morning Herald). For me it was after my first year at New England University at which I had – according to my father – ‘majored in extra-curricular activities’. I was brought home to continue my studies under the parental eye and roof.
It was likely, if not inevitable, that Coralie Clarke and Leslie Rees would meet at UWA because in the 1920s very few people, particularly women, had the benefit of a university education. The university had not long been established and was still in temporary premises, which Coralie described as ‘a collection of tin sheds quite close to the city, in Irwin Street, Perth’. There were only about three hundred students in all. To them it was known as Tin Pot Alley. Both Coralie and Leslie were on the Guild of Undergraduates, which was comprised mostly of men. Interestingly – perhaps typically – my mother and father each recorded quite different accounts of how they met.
No doubt because Leslie was a working journalist, after three years he was appointed honorary editor of the university journal, a prospect he embraced with enthusiasm. The Black Swan was a substantial hard-backed publication that came out three times a year containing poetry, stories, sketches and articles of general interest.
He wrote about meeting Coralie in the chapter of his autobiography entitled ‘Black Swan, Blonde Editress and a New Prospect’:
Coralie Clarke was appointed as assistant editor without my knowledge. I hadn’t so far met her but did when I called a meeting of the new Black Swan staff. And in walked a blonde young woman of eighteen or so, with lively figure and an anticipatory smile, a broad brow and wide-set large greeny-grey eyes. I was a bit scared of her at first: she was a scholarship winner, so I’d heard, top of the State in English and History at Matriculation level. With her masses of curly hair and bright looks she was obviously a student personality.
My mother, in her oral history recorded for the National Library of Australia in 1968, described their meeting in a far less reverential tone:
Of course being interested in literature, it was only a short step to being interested in drama. I joined the Dramatic Society and in my second year was offered a part in a comedy, The Whole Town’s Talking, which we were putting on at the Assembly Hall, the only venue in Perth to stage an amateur play. I played the lead, Mary Westlake, my leading man Paul Hasluck, then a fellow student. Plays given by the University Dramatic Society were seriously reviewed in those days.
The critic from The West Australian, the major newspaper in Perth, was always sent along and usually wrote about three-quarters of a column analysing the play and performance in great detail. After the first night, the notice came out the next day and, what surprised and delighted me, I got a rave notice about my performance. I was just walking on air and could see myself with my name in lights on Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End. The following day I was at university in the gravel quadrangle and a young man stopped me and said hello. I didn’t know him, didn’t know his name, but he said, ‘I saw you in the play last night.’
I said ‘Oh well’ … After all a lot of people saw the play last night and I’d been having a great morning after being presented with flowers the night before. This young man looked at me rather critically and said, ‘Yes, I liked your performance. Did you like what I wrote about you in The West Australian?’
I’m afraid I dropped the brick of all time. ‘Did you write that notice?’ I questioned. ‘I thought a real critic wrote it.’
So that was how Leslie Rees and I met.