As with a previous story, "The Great Tram Hijack" this story concerns my own school life. These sort of episodes happened as every day occurrences. Such experiences are the reasons why in adulthood I am like I am, adopting the role of a 14 year old, in short trousers and in some disciplinarian headmaster's study with my pants down and receiving a thrashing with his cane. At the time, when I really was 14 years of age, there was no question of enjoying the experience.
The school was a Christian institution situated in Melbourne, Australia, not far from the city and catering for day boys and boarders. It was a time when wool prices were high and sheep graziers got around in Bentleys and Jaguars, lived in gracious homesteads set in rolling pastures and sent their sons to expensive boarding schools down in the city. I was such a boy.
The school is still there but changes since my day are radical, discipline is no longer strict, even short trousers until 16 years no longer applies, and the boarders come from Asian countries. No longer are the graziers well-to-do, so their sons attend local schools.
I was 13 years old, going on 14, the year was 1946, World War Two over and I had just graduated from primary to secondary level. We didn't call them that in those days, rather junior and senior school. At junior school discipline was strict and the Junior school Principal was the one who wielded The Cane - over our school uniform shorts. At Senior School not only did the Headmaster wield The Cane (he had a double Cane, two very flexible rods bound together leaving two welts for every stroke) but every teacher had their own Canes, also the Matron in the boarding house. Matron was vicious, and boys who displeased her were required to strip to their singlets and socks and bend over a special stool she kept for the purpose. The whole procedure was described by older boys as "making love on Matron's Stool". In those days, at 13, I didn't understand the significance of the description and thought only of the searing pain in my bottom.
Prefects also were empowered to administer The Cane and did so with the greatest pleasure, all of them with their cronies crowding together to watch the process. Barely 18 years old these hoolgans lorded it over the younger boys like slavemasters. The headmaster occasionely administered Canings on the bare bottom, matron always. I do not recall other teachers doing so, and prefects were forbidden that ultimate pleasure, however did so whenever it was feasible to get away with it, at other times making us change into our thin cotton gym shorts only. For boarders the prefects would wait until we were in our regulation cotton shortie pyjamas.
In the boarding house some disciplinarian had devised a system to maintain discipline amongst the younger boys. It was a sort of committee of senior boys, perhaps 16 or 17 years old, who acted as sort of non commissioned officers in checking behaviour and especially in prowess on the sports fields. Sport was compulsory and boys had to do well or this discipline committee took action. The committee was made up of boys who the headmaster considered would later make effective prefects. Upon appointment to the committee the boys would go into a special dormitory which was in the eastern section of the school buildings. The committee was called "the East Dorm".
I was a small, nervous boy who did not enjoy sport and was hopeless at it. One evening, after performing badly at cricket practise I was summoned to the East Dorm. The East Dorm had its own study room down a darkened corridor. Those due for an interview were silently approached from behind, after dinner in the unlit school quadrangle. Touched on the shoulder with a hissed instruction in the ear, to go to the downstairs common room. This room was never used, there were no lights in it and it was near to the East Dorm study.
Always uncertain when such a summons might be given, younger boys would make doubly certain they were tidy, their shoes polished like mirrors, and most important, they knew the school song and school rules by heart. After the summons I waited in the dark room. My name was suddenly roared out into the darkened corridor. Quickly I moved to the closed door of the study and knocked. The door flew open, I was grabbed and dragged into the tiny room, the door slammed shut and I was rammed into to back of it with the older boys surrounding me in a semi circle shouting I was a miserable wanky little prick. Someone scuffed my highly polished shoes and I was abused for not keeping them clean. Then instructions were screamed at me to hang out my penis and wank it while I sang the school song. Terrified by this time I did as I was ordered, got the song hopelessly wrong and when I failed to get an erection was told I was a bloody poofter (which later of course I became), I was then ordered to take my shorts right off.
At this point someone produced a large tin bucket and it was put over my head. For those readers out there in other countries it is necessary to explain here a piece of Australian history. Early in Australian settlement, in the 19th century, highwaymen, called bushrangers here in Australia, prowled the countryside holding up travellers and raiding settled areas. One such bushranger, named Ned Kelly, has become very famous in Australian folklore because when he was eventually caught in a spectacular gun battle, and knowing this would happen sooner or later, had devised himself a suit of armour which could turn the bullets of the old fashioned guns of the day. One of the police troopers surrounding him eventually made a lucky shot, getting Ned in the leg through a joint in his armour. He was arrested and later hanged.
Back in the East Dorm study I was by this time more terrified than I had ever been. I was told we were to go up the corridor to the study of a particularly unpleasant prefect who had the unique reputation for raising one centimetre welts with his Cane. I was to knock at his door and when it was opened to shout I was Ned Kelly and to put up his hands. To increase the humiliation and terror I was ordered to take off my underpants, tuck my shirt tails up, and to wank as I shouted at the prefect.
I was pushed up the corridor quaking in fear, and roared at all the way to wank harder. Outside the dreaded door I was paralysed with terror so someone kicked it. There was a moment's shocked silence. Finally the prefect roared who the bloody hell was that ! Someone opened the door and there I was, unable under the bucket to see anything, but feeling very painful pinches on my bottom and hearing hissed instructions to get on with it, and to bloody well keep wanking. Somehow I found my voice and stammered the necessary words.
The consequences happened almost immediately. The prefect plunged over to me and ripped off the bucket so as to see who it was. I was then marched down the corridor to the darkened common room, a light was found, I was held down across a table by two East Dormers while the prefect very effectively marked my bare bottom with 12 livid welts, and they certainly were swollen ridges of at least a centimetre.
Is it any wonder I am now like I am !