Lumen Autumn 2025 - Flipbook - Page 26
Letters
to the
Editor
Have your say! Letters to the
Editor are most welcome –
email lumen@adelaide.edu.au
Lumen is your magazine. Please let us
know what you think of this issue, and
what you’d like to read more about in
the future.
Another FJ prank!
The article about the FJ and the footbridge
brings to mind an earlier Prosh prank with
an FJ.
A few years before the footbridge
incident, probably in 1964, there was a
well-organised attempt to put an FJ body
on top of Parliament House and to string
a sign across the front, “Tom the Cheap”
the name of a prominent discount store in
Adelaide at the time. The Premier was then
Tom Playford.
Access was from the lane beside the
railway station and then over the roof of the
Old Parliament House. Watch keepers with
walkie talkies were monitoring all police
movements. These monitors were usually in
male/female pairs pretending to cuddle so as
not to attract attention.
Regrettably the ladder to access the
roof of Parliament House from the Old
Parliament House was a few inches too
short and the attempt had to be abandoned.
Rather than do nothing, the organising
party regrouped, and the FJ was put on top
of the police station that was then alongside
the River Torrens near to Jolleys boathouse.
However, his pressure led to the
institution of Prosh Eve parties called ‘Prosh
Prangs’. The first of these was held in the
Thebarton Town Hall but it got a bit out of
hand and the venue refused to have another
one. The next one was held in the Waterside
Workers Hall in Port Adelaide. This was a
disaster.
There were scantily clad dancers on
stage including the memorable Big Pretzel.
The crowd tried to storm the stage, and the
organisers pulled out a fire hose and drove
them back. One group used a trestle tabletop as a shield and advanced to the stage
hurling ice at the young student holding the
fire hose. He concentrated the fire hose on
the tabletop, and they were swept away.
Police were called but they refused to
intervene saying they were under
instructions to leave the students alone.
The Waterside Workers’ Federation was
understandably extremely upset and there
were no more ‘Prosh Prangs’ after that.
I believe this to be accurate, but I make
this contribution to your discussion on the
basis that it is not attributed to me.
Contributed by a senior South Australian
legal figure
The year before the FJ
I would like to say that I was a participant
in the pioneering, short-lived, 1970 car
hanging and comment that at least we
retrieved our car from the river the
next morning.
This made it safe for Popeye that day
and made it possible for the second event
in 1971.
Roger Inverarity, BE (Mech) (Hons) 1971
HamBurglars
Reading your story on the FJ and the
footbridge in the recent Lumen magazine, I
was reminded of a rumour of another Prosh
prank. I don’t know much about it or if it
was true, but in my first year (1994) of a
four-year Bachelor of Agriculture degree,
when based on the North Terrace campus,
there was the story of Ronald McDonald.
In the Myer Centre there was a life-size
Ronald McDonald on a bench seat. Word
was that some people from Uni went with
wrenches and simply unbolted the seat and
started carrying it back. The story goes that
they never made it back with their haul - a
security officer stopped them.
Justin Wundke B Ag Sc 1998
The Police Commissioner at the time,
Brigadier McKenna, took this as a personal
affront to the police force and pressured
the government and the University to stop
future Prosh Day activities. He was
unsuccessful in that.
A critic’s praise
Gloriously good issue of Lumen. Bravo!
Peter Goers OAM, noted arts critic, columnist,
broadcaster, director
26
Aunt Dorothy’s graduation
Thank you for the interesting articles in the
recent Lumen about revealing the mystery
of the FJ Holden, suspended on the
University footbridge, as well as the first
UofA woman graduate Edith Dornwell.
I have the mortarboard from my aunt’s
graduation, Bachelor of Arts, from the
University of Adelaide on the eleventh
day of December in the year 1918
(pictured below).
Her name was Dorothy Grace Kentish.
She was from a third-generation Australian
family which settled in Adelaide in 1838.
Photos from her University days include her
in cap and gown, the women’s hockey team
in which she played, as well as a small
handwritten invitation to a Sausage Tea
1917 with a photo of ‘Ye Cottage’ on
the front.
The graduation gown was worn again in
1948 by my brother who did Ag Science,
but the use of mortarboards went out of
fashion for some decades so was not worn
again officially until early this century when
my granddaughter used it.
Margaret Day OAM
