The tenth headmaster arrived at the end of the third term in 1966 with his wife and newborn son. Peter Gebhardt was young, accepting his appointment in his 29th year. Through the long history of the school, only two of his predecessors, Ted Evans and Edwin Bean, who were thirty and twenty-seven years old respectively, had been younger. As it was his first headmastership, he brought with him a new vision for a new age.
In his memoirs, written many years later, Mr Gebhardt reflected on his appointment: “I was just twenty-nine. Too young. I went to a school filled with a romantic sense that my educational ideas could lead to an educational revolution…thus began an engagement with that marvellous territory of western New South Wales. I seemed to spend my time receiving Debutantes in the hope that they might produce offspring for the school!” Despite this reflective comment he was able to bring about many changes to a school which was struggling financially, academically the introduction of the Wyndham Scheme and physically. He is famously quoted as saying that the school was like “Queen Anne in front and Mary Ann behind. The trouble was that there was no money for anything, not even a pot of paint. It was not a school that attracted staff.”
Gebhardt had hoped he might bring about real change, and he did, despite the many difficulties faced in the early years of his headmastership. He introduced a raft of new initiatives which set the compass for the future of the school.
In 1967, he determined that senior boys should have independent study areas given the demands of the coursework in subjects leading to the new Higher School Certificate. This he achieved with a library, opened in 1970, which he considered to be, “Next to the Chapel…a library is the most important building in a school”.
The library was built with funds from a very generous bequest from an Old Bathurstian, Hubert J Richardson (ASC 1905-06), a strong supporter of the school. Another bequest from the wife of Dr Brooke Moore (ASC 1911-17) funded an adjoining art gallery in the library, where a continuous cycle of events, exhibitions and displays followed.
Arts and Crafts week was another creative activity Gebhardt introduced, where celebrated Artists came to the school for a week and conducted a variety of craft workshops for groups of students. There were many different activities included, from drama to leathercraft, metal sculpture to poetry, and over the years, the variety of activities changed and expanded. This co-curricular activity continued for the next 50+ years, and many of the alumni reflect positively on the skills they learned -some even continuing to pursue this craft after school.
There were many other major improvements to take place during the nine years of Gebhardt’s headmastership. A swimming pool was built by the P&F in 1969, a band room in the Nissan Hut, and a new sick bay was constructed in the same year. In 1970, the school was entered in the 1970 Sydney Morning Herald’s Garden Competition and the school won equal first place in its division.
In 1972, the P&F decided to fund the building of a new wing to be a Dayboys’ Centre. It was to be two stories and would include a new woodworking and metalworking room. The whole building was finally completed in 1975 and became the Bruce Humphries Stevenson Centre, in honour of a great supporter of All Saints’ (ASC1918-19).
Other major productions which took place during this headmaster’s time included the establishment of a Theatre Club. There were numerous productions, but the most ambitious production was Vision 70, a collaboration of two authors, Peter Gebhardt and Richard Baines, written for the Bicentenary and centred on Captain Cook’s charting of the east coast of Australia. This pageant was reviewed as ‘a spectacular happening on a most impressive scale’.
The centenary of All Saints’ was celebrated in 1974, and there were many activities to take place during that year, with all members of the school community involved in various events. That year saw the production of a short centennial history, The School That Moved From The Hill’, written by Albert Emms.
In 1975, after nine years as headmaster, Peter Gebhardt left to take up the headmastership of Geelong College. Bringing his tenure to a close in December 1975, he said, ‘One man can do certain things in and for a school, then it is time to permit someone else to make their contribution which must be unique…’ Peter Gebhardt was a transformative headmaster and an outstanding educator. He reshaped All Saints’ College and set in motion a modern, creative approach which endured in the culture of the school thereafter.
Mrs Memory Sanders
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