Recycling Shenton

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For nine years we lived in the Shenton Manse - in the 80s - a five bedroom house built about 1909. Each of our boys had a separate bedroom, Peceli an office, and it was a lovely spacious house. Of course we used it for hospitality, sometimes homeless people slept in the hall behind, or there were drum kit practices, rap dancing, or gym there also. So it was with nostalgia and interest that I went up to the Geelong High School this morning for the tours advertised as part of the Centenary celebrations. There were only three of us as we missed the 9 a.m. group and soon after Carmel, the music teacher, showed me around the rooms of our old house, the halls, and the church, all recycled in wonderful ways for music, drama, dance. The old 1903 hall now has mirrors and a great floor space for the dance classes. The church of course which is used for plays etc. always had excellent acoustics but it looks a bit dull now with many of the windows blacked out. One time we housed a visiting Fijian choir from Labasa - eighty-eight of them in the Shenton halls, cooking for them with pots borrowed from Geelong College. We found mattresses for all the eighty-eight of them. It was a fun time - in 1985, then a group of fifty-five Fijians three years later. They bathed in the High School facilities across the road and you can imagine a group of rural Fijians crossing that road and holding up the traffic! These days, health regulations just wouldn't allow so many people to stay in old church halls for a couple of weeks. Okay, enough nostalgia for now. Here are pictures of some of the spaces today.