Two archbishops, one king and North Melbourne footy club
Schools
There can’t be that many people in South Australia who have hung out with King Charles but Damien Judd is most certainly one of them. His royal connection, it transpires, is just one of many (true and cracking) tales the new principal of Gleeson College in Adelaide’s north-east has to tell.
It being the Easter holidays when we met at the 1,000 pupil college in mid April, he was just one of a handful of people in the splendid grounds overlooked by the Adelaide foothills.
Despite the ridiculously complex (and ongoing) roadworks encircling the college, it is immediately a place of calm, the brand new – and centrally located – St James centre (featured on page 6) resplendent and looking as if it has been there for aeons.
Damien had been a school principal at Samaritan College in Whyalla since 1997 when, late last year, he applied for the role as the head of Gleeson College, a year 7 to 12 school founded in 1989.
As well as more than three decades of experience (the bulk in the top job) and a religious and educational outlook to allow him to walk into most such roles, he had a joker card ready to play if called upon.
Damien’s dad, it transpired, had been at school with Archbishop Gleeson.
So, did you bring it up at interview?
He smiles.
“I grew up in Mt Gambier but dad went to Sacred Heart in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s. And his some of his boarding mates were Archbishop Gleeson and Archbishop Faulkner,” Damien said.
“There’s no real connection at all but I remember doing confirmation in St Paul’s in Mount Gambier around 1981 and there were two bishops there. Anyway, they’re doing the oils and Dad hadn’t said anything to me (about knowing them). And I remember they said, ‘we’ll catch up with Juddy afterwards’. And I thought, but ‘I’m Juddy’.”
A later chat explaining the confusion, the family line that ‘Dad would rave on that two of his friends were archbishops’ is surpassed by Damien’s own tale of his recent job search.
His wife Lisa, from a Scottish migrant family that moved over to the Whyalla steelworks and shipyards, was unaware Damien was thinking of a move.
Gleeson principal application done, the first interview was online and straightforward, the next interview at Catholic Schools HQ a little more complex.
“Lisa even dropped me off. I was dressed up and said I was going for a finance meeting (in the school holidays). I thought she might have clicked,” he said.
The subsequent rumour that she heard about his new appointment at the same time as his old school is patently not true Damien affirmed.
“I’m not that stupid. So I said, are we still interested in perhaps living in Adelaide one day? She said ‘let’s do it’, so it was really just a sea change.”
Whyalla, school and place, was excellent. Their three boys – Angus, Callum and Tom – grew up there although of late, Damien discovered he was now teaching children whose parents he’d taught when he first started as a primary teacher many years back.
Education, like most people concerns in Whyalla, is a barometer of the steel town’s fortunes and resilience Damien said, beautiful but with challenges.
There were about 1000 children at the three campus Samaritan College when he left but numbers had dipped to 600 students at the height of the steelworks entering administration.
“And that creates a cycle of ‘we can’t afford to pay loans and then replacing staff when why would they want to come to Whyalla if it’s got this reputation of the steelworks being volatile and closing,” he said.
“And so if that’s the same for nurses and doctors and other teachers in other schools, it’s a well-known town for having employment issues.”
Adelaide, as a city, offers not just a greater stability but accessibility to concerts and other outings but also to the airport and the chance fly to Melbourne to watch his beloved AFL side North Melbourne.
Lisa too, is now working in Adelaide as a Reception teacher at Blackfriars College.
The single campus Gleeson College, a low to medium fee paying school that borders Pedair and Golden Grove High schools – they share some sports facilities – is perhaps more of a straight principal role compared to his Samaritan College job which called for him to be as much as CEO or manager, as an educator, he said.
“I would not have applied for every school that had a vacancy,” he said. “It had a nice feel that reminded me of Samaritan.”
Damien’s background positions him as an all-rounder, teaching initially in primary schools for five years and then secondary. IT, maths and PE were staples and then specialising in vocational education before he ran the local Australian Technical College (a John Howard initiative).
“Religious education was a subject. But being an upper primary teacher, you do have a few broad skill sets,” he said.
“The parents are a lot more involved in a primary than a secondary, so there’s little nuances I’m getting used to (at Gleeson) of just being in a purely secondary campus.
“But I think there’s a lot more that goes on. In a secondary that makes it an exciting job from the kids getting apprenticeship and the sports competitions and the dance and the cheerleading.”
He won’t commit to how many hours a week he works but, as with most principals, he can think about school 24/7 he said.
So, King Charles. The story is entwined, as with many things in Whyalla, with Sanjeev Gupta, the alleged steel magnate touted as a savour of the city.
The Commonwealth games were happening on the Gold Coast and Gupta, being pally with the king, organised for several principals to meet Charles as part of the Prince’s Trust initiative.
“They had these programs about getting students back into steelmaking and things like that rather than seeing it as a dirty negative job.”
The meeting, at Government House in Brisbane, was surreal. Damien took a student along to represent the school
“A lot of people had the Order of Australia and they were older. I think there were some veterans there. So we stood out like a sore thumb because my student was wearing school uniform. But they said ‘stay where you are. The prince knows he’ll walk around the room. He’ll get to everybody, don’t worry’,” Damien said.
And when he arrived, the king was imperious.
“Charles spent a lot of time in our little group. came back a second time, asking questions about green steel and stuff like that. So I had a really good chat with him, it wasn’t just a meet and greet,” Damien said.
“My understanding of Prince Charles came from ‘The Goodies, Spitting Image’. But he seriously knew his environmental stuff, which I had read about, he’s not just token about that. It was a genuine conversation.”
We don’t know when King Charles will next be in Australia but if he fancies a trip to Adelaide, then the Gleeson College principal has a better chance than most of giving him a tour around the school.
It would be some occasion indeed.
