LEARNING IN Glebe
Social + sport
Tranby brought people together in many ways. In its early days, after 1957, Tranby was a hostel for young people from rural cooperatives who were doing apprenticeships or learning more about bookkeeping and cooperative management. An Aboriginal Hostels Company was formed in the mid 1970s, but the people who enrolled as students in Tranby courses were eager to socialise. Many were from rural areas and wanted to get to know Glebe and Sydney a bit better. Others had grown up in Sydney but had travelled into their classes from western Sydney or other suburbs. All of them enjoyed spending time with other students.
In the 1960s, the young men from rural cooperatives who stayed at Tranby while they did apprenticeships or courses were involved in a regular football competition.
Their team was loosely associated with the local Methodist Church and in it the Tranby students and residents played with university students who were in shared housing in the neighbouring streets, like Max Solling from Boyce Street at the side of the Tranby building.
Over the 1960s, other Uni students and activists like Paddy George from different share houses in the streets around Tranby also played in this team. Max has recorded his memories of the mid 1960s, when he played alongside Bruce Ellis and others. On weekends, Max, Bruce and other Tranby residents used to walk in regularly from Glebe to the Sydney Cricket Ground to watch the match of the day there. It was on those (long) walks that these young men shared with Max the difficult times they had had facing racism in their home towns like Condobolin and Armidale where they often faced harassment by police and discrimination by employers.
Tranby student with beer, pinball machine and Balmain Tigers Rugby League team poster
Glebe Greasers team in play at Northmead. Bruce Ellis (with ball) and other Tranby residents, playing with teammates from Boyce St share house, including Max Solling (dark shorts), Bill Holani and Frank Ooi (far right) and Bob Steele (white shorts, long socks, next to Max), son of Methodist vicar Jock Steele. Photo: Courtesy Max Solling, SMH 6 Nov 1963 p8
Street cricket, in Boyce Street beside Tranby co-op. Source: Tranby Archives
Darts has been a continuing interest of Indigenous people: in 2013, Andy Warren of Port Augusta became National Under-18s Champion at a Sydney competition. Source: Port Augusta Transcontinental, 30 January 2013
Students were still playing informal sports in the 1980s, shown in this game of street cricket in Boyce Street.
Another focus of student socialising at the time was the Toxteth Hotel, a few blocks from Tranby on Glebe Point Road. Students would gather there after classes for a drink, to watch football, horse races or other sports on TV, to play pinball or darts – a great favourite with Kevin Cook - or just to socialise.
Tranby had sports days – often held at La Perouse, just as a social get together or to celebrate graduations and the end of the year.
Some students in 1985 were playing weekend football together, including Tom Evans and Ronny Mason, a nephew of Michael Ella who had studied at Tranby in the past. Michael was, in turn, first cousin of the Ella brothers Mark, Gary and Glen, all famous Rugby Union players. Tom had enrolled in the Business Studies course and through 1985, enjoyed working with UTS Communications students and staff on the Tranby newsletter that year, the Meeting Tree.
Tranby Sports Day at La Perouse, showing carved wood trophies
Highlanders Women’s Ella 7s team 2016, featured in ABC News before the weekend competition at Coffs Harbour. Photo supplied Nikki Muller, featured ABC News
Tom went on to enrol in UTS and completed degrees in Communications and Sports Management, then worked in the Commonwealth Public Service for some years. In the late 1990s, he acted on his life-long interest in sport and joined the Rugby Development Team organised by barrister and Union player, Lloyd McDermott. This is an organisation which encourages young Aboriginal Rugby Union players.
Since then, Tom has been involved in a number of overseas tours with young teams and in developing the Ella 7s competition for young rural players. He has been particularly active in supporting the emergence of Women’s Ella 7s teams. By 2016, when Tom was interviewed, there were 24 male sides and 12 female sides in the annual Coffs Harbour competition for the Ella 7s teams, with one of the teams that year shown here.
Tom at Tranby, 1985
Tom seated on left in photo of students in Good Weekend, 25 May 1985, ‘Tranby: the Aboriginal soul in the heart of Glebe.’