A century of Melbourne’s unique graduate institution

Frank Lees saw the final months of the war in Borneo and volunteered to join the Australian section of the Allied occupation force going to Japan under General Douglas MacArthur.

In that war-ravaged and defeated land he was posted to the small rural village of Hofu in southern Honshu.

“Like many of the 2400 RAAF officers and airmen I was ‘adopted’ by a local family,” Mr Lees recalls pointing to a photo of him sharing a traditional meal, at a time when local rations were desperately short, on New Year 1947.

“Our apprehension was replaced by trust and over time friendship. The success of the Australian occupation that was one of many contributors to peace has its root in that single concept of harmony which guided the Japanese people to their return to peace and prosperity.”

On weekend leave he witnessed firsthand how residents in nearby Hiroshima had risen from the ashes of the atomic destruction, building shops with scrap timber salvaged from the rubble, adorned with always elegant and ever-optimistic signage for anything from beauty parlours to construction businesses.

Mr Lees returned to Australia and under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Scheme, completed first his Matriculation at Northcote High School and then a degree in Mechanical Engineering at Melbourne, including his first year at the Mildura Branch, before graduating in 1953.

He and his wife then moved to Canada before being driven back by the cold. He worked with the Taylor Instrument Companies with which he would remain until 1973, representing it across Asia, before working at Swinburne and the University of Melbourne in research and industry development.

One of the first things he did on his return in 1957 was to take out a life membership (at the princely sum of 15 guineas) of the Graduate Union.

“Graduate House is unique among the colleges at Melbourne in that it is the only postgraduate college,” Mr Lees says.

The Graduate Union, the eleventh affiliated College of The University of Melbourne, came into being in 1911 when a group of graduates wishing to maintain the friendships formed during student years began a graduates club which continues to this day. Distinguished engineer and citizen soldier, Colonel John Monash was the inaugural Chairman.

A range of activities and events will be held during this centenary year including a Centenary Dinner in July.

Graduate House provided Mr Lees with a club atmosphere where he enjoyed and contributed to a wide range of talks, luncheons and other intellectual and social events.

It was at this time that the Union’s equally far-sighted and irascible warden Bill Berry saw the potential of the then unfashionable Victorian terrace houses of Leicester street which he began buying up for the College.

 “I remember at one of the Friday night cocktail parties Bill used to put on for graduates of a particular year across all faculties, Stella Langford, a school principal was there,” Mr Lees recalls.

“Her father was an astute investor and Stella had inherited his eye for property. She owned the three terraces at the south end of the street and so impressed was she at how things were being done, she took Bill aside at the end of the evening and said she would leave them to the College in her will.”

True to her word she did just that and in 2010 the Stella Langford Wing opened adding a new dimension to the College’s accommodation, which is home to up to 120 graduate students from around the world.

“With the Melbourne Model and the university taking on a more graduate focus we are entering a new era, but I think the future has already been laid over the past hundred years here,” says Mr Lees, who is a former President of the Graduate Union.

“Look at the motto Bill Berry gave us – it’s quite simple – past graduates for post-graduates.”

Today the Graduate Union comprises both a postgraduate residential college (Graduate House) and a private club for graduates from all universities (University Graduates Club).

“The role of clubs around the world is changing and I believe we have managed that change extremely well,” Mr Lees says.

“As well as continuing our traditional role we have filled a need for meeting places with quality catering and for a range of levels of accommodation. On any day you will see three or four groups here for meetings and our accommodation rates are above ninety per cent.”

Mr Lees, who has visited Japan many times since his first encounter, has just published a book, Haiku Four Seasons reflecting his love of and admiration for Japan and its people. And as was the case with his first contact the nation and its people face very testing times, but he is confident that now, as then, they will overcome their difficulties.

“For Australians, Japanese discipline and mono-cultural society is an enigma and it will be very difficult for us to understand how they will tackle the Sendai tragedy,” he says.

“But I look back to March 1946 and Hiroshima presented the same spectacle as Sendai – completely devastated. The Japanese people were cheerful, they welcomed us because their Emperor had said they must march forward with the progress of the modern world.

“He wrote a haiku poem in which he said ’The snow is on the pines, but the snow will melt and the pine will return’ meaning the occupation troops are here now but they will disappear and Japan will resume its normal position.”

For detail of the Graduate Union centenary go to:
http://www.graduatehouse.com.au/