Introduction

This book is not a register of the members year by year, still less a chronicle by segments of time. Rather is it a reflective but also a personally challenging compilation, one assembled with the help of alumni and, in many cases, their writings - both public and private - to mark a defiant milestone and anniversary rather than a history of a steadily ongoing University College. It was one, so vibrantly achieving for 40 years and then suspended - if not terminated - in the material sense in more recent years. Since the alumni did not offer written contributions in any quantity, and as it had been the intention that this book should endeavour to characterize our identity, in actuality it gives a series of highly evocative impressions from the premier University residential institution in Armidale. And so the commemorative purpose has been followed by the assembling of a series of reports and reflections on facets of the first fully residential University College on campus in rural New South Wales, Wright in Armidale, initially for men and, later, for both men and women. As a College - in its heyday - it did much, to justify the faith of the innumerable benefactors to the fledgling tertiary institution, and also the far-sighted and idealistic vision of that compassionate educationalist, Dr Robert Madgwick, in office at the time of the supportive initial planning and for the first two strenuous but hugely satisfying masterships. As a document of record, the book also tells us much about Australian society in the second half of the twentieth century, from migration, a wider educational franchise and about concern for the strength of mind and sense of the self so desirable in the young adults in this nation.