The Contribution of Arnold Eberle to Adult Education in New England (1948-1954)

Arnold Walter Eberle, who was later to hold the degrees of Bachelor of Commerce, of Arts, and of Education, and to serve as the first full-time officer for adult education for both the University of Sydney and the New England University College in the New England Region, with his base at Armidale, New South Wales, was born in Waroona, Western Australia, on 5th May 1909. From his humble origins there he was to become in a very real sense the shaper of what would be, within a generation of his death, both Australia's Open University, and the most dramatic Adult Education Department in the Southern Hemisphere. As was said soberly in an official minute penned a few weeks after his death: "Mr. Eberle's work did much to make the University College known throughout northern New South Wales and he laid a firm basis on which his successors may build an Extension Department worthy of a growing University." (p. 55, '1953 Report of the Senate of Sydney University'). Eberle graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1931 with the degree of Bachelor of Commerce and the Diploma in Education. He was for eight years (1932-1940) a master on the staff of the Swan Hill High School in Victoria. During that period he continued studying for his Bachelor of Arts degree as a part-time student. He married and had three children. His Bachelor of Education was awarded for a thesis compiled after the war as a direct result of and report on his initial work in New England, New South Wales.