As St Gregory’s College in Campbelltown, NSW, celebrates its centenary, one old boy remembers fondly his time there.
Story Ken Eastwood
Forty years after attending St Gregory’s College in Campbelltown, near Sydney, Jimmy Smith says he still has “the best” memories of his schooling. Nearly every day he has contact with fellas who were in his year group in the late 1980s. “Long after the disciplines and the achievements are forgotten, it’s the friendships that endure,” Jimmy says. “We just had a really, really great group of guys who have maintained togetherness. We had 163 in our year – 110 day boys and 53 boarders.”
As St Gregory’s prepares to celebrate its centenary in 2026, Jimmy is full of anecdotes from his time boarding at the college, and travelling to and from his family’s mixed farm in Wallendbeen, NSW each term. The college’s senior boarders today have their own room, but in Jimmy’s day, he slept in a dorm of 32 boys. His mum used to provide him with a fruit cake each term, which he kept hidden in a foot locker under his bed every night. “In the night, this mate of mine would, you know, commando roll to my bed, and, I had no idea, he’d just slice off another bit of fruit cake. And I’m only learning about this 35 years later.”
This story excerpt is from issue #164
Outback Magazine: Dec/Jan 2026
