After educating almost 20,000 boys, Toowoomba Grammar School is celebrating its sesquicentenary with a year of special events.
Story Ken Eastwood Photo Toowoomba Grammar
When World War II finished, Howard Jensen, now 95, was a boarder at Toowoomba Grammar (TGS). “We heard that peace had been declared not long after midnight and about 50 of us, in our pyjamas, ran out into the streets of Toowoomba,” he says. “We made our way to The Glennie School boarding house [a nearby all-girls school], did our war cry out the front, and the lights came on. We all took off! It was an unforgettable experience.”
This was one of many wonderful stories told at a special “across the boarders” get-together in February, when former TGS boarders gathered in places such as Darwin, Augathella and Goondiwindi, and joined in with a live linkup.
“We wanted to have an event that tipped a hat to all the boarding community since it opened in 1875,” says Grammar 150 project manager Jo Capp. “But instead of everybody coming to Toowoomba, we thought we’d take the school to them.” Howard was with the contingent in Roma.
Jo says other great stories from the history of the school included the use of ‘Jack’s Bar’, an area dug out under one of the boarding houses, where boys used to secretly hang out. And the members of the post-WWII cadet corps and shooting teams, who would take some of the school’s armoury of .303 rifles home to practice, slung over their shoulders as they rode their push bikes through the streets.
The commemorations this year mark 150 years since the first foundation stone of the school was laid. Money for the grammar school had been raised by a combination of local donations, a government grant and fundraisers, including one that featured trapeze artists, a “boneless boy in his puzzling contortions”, and “daring feats on horseback”. A headmaster was appointed in 1876, and the first cohort of 44 students – 24 dayboys and 20 boarders, from places such as Rockhampton, Cairns, Cunnamulla and Maryborough – started in 1877. Today the school has 1,139 students, about a quarter of whom are boarders.
This story excerpt is from issue #161
Outback Magazine: June/July 2025
