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                                                            a certificate of service to Miss Joske for her work in the Civil
                                                            Defence Organisation during ‘a period of national emergency,
                                                            world war, 1939-1945’. It must have been a remarkable relief
                                                            to Miss Joske that things could now ‘return to normal’ in
                                                            the College. Her long service as Principal coincided with
                                                            a relatively conservative period in the life of the College,
                                                            and the nation, that would be severely shaken by Australia’s
                                                            engagement in another war – the Vietnam Conflict.
                                                            As College Fellow and President of the Australian Human
                                                            Rights Commission Prof Gillian Triggs (1964) recently
                                                            reminded our students, the ‘Vietnam years’ were a testing time
                                                            on campus as protest against the war grew in strength both
                                                            within and beyond our walls.  She recounted that early one
                                                            morning Dr Eden had summoned her to wash anti-Vietnam
                                                            graffiti (not of her own making) off the front wall. Fuelled in
                                                            part by conscription, the bloody realities of war (now brought
                                                            home to civilians for the first time via television) forced
          Captain Mavis Freeman, Australian Army Medical Corps,   Australians to question if ‘just war’ was still possible.
          in her lab at the Heidelberg Military Hospital in 1944

          career during the war as only the second female scientist to   It was a tumultuous time for the nation, and for the College,
          join the AIF.  Serving in the Australian Army Medical Corps   in which Dr Eden sought to empower a growing number of
          at home and in the Middle East, she began research into safe   young women – and from 1973 young men – who sought to
          methods for blood transfusions in malarial regions (a vital   question the values of ‘Anzac’ that had dominated the national
          topic as Australian soldiers were debilitated by malaria in the   discourse since the 1920s.
          Middle East, Kokoda and other campaigns). Margaret (later
          Dame Margaret) Blackwood, whose long association with   Many generations of JCH students have their own memories of
          JCH began with her appointment as house tutor in 1951, had   ‘Anzac’, and their personal and family stories that have shaped
          served in the Women’s Army Air Force (WAAF) as a cipher   our history since 1886. For me, it has been an honour to hear
          officer and then as a senior administrator and Squadron   just a few of these stories. College Fellow Dr Olive Mence
          Leader. Margaret Henderson assumed the rank of Captain in   (1939) still remembers students gathering in the Common
          the Australian Army Medical Corps, as doctors and nurses   Room (now the SCR) in her first year at JCH as Prime Minister
          throughout Australia further developed techniques and   Menzies announced that Australia was once again at war
          procedures to deal with a new generation of combat wounds   with Germany.  College Fellow Barbara Falk (Cohen 1929)
          and damaged young men returning from the Middle East or   told me, upon her election as a College Fellow in 2005, that
          New Guinea.                                       she did find it hard to take some matters at the University too
                                                            seriously.  When I asked her why, she recalled standing on the
          As the Second AIF added new names to the honour rolls of   deck of a convoy ship and holding her new born baby as they
          the Great War, the College reflected a nation in which women   steamed from Britain to America in 1942.  She remembered
          once again found greater roles and responsibilities opened up   talking to the world-famous political philosopher Isaiah Berlin
          by the necessities of war. With victory, gendered expectations   as together they watched a German torpedo cross the ship’s
          of domestic duties returned.  On Remembrance Day 1945,   bow, reflecting on that fine line in the water separating what
          the City of Melbourne Civil Defence Organisation presented   became a long and distinguished life from near certain death.



























        8   LUCE  Number 14  2015
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