b'A H I S T O R Y O F C O O G E E P R E Phis interest, were taught. As a rule, he chose not to do the home-workinthesesubjectsandinvariablyhadtofacetheconse-quences. Nimmo would go over to the marble masonic plaquefixed to the wall in the the corner of the room and jump up toretrieve the feather duster hanging on the nail beside it. (By thistime, Nimmo had moved from Glebe Gully and feather dusterswere more accessiblealthough they too had to be replaced eachmonth.) Then, out in the passage, Nimmo would apply four cutstoyoungThompsonshandforfailingtocompletethewritinghomework and, half an hour later, another four for no mapping.After school, Rob would join the tennis group who walked to thecourts at Clovelly for tennis coaching. For Robs parents, this wasmoney wasted: on Wednesday afternoons his fingers were alwaystoo swollen to hold a racquet.The caning continues to this day, of coursecontributing tothe uniqueness of Coogee Prep. It is still administered frequentlyand with effect and in the same spirit as before. The only practicechange has been anatomicalnow the thwack is received on therump instead of the hand; and Mr. Brown prefers the long cane tothe feather duster.TheonlyothergenerallyacceptedpunishmentinNimmostime was Linesusually the only weapon in the arsenal of thewomen teachers. Sometimes the recalcitrant boy had to write outhis name, in full, five hundred timeswhich was particularlyhardforthosewithmultiplegod-parents.MauriceGulson(192432) remembers Ronald Arthur Stuart Thurlow, whose fam-ily made Akubra hats, ruing the day he was baptised.In more recent times, there has been a move away from Lines,towards Words. A boy may be asked to write out a list of three hun-dredwords,eachhavingnotlessthanfiveletters.Thereisanunderstanding that no word may be repeated more than five times.Various methods of writing five-at-a-time have been devised overthe years, but with little success. More promising, however, hasbeen the boys foresight in building up caches of words-in-waiting.Pages of words are prepared during idle moments and filed awayagainst the day of punishment, when they are presented to theteacher without more ado.5 3'