Minna Brennan
Minna Brennan taught at the Kelvin Grove Infant School during World War Two. She now resides in the Hilltop Gardens retirement village in Kelvin Grove, which overlooks the Kelvin Grove Urban Village.
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Kelvin Grove Girls and Infants School 1942
My name is Mrs Minna Brennan. The Kelvin Grove Girls and Infants School was a practising school where teacher trainees came weekly to gain experience. I taught there from 1940 to 1943. I felt somewhat inferior although I knew I had infant specialty, but I wasn’t a showy teacher. The others were experts. I admired them greatly. My friend of training college days, Beth McClary, was posted there too and she was good company. She later became head teacher of West End Infants School. Wartime Brisbane,1942, at Kelvin Grove has special memories. Teachers returned to school the last week of January, without students attending until March. During this pupil-free time, we trudged the steep hills of Kelvin Grove in the heat of February enquiring of what each household was going to do in case of invasion. We filled in forms about their intended movements.
Meanwhile slit trenches were being dug in the school grounds. Invasion was still imminent – the schools re-opened but only half of the children attended at any given time. This was so that only half the children would be bombed if such a bombing should occur. Teachers had to arrange half days: Group A children attended 8am to 12 noon and Group B from 1 to 5pm. One of my duties was to ensure that the children had plenty of practice getting into the slit trenches. I was at school for what could have been the real thing. Sirens sounded and we took up our positions. I believe there were Jap planes nearby but they didn’t get in very close, fortunately. We had three or four months of this routine until there was victory in the Coral Sea. One special day I recall in May 1942 was when I was called to the head teacher’s office because there was a visitor waiting for me. She vacated the office because it was my soldier boyfriend, to whom I wrote daily, that was there. He was on route from Townsville where he was posted to a signalists course in Sydney. He saluted some of my colleagues on his way to see me and these ladies were not used to this kind of treatment, and greatly enjoyed the salute and often repeated the story with great glee.
“Oh, yes well y’know, this little girl and she’s got a boyfriend and we’re old maids and we know better than things like that…”
