Impressment: Managers, Actors and Impressed Boys

Frederick Charles Faulkner (1852 - 1924) was the longest serving Headmaster at the Perth High School (the present-day Hale School) from (1890-1914). Arriving to take up the Headmastership as a bachelor, he married into one of Perth's most prominent families and then proceeded to revolutionise secondary education in Western Australia.Working in ramshackle buildings, that were barely fit for purpose, he developed the curriculum, set a high standard for university entrance qualifications and produced four Rhodes scholars in his time at the school. He also pursued a policy for his boys of a 'healthy mind in a healthy body' and fostered all sports, gymnasium activities, calisthenics and physical education. He always maintained his greatest achievement was developing the 'tone' of the High School boy. It is his enduring legacy.Along the way he won lasting friendships with some of the notable educators and political figures of the day and lost many fine boys on the battlefields of South Africa, Gallipoli and in Europe.For twenty-four years, he battled prejudice, litigation, a serious health crisis and tragic personal loss, but endured; setting up the Public Schools' Association and leading it, as President, for a decade, from its inception, in 1905 until his retirement. The denouement of his life was not what he had hoped for or envisaged.

On his sixteenth birthday, Cameron's life changes irrevocably. Many people see the signs but ignore them. Dr. Penny Corrigan gives Cameron a lifeline, but it is fleeting and evaporates. Cameron's mother, Genevieve, and his father, Jack, do their best, but succumb to a 'silver tongue'. Two teachers, Mr. Caledane and Mr. Johnston-Harper, inspire and challenge him. An Indigenous boy, Rick, stands shoulder to shoulder with Cameron and teaches him a 'totem word'. Others obfuscate deliberately and exacerbate situations. A false façade disguises real feelings.How this all plays out in the small wheatbelt towns of Northam, Korrelocking, and Wyalkatchem, in Western Australia, is the story of Cameron and Rick.

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Convicted of stealing a coat in 1832, Benjamin Stanton was sentenced to seven years transportation to Van Diemen's Land. He spent twelve months on the prison hulk, 'Euryalus' and then another four months on the convict transport ship 'Isabella' before arriving in Hobart Town on the 14th of November 1833.In January 1834 Benjamin was one of the first sixty-eight boys to be incarcerated at Point Puer, across the bay from Point Arthur, where a Boys' Reformatory was being established. His years at Point Puer with its deprivations, misbehaviour and severe punishments are examined in detail.With further offences, Benjamin Stanton managed to stretch his original seven years transportation to sixteen years' incarceration at Point Puer, Port Arthur and on a Hobart Town chain gang, before eventually receiving a Governor's pardon in 1849.As a thirty-year-old he left Tasmania and settled in Geelong, Victoria where he took a common law wife and had two sons, Benjamin, and George. Both these boys had large families with intriguing histories of their own. Eventually one of George's daughters, Roseanna Stanton, gave birth to her fourth illegitimate son, Charles William, in 1908. That boy became Charles William Hopkins who was my father.

Rufus Enterprise chooses Seal Island in King George Sound in the Southern Ocean of Western Australia as the site for his sealing operation. He appoints Tom Elder as his leader with four ex-convicts, Bob Beater, Dick Dental, Harry Heeler, and Sam Scullion to assist him. A group of boys are shanghaied, press-ganged, and purchased to make up the unpaid workforce on Seal Island. The boys are worked hard and treated badly, but some learn invaluable skills under the tutelage of Harry Heeler and Sam Scullion.A sudden fierce storm sees an East Indiaman ship flounder and founder near Seal Island, but efforts to get a line out to her prove futile. The ship sinks, but there is one survivor, a 'boy in fancy togs' called Adam. Adam is a problem for Rufus Enterprise. He might be worth a ransom or reward, but he also may have seen enough to bring the operation on Seal Island undone. Adam befriends Benjamin and shares with him the dream for a better life. When Rufus Enterprises hears of this so-called dream, he is furious and decides to deal the problem in a wicked way, through a ritual castaway. He retells the terrifying tales and legends of 'Old John' Sullivan to frighten the boys into submission and stamp out all talk of dreams and dreamers.Benjamin shares the dream with six others who become 'outcasts', when a 'snitch' called Jake, brings them undone. Rufus Enterprise, now infused with a black miasma, is teetering on the edge of madness, and his unstable state explodes into death and destruction. How all this is resolved is the story of the Seal Island band.

Alaric Pinder Boor lived and died more than a century ago. His fascinating life has been reconstructed using historical sources including: certificates, documents, photographs, immigration, travel and shipping lists, electoral and rate book rolls, newspaper articles, letters, war records, and interpretative paintings.The literary device of ‘faction’ has been employed. The facts have been embellished with fictional stories and conversations that may, or may not, have occurred. The aim is to reimagine a life story that should not be allowed to fade into the mists of time, and hopefully introduce Pinder Boor to a new audience who can appreciate a life well lived, but cut short far too soon.