Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/48

26 We visited one of the intermediary schools, the Perth Modern School, as it is called, at Leederville, a suburb between Perth and Cottesloe Beach. We found a handsome red brick building, looking like a Nonconformist college in one of our older Universities. In the large, well-kept grounds there is room for football, tennis, hockey, and a gymnasium is provided in a detached building.

The school is admirably constructed for its purpose, the classrooms opening out of a large central hall. We were unexpected and unannounced. In the course of our researches in pursuit of the headmaster we were impressed with the excellent discipline and tone of a school in which the children's attention was not to be distracted by the presence of strangers glancing into their classrooms in passing. The teachers, masters, and mistresses, all wore university gowns. The headmaster, alert and enthusiastic, showed us over his spacious, airy school-buildings, including the well-equipped laboratory and the department of domestic economy. Western Australia does not neglect the practical side of its children's education, and here the girls are taught dressmaking, millinery, and cooking. The dining-rooms of the staff, and those pupils whose homes are at a distance, had the air of a well-appointed restaurant, with its small tables daintily