About – NTHS&Tech OSA

New Town High Old Scholars’ Association was formed in 2019, our Centenary Year.

Hobart Junior Technical School opened in Bathurst St Hobart in 1919. The building now houses the Tasmania Police Museum.

In the early 1950s this school was superceeded by Hobart Technical High School (known as ‘Tech’) at Midwood Street, New Town. In 1962, the school was renamed New Town High School.

In planning events for the Centenary, a committee of former students and NTHS staff decided that forming an association was the best way to reconnect old scholars and provide opportunities to assist in various projects of benefit to the current and future students.

NTHOSA – New Town High Old Scholars’ Association is open for former students of the above schools. It currently operates as a sub-committee of NTHS School Association (parents of current students) and the intention is to incorporate in the near future.

Membership is currently free, however a $20 annual charge will be introduced to assist in planning activities of benefit to members and the school.

If you would like to become a member, please complete the short form here.

Special offers and discounts are being arranged for NTHOSA members. If you manage a business and would like to promote your goods and services to NTHOSA members, please contact us here.

Myths and Legends

A Confession

My first contact with the school was in 1942 when the Junior Technical School was in Bathurst Street and I was a student studying Chemistry at University. Our laboratory was on the second floor immediately above the broad driveway on which the school assemblies were held. The boys were tightly packed into the limited space available and we looked down upon them, as it were, from a great height. We used to sprinkle them with a fine spray of water blown from apparatus called wash bottles. They would look up at us in frustrated desperation. They could do nothing about it. They were too crowded to be able to move aside and, under the discipline of the school, unable to create a disturbance. They were sitting ducks. The university students very unfairly took advantage of the situation. But if looks could kill, we would have been consigned to everlasting perdition.

Twenty-four years later I re-appeared on the scene as Headmaster. It is remarkable how greatly perspectives can change in twenty-four years.

Des Mahoney

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