Ethel Hemming (Bates, 1940)
A century of memories
Despite graduating more than 85 years ago, memories of Girls Grammar are still sharp for Ethel Hemming. At 102, she readily recounts the names of favourite teachers and tricks girls used to get around strict uniform rules in the 1930s.
Today, Ethel is the proud matriarch of four generations of Grammar Women, with one great-granddaughter in Year 10 in 2026.
`I only attended Girls Grammar for two years and loved every minute of it,’ she remembers of her time at the Spring Hill campus in the 1930s. `We had to wear black stockings all year and had to have our gloves—and, of course, there wasn’t any air-conditioning. It was so strict in those days. But that was our uniform and we just accepted it.’
Classes were held in a building known as The Cottage, which stood next to Main Building on land now occupied by the Research and Learning Centre. At break time, Ethel said girls had to pass a uniform check, ensuring they had hats and gloves before being allowed out.
Underlining that some things remain constant across the eras, there were always lost or forgotten uniform items, along with inventive ways to solve such problems. Ethel laughed remembering girls walking out the front door of The Cottage, before throwing their gloves back through open windows for friends to don before walking out.
Ethel, front row second from left, on a trip to Lone Pine
Equally strict, Ethel said, was a policy forbidding BGGS students from talking to boys, particularly those at BGS, while in uniform—even on buses or while walking to School. `One of my friends was a twin and her brother went to Boys Grammar and she wasn’t allowed to talk to her own brother.’
A keen student, who earned a merit award for her aptitude in mathematics (and never forgot her gloves), Ethel would have loved to continue her Schooling beyond Form V, the equivalent of Year 10, but with Australia still in the grip of the Great Depression, it was a luxury her family could not afford.
Like many young women, Ethel graduated into an office job and was trained in the use of a complex accounting machine known as a comptometer. Few people had the skill to use it efficiently, but Ethel’s mastery became a double-edged sword when war broke out.
She enlisted in the Australian Women’s Army Service in 1943, living with other recruits in tents at Yeronga while she completed her training. With specialised comptometry skills, Ethel was swiftly snapped up for defence invoicing duties, first based out of Moorelands House in Toowong, then Cloudland in Fortitude Valley, where staff performed fitness drills on the sprung dancefloor between office tasks.
Although she was quickly promoted to the rank of corporal, Ethel was frustrated—and a little bored—doing the same tasks she had in peacetime, saying she wished she followed the lead of a friend who wrote on her application: `I don’t want to be working in an office.’
`I wished I could have done more,’ she said.
Ethel served in the Australian Women's Army from 1943 to 1946
Throughout the war Ethel maintained a correspondence with a young man from Brisbane, Lloyd Mayo Hemming, who fought with the 2/2nd Anti-Tank Regiment in the Middle East, before serving in New Guinea and Borneo.
Interestingly, Ethel said the wartime mail system put today’s to shame. She would write to Lloyd in New Guinea and receive a reply within four days. `But now—I’ve just been to a 100th birthday party and the invitation took a week to come to me.’
With their courtship buoyed by military express post and leave visits, the couple decided to marry, but their plan was almost derailed when Lloyd was involved in the infamous Battle of Balikpapan in Borneo in July 1945. Just weeks before the Japanese surrender, more than 220 Australian soldiers were killed in the operation, with Lloyd narrowly avoiding becoming one of them. During fighting a bullet pierced his tin helmet but fortunately for Lloyd, Ethel and generations of Hemming offspring, it just skimmed his scalp.
`Fortunately it (the bullet) didn’t go straight down, or he’d be dead,' Ethel said. `It went in at an angle and shaved part of his head. My son in Melbourne still has the tin helmet with a hole in it.’
Ethel and Lloyd were together for 71 years before he passed away in 2017, aged 94.
A lifetime member of Toowong RSL sub-branch, Ethel has always marked Anzac Day, but never marched, preferring to leave that to her husband when he was able. After dropping Lloyd into Brisbane city, she would go home and watch the march on TV, often shedding a tear as she remembered all those who had served.
Ethel—who only last year moved from independent living into supported aged care in Brisbane’s west— said Anzac Day was still a special time. She would mark the day with fellow residents, including several centenarian veterans, at her aged care home.
It was perhaps more important than ever in today’s tumultuous world to reflect on the cost of conflict, and the sacrifices made by generations of servicemen and women, she said, praising growing numbers of young people turning out to Anzac ceremonies.
`I hope they think about what they went through and why we have such a wonderful country.’
Four generations of Grammar Women in 2016: Janice Wilke (Hemming, 1965), Alexandria DiMichele (2016), Ethel Hemming (Bates, 1940), Natalie DiMichele (2018), Rachael DiMichele (Wilke, 1988)
Awarded for Maths
Ethel, left, and schoolmate Val Gardner at a BGGS picnic day at Redcliffe in 1938
Ethel would marry serviceman Lloyd Mayo Hemming just months after the war ended
The couple was happily married for 71 years before Lloyd passed away aged 94 in 2017.