Peter McFarlane (Minlaton)
My experience goes back to 1962, my first year as a High School teacher in Minlaton when Neil was a year 10 student (and talented tennis player). That year the Young Elizabethan Players with actors like Dennis Olsen, Edmund Pegge and Doreen Warburton playing multiple roles came to the Institute for a couple of days and, with minimum sets and simple costumes, performed a variety of Shakespearean plays.
A few weeks later the Institute turned into a cinema and I went there to see Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I was there with an Audrey Hepburn fan but all we saw when the movie started was a New York street and an elongated and squashed yellow Chevrolet taxi which froze for an interminable amount of time and which drew (as Neil referred to) lots of laughter and comments from the moviegoers. ‘C’mon Ern!’ (Ern Martin, the local electrician and part time projectionist) ‘Get it sorted mate! I’m on the tractor in the morning and Mick here has to get up and milk the cows!’
A few weeks later the Institute became the polling booth for the state election. Our Principal (or Headmaster as he was called then) was one of the scrutineers and he recounted the story to us on the Monday morning of how he had just shut the heavy doors at 6 o’clock as required to begin the count when there was a heavy knocking outside. It was Ozzie, the local drunk. In those days it was 6 o’clock closing in hotels and Ozzie had been delayed.
‘Let me in, you buggers! I’ve got to cast me vote,’ he shouted.
The Headmaster obliged and reopened the doors. Ozzie staggered in, had his name marked off and went into the polling booth where he scrawled something on a ballot paper, scrunched it up and stuffed it into the ballot box. After he’d left, the headmaster closed the doors and opened the box to begin the count. Of course there on top was Ozzie’s scrunched up voting slip which read: ‘They’re all a mob of bastards!’
Over my four years in the town the Institute was used in many other ways, many of which Neil has described. The Institute was founded in 1880, revamped in its art deco form in 1939 and is still used extensively in many different ways today.
There are many more stories and anecdotes to be told – more than one hundred years of them.
Votes and Ghosts
In country towns institute buildings have been the heart of their communities – for meetings, council offices, dances, performances, government elections, picture shows, church services and concerts. Peter McFarlane relates an incident from 1962 when Minlaton Town Hall was used as a polling place.
In 2023 most institute buildings are still used for the same activities as fifty and a hundred years ago Hoyleton Institute is now privately owned and has become the holiday home and workshop for John Hayward and his friend Will. Traces of the building’s former life inspired John to undertake a PhD to research these ghosts. His story about using the building is now on this site. You can also read an article about his research at The Hoyleton Institute Stage Door Inscriptions and the Ghosts of Forgotten Travelling Performers.