Sir Robert Menzies

Posted in 1910

  • Wesley College MelbourneTakes up his scholarship at Wesley College in Melbourne:

The young Robert won scholarships and moved to Melbourne where he attended Wesley College. A contemporary, Percy Joske, remembered him as 'a gangling type of boy, growing rapidly, with intense energy and tremendous self-assurance'.
Video script Menzies in his time, 1994

  • Despite his father James' instructions to seek enrolment at Scotch College, Bob wanted to stay with friends from Grenville who were going to Wesley College and went instead for interview there and was accepted:

Father James was not pleased and the disobedient boy found himself on his mettle: 'You may suppose that having had this bad year at Grenville and having been given the rounds of the kitchen by my somewhat peppery parent about it, I knew that when I went to Wesley I had to put my nose down, otherwise all hope of the University was out'.
A W Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life. Vol 1 1894-1943, 1993 p 18.