One of the highlights of last week’s highly successful 70 Club Luncheon was a celebration of the 60^th anniversary of the first performance of the Cadet Unit Brass Band in 1958. The Band had been formed the previous year by Jack Butler, a teacher at Newington for thirty-five years and a special guest at the Luncheon. Many of his musicians from that era also attended.

The performance by the present-day NCCU Band was not only a wonderful part of the celebration but also a link to that earlier incarnation of the Band. Its history, however, goes back a lot further.

Newington’s first Cadet band was a drum, fife and bugle band formed in 1886. In addition to Cadet Corps parades, the band played at major school events, such as the raising of the first school flag in 1899, and remained a feature of the College’s musical life until at least 1911.

The next chapter in the band’s history started in 1949, when a drum band was formed. Not to be outdone, the Air Training Corps, Newington’s other cadet unit, formed its own drum band, often practising and parading with the Cadet drummers. By 1952 bugles had been added.

Early in 1957 the decision was made to expand the Cadet band to a brass band. After a fundraising effort, the first instruments were purchased and a group of new musicians received training. While primarily intended to serve the musical needs of the Cadet Unit, it was hoped ‘…that this enterprise will give a much-needed lift to the musical life of the school.’ As well as marching at the head of the Cadet Unit during parades, the band played at weekly assemblies, Chapel services and a range of other occasions. Under Allan Bellhouse, AM, Jack Butler’s successor as Bandmaster, the band won a series of Cadet Band competitions between 1966 and 1970.

In 1980 it was announced that the Cadet Brass Band was to be revived. Training started late the following year, and its first public performance was at the 1982 Anzac Day observance. This version of the band was short-lived, however, and did not continue beyond 1983.

The most recent revival of the NCCU Band, like that of the 1950s, started with a drum band. An initiative of the Unit’s Commanding Officer, Major Rodney Wood, a Drum Corps was introduced in 2012, ‘adding a sound and rhythm that had been missing from our parades.’ The next year it marched in the Sydney Anzac Day march for the first time in thirty years. The revived full Band first performed at the Centenary of Anzac events in 2015 and continues to grace Cadet and other College events, continuing a tradition that now stretches back 132 years, and counting.

David Roberts
College Archivist