Interview with Diana Riddell, Student Association Secretary and Arts Centre Manager

Interview conducted 9 December 2009, at Emeritus Faculty
Producer, Interviewer and Editor - Peter Stewart
Engineer - Nik Fominas

Biographical introduction: Diana Gould was born in Chelsea UK in 1929. After attending state schools in London, Di matriculated from Wimbledon Girls' Grammar then worked as a receptionist in a cancer clinic. She married John Riddell, an economist, in London 19xx and had two sons. In 1963 John was recruited by Treasury in the Australian Government and the family moved to Canberra, where Di became attended to her sons as they adapted to life in Canberra; later, she worked part-time as a doctor's receptionist. The family bought land in Wongoola Close, in O'Connor, and built a family home in which they lived for more than 30 years. They moved to a smaller house in Nicholls, in the Gungahlin area in Canberra's north.

Di was Administrative Secretary in the Student Association in the Australian National University from 1965 until 1990, then Manager of the ANU Arts Centre until compulsorily retired by the university in 1995. Since then, she has been a board member of the Canberra Labor Club and the ACT Drug and Alcohol Agency, Justice of the Peace in the ACT Magistrates' Court, membership secretary of ANU Emeritus Faculty, and full-time carer for her husband John Riddell in the final years of his life, to 2008. .

Interview abstract: Among the early friends made by the Riddells in Canberra, was Tony Hartnell, producer of the ANU Revue, an annual theatrical event which was one of the few theatre productions available to the citizens of Canberra in the early days of the Australian National University. As a result of that contact, Di was asked in 1964 to fill in for a few weeks for an absent member of staff in the Student Association office. She did, to begin a presence there which lasted more than 20 years. Di soon became Administrative Secretary of the SA, and became involved in a struggle consequent on problems beginning to beset Australia's universities. At ANU, the struggle manifested as contention between the SA and the ANU Council over student representation on Council, a concept quite foreign to the conservative and traditional burghers that ruled ANU Council and much of Canberra in those days. However, that sort of conservatism was not characteristic of a certain core of executive officers of the university itself - the Vice Chancellor [John Crawford], Academic Registrar [Colin Plowman], and Registrar [George Dicker], for example. These people became important allies of the student body at ANU, and important friends of Di Riddell.

The students eventually won this struggle - the SA President, and elected representatives of undergraduates and postgraduates were seated at Council in 1966. This was also the year of federal government commitment of Australian conscripts to the American war in Vietnam - the beginning of six years of bitter strife on Australian campuses, as students voiced and demonstrated their solidarity with the mostly unwilling conscripts. Women's rights developed as another cause of contention with authorities, both on and off campus. Di and the SA office became the centre of organisational activities in these and other causes, including student housing, condom vending machines on campus, and the early stages of drug use and abuse by students and staff. The first national Aquarius Festival [arts and culture, 1971], a huge undertaking catering under a circus big-top for some thousands of local and visiting students, and the nascent Aboriginal Embassy [1972] also were incubated by the SA with Di's involvement.

After several confrontations, on and off campus, in which Di was sometimes directly involved, she soon established a working relationship with ACT police, magistrates, and judges such that large sums of bail money for mass-arrested students no longer had to be moved from the SA offices to the ACT courts, or even sighted, by the authorities. Di's recognisance satisfied the authorities in many cases. Di's [and Colin Plowman's] relationship with Ron Dillon [Commissioner of ACT Police] were important in generating trust between police and the university such that police agreed not to intrude on the campus [except for serious criminal cases] unless invited by university officials.

In the late 1960s, the university established a campus health centre headed by Dr Brian Furnass. Soon after, Brian recruited Patricia Sorby as community nurse, resident in Garran Hall to provide a 24-hour on-call emergency service for students. Pat and Di became close friends, and an important duo in developing health services geared to university student needs. With increasing drug use among students, plus issues surrounding birth control and abortion confronting students, and increasing financial pressures related to tuition fees and living costs, stress was high among this cohort of students. Pat and Di and the SA set up welfare services and advisory systems accessible through the SA and health centre, with few questions asked. The Cottage was established by the SA, using one of the original residences on the ANU campus, provided rent-free by the Chancelry. The Cottage was a place of refuge and time-out for the most stressed and vulnerable students, personally overseen by Pat Sorby. It was soon recognised as a model for other universities around Australia - a means to help the most psychologically and financially disadvantaged students, including where necessary the children of such students.

A new level of energy was released on the campus in 1972, with the Whitlam Labor election victory promising an education revolution. Most important for undergraduate students was the abolishing of course fees, and a generally higher level of funding for teaching and learning. This opened the university option for many thousands of young Australians who heretofore could not access university education. About a year later, influenced by Aboriginal activists such as Marcia Langton and other ANU students, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was raised outside [Old] Parliament House, and with continuing ANU student support, soon became a permanent fixture there. Important elements of this action could be traced back to the SA office, and Di Riddell.

The development of student activities in the Childers Street precinct of the campus was also an initiative developed by the SA. This area included the Childers St Hall [later the Drill Hall, now the ANU art exhibitions building], a centre for theatre and concerts, the School Without Walls [SWOW] an experiment in alternative secondary school education, the Food Coop, and informal meeting spaces for student and community activities. Lennox House [near the present Old Canberra House, previously the residence of the British High Commissioner, and after that the famous ANU Staff Centre] and the Corin Huts were provided by the Chancelry for low cost student accommodation under combined SA and university supervision. Later, after badgering by the SA and Di Riddell, some university owned off-campus housing stock was added. The community radio station 2XX was begun in the 1970s, staffed and operated by ANU SA members.

In the mid 1970s Di and the SA persuaded the Chancelry to establish a student welfare loan fund, run informally from the SA office and supervised by a small, independent management committee. The campus branch of the Westpac bank provided the loan funds and the ANU guaranteed payment of interest on loans. Unfortunately for Westpac, there were no practicably enforceable guarantees covering principal of the loans, which led a few years later [as students disappeared back into their communities, loans unpaid] to substantial write-offs and Westpac's withdrawal from the scheme. The bank's place was taken by the ANU Credit Union, which with the Chancelry tightened conditions of lending, to ensure the later recovery of at least a reasonable proportion of loans. The project then ran soundly for many years, providing hundreds of students with small sums [typically a few hundred dollars] to tide them over short periods of difficulty, and costing the university and the Credit Union little financially.

In the late 1970s, the SA established a Cultural Affairs Committee, with such [later] show business and media luminaries as Richard Roxburgh, Penny Chapman, John Stephens, and Andrew Pike members from time to time of the committee. By now, the annual ANU Student Revues had lapsed, but Di and Val McKelvey persuaded the university to fund the building of the ANU Arts Centre, though funding was sufficient only to provide a building shell, without stage equipment or auditorium fit-out. By skillful scrounging and persuasion, Di and Val gradually put those deficiencies right, and a new era of theatre and music began on the ANU campus .

Di's interest in theatre and musical production steadily evolved to the point that in the mid 1980s she was both managing the SA office, and staging productions with Val McKelvey in the Arts Centre. The Centre steadily became more or less financially independent, cross-subsidising serious music and plays from more profitable popular concerts and other events suited to the Centre. The Centre also provided a home for Paul Thom, a talented musician who was also a member of academic staff, teaching philosophy. Paul mounted productions of baroque opera that were to attract national attention, assembling from time to time singers and instrumentalists [using authentic instruments] from many locations in Australia: another national activity for the national capital, compliments of Di and the SA! The Arts Centre later provided a home for the short-lived Canberra Opera.

In 1990, the SA was dissolved, replaced by a Student Representative Council, a less autonomous, more conservative vehicle for student governance. Di moved to a full-time university-funded position as manager of the Arts Centre [an opportunity too for her to gain a few years of superannuation funding - the SA had employed her on contract for nearly 25 years, which in those days gave her none of the usual benefits of full-time employment, including a superannuation fund].

In 1995, Di was compulsorily retired by the university. Knowing the threat posed by idle hands, she then became a member of the Boards of the ACT Drug and Alcohol Agency and the Canberra Labor Club, embarked on part-time work as a marriage celebrant, and as a Justice of the Peace in the ACT Magistrates Court - in the last case seeing some of her old world from a different side of the bench, as it were. In 1999 she helped found ANU Emeritus Faculty, and soon after joined its committee where she now serves as the Membership Secretary, engaged with many of the old friends and academic colleagues who were so supportive of her during her days with the SA and the Arts Centre.

Over the past decade, Di's husband John's health deteriorated to a point that he required her full-time care. John died in 2008. Di now looks forward to some optimal blend of new and interesting challenges, and a restful, contemplative retirement. .