Sure You Can!

Hallowed halls of horseplay

Damien Murphy

October 25, 2008

One Saturday night years ago Peter Larratt, a year 12 student at Melbourne's Xavier College, led a horse up the stairs to the first-floor verandah where boarders lay asleep. Boys from farms in north-east Victoria and the Riverina, the boarders apparently thought little of waking up to a horse - but it was different for the Jesuits.

The animal, rustled by Larratt while grazing innocently in a nearby paddock beside the Yarra River, was no mountain pony and couldn't walk down the stairs, so the priests had to hire a crane to hoist the horse off the verandah before celebrating Sunday Mass in the chapel.

In a week that Xavier boys behaving badly attracted national headlines of the "Elite school scandal" variety, Larratt's horseplay seems a distant echo from an innocent time. When Larratt was at his prankster peak in 1966, Jesuits lay about the school like autumn leaves.

The trouble is, you can't find a good Jesuit anywhere these days;

maybe the paucity of priests is the root cause of Xavier's problems with "muck-up" day, bullying and drinking.

Link (here) to the full article.

Photo is of the Xavier College Chapel