Wide-ranging High Achiever Won Respect

The Age

Saturday July 21, 2007

Anne Latreille

NINA ALISON CRONE, OAM

TEACHER, HISTORIAN, LINGUIST, JOURNALIST

21-8-1934 - 14-7-2007

NINA Crone, who has died in Melbourne after a short illness, aged 72, was a born teacher. She was fascinated by history and language. She loved to acquire knowledge and to pass it on - with joy, flair and expertise - to others.

The high point of her career was 20 years at the helm of Melbourne Girls Grammar School, where her armoury of skills was well suited to the position of headmistress, which she took up in 1975. These skills - intellect, a capacity for hard work, negotiation "smarts", genuine interest in young people, and charm mingled with a somewhat fey quality - were deployed not only in education but in spheres as disparate as journalism, garden history, volunteer work with community groups, and her family.

Crone's Londoner father, a master mariner, met his Australian wife-to-be in Sydney, and their blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter - the first of their four children - was born in England. The family moved to Australia in 1938, and Crone was educated at Presbyterian Ladies College, where she was a prefect, magazine editor and made lifelong friendships.

She studied French, politics and history at Melbourne University, and after considering joining the diplomatic service, she spent two years as a teacher before sailing to Europe in the late 1950s. She taught in England and Switzerland, picked grapes in France, and built at a refugee camp in Austria.

Back home, in 1962 she added a bachelor of education to her arts degree, taught for several years, then became a radio and television producer in the ABC's new school broadcasting division. She felt that experience outside the academic world would make her a better teacher.

Her time as leader of Melbourne Girls Grammar spanned an era of educational and cultural change and was full of unremitting hard work. Living on campus, she led expansion of the school in terms of curriculum, staffing, buildings - including a library and audio-visual centre named for her in 1987 - and community outreach. She monitored the progress of each student, beautifully gift-wrapping the books given to year 12 students at their valedictory dinner.

Crone had many and varied involvements in the wider educational sphere, and received an OAM in 2000 for her sustained contribution to education.

She kept up outside interests - writing for The Age under a pseudonym, and working in the shop at the Royal Botanic Gardens.

When faced with a problem, she preferred to "massage" others into adjusting their way of thinking. Behind the scenes there could be flurries, but out in front she was a model of calm, clear-thinking good sense, and she commanded respect. She always stressed the value of listening.

Her funeral this week filled Christ Church South Yarra to capacity - a tribute to her spirit and energy. As was this quotation found among her notes, which she had taken from St Matthew's gospel: "The eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light." Beside it she had noted: "It is in the trimming, polishing and fuelling of this lamp . . . that the vocation of the educator lies."

When she retired in 1995, Crone moved to Walkerville in South Gippsland, where she had bought (and cleared) a bush block in the 1970s as a retreat. She extended the house she had built, and developed a garden of Australian plants suited to the poor soil and strong winds.

She didn't hesitate when asked to fill a sudden vacancy at a school in Warragul, 90 minutes away. Twice a week she drove across the hills to teach French - her abiding love - to two small classes. This was the start of a close involvement with her new community in areas such as the Red Cross, tourist information and local history.

An enthusiastic member of the Australian Garden History Society, she edited its quarterly journal, combining as it did her remarkable knowledge of history and her love of plants and gardens. Her inquiring mind and intellectual rigour enriched the publication. And she was a regular at garden working bees.

Increasing interests in Melbourne brought her back in late 2003, and she joined the East Melbourne Historical Society, was active at the Lyceum Club, walked in the Fitzroy Gardens, and carried out research - in Melbourne and France - into the life of Madame Liet, the first French teacher at Melbourne Girls Grammar. And, she became a guide at the W. R. Johnston house museum, where she found that talking about decorative arts was another way of interpreting history.

Three months ago she devised and led a "magic tour" of the collection for children and their grandparents. As preparation, she read the Harry Potter books; then she donned a wizard's hat and captivated the participants.

This vigorous, warm personality - Miss Crone to generations of schoolgirls, Nina to her friends - is survived by her siblings, Graeme and John Crone, and Eleanor Leigh, and by her much-loved nieces and nephews.

Anne Latreille was a colleague - in several spheres - and friend of Nina Crone.

© 2007 The Age

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