1921 - 2006

Maurice Symonds was born in 1921, in Bondi, the third of six children and the grandson of Russian and English immigrants. His father died in 1925 leaving his widow with Maurice and five siblings.

From Bondi Public School, Maurice gained entry to the first ever Opportunity Class at Woollahra Public School. He went on to Sydney Boys’ High School and although he attained entrance to the University of Sydney, Maurice accepted a Teacher’s Scholarship to Sydney Teachers College. These scholarships paid a small allowance which allowed some financial self -sufficiency for bright students whose families couldn’t afford to provide that support. He completed a specialist visual arts program. This led to Maurice working as a specialist art teacher at regional schools during the 1940s and 50s. Then he became a department head at Sydney Teachers College in 1956. In 1957 he moved to Alexander Mackie College, where he worked on the first program offering full, four-year degrees integrating art and art education.

Maurice’s first wife Valerie Mead, who he had married in 1948 died in 1961, leaving him with three young children to care for. In 1965, he married Ann Burley, who would become Waverley Council’s first female Deputy Mayor in 1977. They had two children.

Instrumental in the creation of the very first Waverley Library which opened on Bondi Road in 1964, Maurice had written a letter to Waverley Council advocating the cultural need for a good library in the community. Despite some strong opposition on Council, this letter convinced the mayor to use his casting vote to create the Library.

Maurice also led a team of friends and supporters in transforming the bathing sheds at the Bondi Pavilion into an arts centre. In 1973, the Bondi Theatre Group made a proposal to Waverley Council to convert the old Palm Court Ballroom into a theatre. With the help of a $50,000 grant, work was completed the following year, and Maurice was appointed the inaugural Chairman of the Board of the Bondi Pavilion Theatre. The theatre was officially opened by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on March 23, 1974 with David Gulpilil dancing the theatre into life.

He was a passionate supporter of the arts. In the early 1970s, there were no comprehensive art education textbooks for junior secondary students in Australia. Maurice was asked to be the senior author of what became the highly successful publication ‘The Visual Arts’, first published in 1972. From 1983 to 1986, he served on the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, and throughout the 1970s and '80s and into the '90s he sponsored young Australian artists.

After retiring as Director of Art Education at Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education, Maurice became the director of the Sydney program of Rollins College in Florida, USA. This was an Australian Studies program designed for American students enrolled in colleges in the USA. Maurice also lectured in visual arts in this program from 1981-95.

Maurice led successful, and at the time, innovative art tours to Europe for several years from 1975. Soon after his last overseas trip to Europe and New York in 1998, Maurice’s health declined. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2002 and suffered from other age-related illnesses before his death in 2006 aged 85.

Courtesy Katharine Symonds and the Waverley Library Local Studies Collection.