Students: Toughening Charles at Timbertop

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High in the Australian bush country northeast of Melbourne, the "slushies" at Timbertop school scarcely paused in their chores when they got the official news: 16-year-old Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, will become one of Timbertop's "young old boys" in February. There had been rumors that the prince might transfer from Scotland's Gordonstoun School, and, while royalty is something special at "Australia's Eton," wealthy boys from throughout the world are commonplace there, and the slushies* are pretty blase about such things.

Birds, Beetles & Butterflies. Timbertop, patterned largely after Gordonstoun, is a branch of Australia's Geelong Grammar School, an exclusive institution operated by the Church of England. It is designed to toughen up 130 young aristocrats every year. The boys do all their own housekeeping except cook. They make overnight hikes across 1,300 acres of rugged Crown land, watch birds, hunt beetles, collect butterflies.

Young Charles will live in a rustic wooden dormitory, get up at 7 a.m., dress in jeans, an open shirt, sweater and desert boots. He will take his turn at serving a breakfast of cooked meal, tea, toast and milk from a nearby dairy barn, attend compulsory chapel, then turn to rigorous academic work until 3 p.m. After that come the chores, which range from polishing the chapel's huge picture window to varnishing floors, feeding the pigs, washing the dishes, cutting and carting a portion of the 500 tons of wood that the school consumes each year. In the evening he will study under a master's eye. Lights go out at 9:15.

Beneath Silver Wattle. His real mettle will be tested, however, on long cross-country runs through the steep hills. And each weekend, rain, shine or snowstorm, hiking parties set out after class on Friday, live until Sunday afternoon in the bush, cooking johnnycakes and damper (a sconelike bread). They cover up to 100 miles of trail beneath silver wattle and broad-leaf peppermint trees, scramble across crumbly dacite rocks. They also tramp six miles to reach ski runs on Mount Stirling, where there are no tows or lifts.

For all its outdoor ruggedness, however, Timbertop still accents the academic. Tough courses in English, math and science are compulsory, and boys must learn either French, German or Latin. The school charges $405 a term; it is so popular that parents normally have to apply ten years ahead of time to get their children on the Geelong waiting list.

While Australia appreciated the royal attention, its public-school administrators were somewhat miffed that the prince will attend such an upper-class school. "If the desire is for the prince to meet Australians, it is desirable for him to meet ordinary run-of-the-mill Australians," sniffed Douglas Broadfoot, an official of the New South Wales Teachers Federation. "Leaders of the government have been seriously remiss in not advising the Queen more accurately. Prince Charles might just as well stay in England and attend Eton as come to Australia and go to Geelong Grammar."

* Timbertop students spend much of their time "slushing around" in kitchen and cleaning duties.