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Geelong Deanery |
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Reflections on Teaching in a Country School: How Times Have Changed!It was January 1951. I had completed my training as a teacher the previous year and was anxiously awaiting the notice of my first appointment, which arrived two days before school was due to commence. After searching road and rail maps, and after a number of phone calls, the location of the school was found to be in the ‘Big Desert’ – north – between Nhill and Kaniva. I caught the train to Nhill and was picked up and taken to one of the four properties that were located in a cleared sandy area surrounded by scrub. My accommodation was an unlined tin hut, high on steel wheels. The hut, 2m x 2m contained a narrow bed, and a narrower tin bath. On hot days the temperature reached 140 degress and on the frosty mornings the icicles hung from the tin roof. I was not welcome to eat in the farmhouse, use the bathroom or the toilet. My first view of the school showed me a mud brick building 5m x 5m. The school contained five desks, a small teacher’s table and a fireplace. Equipment and library books were non-existent. My mode of transport was a bicycle that could not be ridden on the sandy track. There were 9 pupils, one in each grade 1 to 8, plus one in year 9. I felt the challenge and loneliness were beyond me. However, I survived and I believe the children learnt something. I revisited the site 45 years later and found the school had disintegrated, the hut still existed and the area and tracks as desolate as in 1951. The one change was my former pupils. They were in their 50s and still in the area. Bill Bond |
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