Ajana School 1936
Where the people live
Daphne Lowth
Chapter Four - School Days
Ajana School was six kilometres from home. Located close to the cross roads formed by the North West Coastal Highway and the road to Ajana, it was a one room school built of timber with a wooden floor and a white painted corrugated iron roof. On the east side was a lean-to shelter, on the south side were two windows and on the north side were the door and two rainwater tanks.
By today's standards, the interior of the classroom would be considered primitive. In one corner was a pot-belly stove for heating the room in winter. Each of us was rostered in turn for a day to light the stove and stoke it with firewood during the day. The desks were iron framed with wooden tops. Those for the older children were long enough to seat six, while those for the younger children were designed to seat two. Along the western wall were blackboards. Near the door were the teacher's table and chair and further along this north wall was a store cupboard. On the wall behind the teacher's table we had a pegboard for hanging our hats bags and mugs. In a corner near the windows were four shelves for our library books. The school was built to hold sixteen children but at one time we had twenty three pupils in the room.
The school grounds had been covered with gravel and rolled to create a firm surface. Pepper trees and gum trees had been planted around the fence line and beneath each was a plaque dedicated to the memory of the soldiers from the Ajana District who had been killed between 1914 and 1918 while fighting in World War 1.
Adjacent to the school grounds was a hectare of bushland property known as 'the school boundary'. It was not fenced off but had a fire-break around it. Teacher took us for nature study walks in there but we were not allowed to wander on our own.
I started school in February 1935, the year in which I turned seven. Pat, who was then nine years old, had spent the previous two years at Northampton Primary School but now stayed home to go to school with me. Dad drove us to school in the old Ford car. During the winter and heavy rains, he would pick us up again in the afternoons, which meant he had to leave his farm work and carry on again after we came home.
During fine weather and all summer, Mum would harness Old Marion to the sulky and drive the six kilometres to collect us from school. If we were caught in a shower of rain we each put a wheat bag over our head to keep dry. We each had warm flannel coats but plastic raincoats had not yet been made.
Miss Coral Dunne was our first teacher. She first boarded with Aunty Belle and Uncle Tom but when they left at the end of 1934 she boarded with the Cornell family who lived about three kilometres from the school, a distance she walked each day.
Along with Pat and I, two other girls my age started school. They were Betty Cornell and Hazel Ruffin. For the previous five years there had been no girls at Ajana School and the boys resented we girls being there. They gave us a hard time. Playing a game they called "branders" they would together throw tennis balls at us with as much force as they could. This led to the girls having to stay and play on one side of the school building while the boys were able to play in the rest of the yard. However the school was raised on stumps sixty centimetres high and the boys had catapults or 'gings'. With these the boys used to shoot us with stones fired under the school. They were cruel and loved to see us cry.
The teacher often took pity on us and allowed us to eat our lunch inside and look at books. She was unable to catch the culprits because no one would say who fired the stone from the catapult. The boys were punished by all being kept in long enough after school to allow us to get away from the premises but when they promised to behave they were let out and so it started all over again.
Needless to say we four girls had bruises all over our legs and bodies.
One day dad witnessed one of these brutal, cowardly attacks. He shoved two of the boys into his car, took them back to the teacher and threatened that, if she could not control them, he would report them to the police and her to the Education Department. As a result all catapults were confiscated and the boys had to light a fire and burn the lot. From that time on the boys were regularly searched and any one found with a catapult was caned. The situation did improve.
After that group of older boys left the school, the younger boys played with us. All the children at our school left at the age of fourteen or fifteen. During the lunch break these older boys often went 'walkabout'. As they were often an hour late getting back in school, Coral Dunne's punishment was to march them up and down the rabbit-proof fence hitting them hard around the legs with a piece of pine board. She had broken a lot of canes so used pine board instead. These older boys went walkabout for a purpose. Because of droughts in the grazing areas to our north and east thousands of emus were travelling south and west in search of feed and water. This brought the emus into our farming lands where they were causing serious damage to fences and grain crops. The rabbit-proof fence that ran east west alongside the road from the Ajana siding to the school acted as a barrier to the emu migration. Here the emus, often in mobs of more than a hundred, ran up and down the fence trying to find a way through.
The older boys used to hide behind bushes along the fence, rush out into a passing mob and club down as many emus as possible. For each emu beak they took to the Northampton Shire office they received a bounty of ten cents, which in today's values would be at least one dollar. Because of the amount of damage being done by these very large mobs, emus had been declared vermin and the State government had allocated funds for the bounty being paid.
Farmers also shot emus, particularly along the rabbit-proof fence. Here, over time, hundreds of emus were killed, not only for the bounty but to use the meat which made excellent feed for the farm dogs. When the fat was rendered down the resulting oil was used to preserve leather, particularly harness, reins and saddles.
With so many emu carcases accumulating along the rabbit-proof fence it became necessary to organise busy bees to clean up. The carcases had to be manually handled to pile them into heaps which were then burned. After handling these carcases at one of these busy bees, dad became ill.
We were visiting the family of mum's brother Herbie when dad became ill and his face became swollen and red. Uncle Herbie took him in his truck to Northampton Hospital where the infection was diagnosed as erysipalis. This kept dad in hospital for over a week. We stayed that night with Auntie Marie's family and because mum was not able to drive we were taken home next day.
Mum was very frightened of the dark so while Dad was away she put us all in her bedroom at night to sleep. She often had nightmares and tried to call out for help but her cry in the night was a weird high pitched sound which woke us up. Her dream was always about a man under her bed and I have often wondered if she had had a dreadful fright some time in her life.
The school bell rang at nine o'clock each morning. We lined up in two rows and stood to attention while our teacher inspected our hands and nails to see if they were clean and as she asked us whether we had cleaned our teeth both night and morning. After marching into school we stood at our desks and sang 'God Save The King'. The words of new songs were written on the blackboard and as there was no musical instrument, the teacher used a tuning fork to make a starting note, sang the song to us over and over and so we learned the words and tune by copying her.
Every day for half an hour our teacher took us for 'Drill' that is now called Physical Education. We all had a clean wheat bag neatly folded and stored under the school on which we used to lie for some of these keep-fit exercises.
Sport took place on Friday afternoons. Depending on the season there might be skipping races or the hop-step-and-jump, games of rounders or hockey. Rounders was a baseball type of game played outside the playground where the soil was soft. We played with a tennis ball and our bat, which was made by the boys, was actually a piece of pine board carved thin at one end to make a handle.
Hockey was played on the gravelled surface in the playground. Our ball was a battered jam tin, while our sticks were a bough with a curve or knob at the end taken from a mallee tree. We all found and chopped our own sticks with a little help from dad of course.
Along the school boundary fence we built hurdles to jump. Two vertical sticks in the ground had notches cut in them so that the cross-bar could be raised higher as our jumping improved. The ground was dug over to make it soft to land on.
The school day finished at three fifteen.
In summer there was no garden as it was too hot and dry but in winter a small area was fenced off in front of the school for a garden. Each child was given a small plot. Girls grew flowers and boys grew vegetables. We all took a great deal of pride in watering and weeding our individual gardens. To keep out rabbits we put wire netting all round the garden. On wooden stands at the front of the school were two tanks of rainwater. We washed our hands in enamel basins, one for girls and one for boys, using the same water and the same soap. The last person to use each basin put the water on the garden.
Girls learned hand sewing on Tuesdays. In the early years we made potholders from hessian bags and wool but in the later years made garments for ourselves and embroidered doyleys, which we called fancywork.
My Uncle Syd was a handyman who made mugs for the children. To do this he soldered a tin handle on to a condensed milk can and then painted each mug a different colour. If a mug went rusty, he made another one. The boys called him Mr Syd. He had no children of his own and was eager to help others.
Each Tuesday afternoon Mr Syd donated his time and drove to the school in his old T-Model Ford to teach the boys woodwork. This he did under the lean-to where he built a workbench. Here the boys took turns using a fret saw and other hand tools. They made picture frames, trinket boxes, pot stands, small toys and such.
At Ajana during summer the temperature could rise to fifty degrees Celsius. By law, schoolwork was to cease at forty-one degrees Celsius. When this happened the teacher would often read to us until the sea breeze came in and the temperature dropped. Sometimes we just went home if there was no let up. As the thermometer was in the classroom it was a lot hotter outside so we went home in very hot conditions indeed. During summer, the afternoon temperatures often climbed above forty degrees for more than seven consecutive days.
During the nineteen-thirties children came to Ajana School from as far as Binnu, sixteen kilometres away. Bill Perry drove a horse and cart or sometimes rode his horse. A small yard was built in the bush using she-oak poles, and a slip-rail was used for a gate. Bill brought chaff for his horse and he gave her a bucket of water to drink. Neil Rochester rode six kilometres to school and also kept his horse in that yard. Some children walked three kilometres and others rode push bikes.
During 1936, her first year of teaching in Ajana, Jessie Peden boarded with the Cornell family and walked the three kilometres to and from school each day. The road from Cornell's followed the rabbit-proof fence where the stench of dead emus was so dreadful that Jessie had to walk with a handkerchief held over her nose.
Also during 1936, my brother Leonard Preston was born on the tenth of October at the Northampton Hospital. Leonard had thick black hair that had a silver streak through it at the back of his head. Pat became a very good nursemaid, bathing and nursing him, and we both fed and looked after him as much as possible. When Len was little I used to carry him on my hip.
I often took both my brothers for long walks along the farm tracks to pick wildflowers or collect mushrooms or sometimes just to exercise the farm dogs. On one walk we found a small dead bird which upset Leonard. He wanted to know why it had died so I told him, "Mr Fox took his bedclothes and he caught a cold and died." He repeated this all the way home and then told everyone about naughty Mr Fox.
Leonard became my little shadow and often said to me, " When I grow up I will marry you." Because he was four years younger than Charlie and there was no other child of his age in the district, he had to battle along and grow up with older children for company.
At the end of each year we all sat for exams. The last day was break up and concert, with our parents coming to the school for the afternoon. Reports were given out and each child received a book for special achievement. The books could be for achievement in writing, spelling, reading, arithmetic, history, geography, composition, sewing, woodwork and much improved. There were great story books such as "Anne of Green Gables', 'What Katie Did' 'What Katie Did Next', 'William', 'Just William', 'Tom Sawyer', 'Huckleberry Finn' and so on.
The Ruffin family had friends in Carnarvon who quite often sent down a case of bananas to our school. A transport truck off-loaded them for us at the grid through the rabbit-proof fence. The bananas were very welcome because we did not get fresh fruit very often.
From our classroom windows we were able to see these Carnarvon transport trucks struggling to climb Folly's Hill. The road was made of gravel and it was a very steep hill. Quite often a truck would stall before it reached the top. The driver would then have to let the truck roll back to the bottom of the hill and try again to drive to the top. Our teachers used to find it difficult to make us concentrate when this occurred. Sadly for us the road was improved.
The Main Roads Department dug a deep cutting through the top of the hill. To do this dynamite was used to blast the top off the hill and the road gang used picks, shovels, wheelbarrows and trucks to make a much gentler gradient over Folly's Hill. However we were then able to watch the manager of the Galena Lead mines speeding over Folly's Hill at sixty miles an hour. At that time no one else in the district had a car that could travel anywhere near as fast.
Every Monday morning at ten o'clock we used to hear the mail plane from Geraldton fly overhead on its way north to Carnarvon. Our teacher used to let us out to see this speck in the sky. It was great fun to be the first to spot the plane. Until the Second World War started in 1939, this was the only aircraft that we ever saw.
Cubs and Scouts were organised and run for the Ajana boys by a farmer called Mr Ludbrook. Together they built a bough shed at the crossroads near our school and held their meetings every Saturday morning. The Scouts and Cubs used to build the district's bonfire to celebrate Guy Fawke's Day on the fifth of November. They always made a 'guy' out of chaff bags and sat 'him' on top of the huge pile of wood. The fifth of November was also my dad's birthday and so, just after dark, he used to be asked to light the bonfire and then we all let off our crackers.
During the Christmas Holidays at the end of 1936 our teacher, Jessie Peden, bought a second hand car which she learned to drive. When she returned for the 1937 school year she boarded with my Aunty Mary and Uncle Syd and stayed with them until she was transferred to Northam High School in April 1938. Aunty Mary's father was living with her and as there were only two bedrooms in the house, Uncle Syd built a room on to the front verandah for Jessie. The room was very small with a curtain strung across one corner to create a wardrobe, a bed along one wall and packing cases covered with material to make a dressing table.
As Uncle Syd's house was at the bottom of the hill from our place, Jessie took Pat and me to school in her car, which she named 'Marguerite', and along the way she picked up Hazel Ruffin.
Early in 1937 the average attendance at Ajana school fluctuated between six and eight. However there had to be an average attendance of eight for a school to remain open so mum and dad were asked to allow Charlie to attend to build up the average attendance. At the time he was only four and a half years old as his birthday is in June. He did not attend all the time during 1937 but became a full time student in February the following year. Esme Mitchell also started school with Charlie and Jessie took them to school in her car as well.
When Jessie Peden was transferred in April 1938, Mrs Geraldine Clark came to teach us. Unlike Jessie, Mrs Clark rode her bike the six and a half kilometres to the school.
I was now ten years old so our parents bought Pat and me a second hand bike each that we had to learn to ride in a hurry so we could get to school. The road was dirt all the way but was graded twice a year during winter to take out the corrugations. It took us an hour to go to school because there always seemed to be a strong easterly wind blowing into our faces in the morning and a strong south-westerly wind in our faces on the way home in the afternoon. Many was the time we walked and pushed our bikes up the hills.
We took great pride in our bikes, keeping them well oiled and sparkling clean. However the prongs of doublegee seeds often damaged our tyres so we soon learned how to mend our own punctures. Because of the doublegee menace we finally had to buy special thick tyres known as Bushman's Tyres.
After Pat and I learned to ride well enough we used to take turns double-dinking Charlie. He sat on a cushion tied to our parcel carrier with his legs dangling either side of the back wheel. Father bought him his own boy's bike but he was still too small to reach the pedals even with the seat right down so the seat was removed and a cushion tied onto the bar for him to sit on.
One day at the Geraldton Agricultural Show, Charlie was waiting outside the toilets when two ladies asked him his name and whether he went to school. Charlie replied that "Yes, I go to school and I ride my bike four miles each way and I am only six years old." One of the ladies responded, "You poor little fellow, no wonder you did not grow." Charlie was nick-named "Little Acky".
Geraldine Clark suggested to our parents that a tennis court be built at the school. A busy-bee was held where the ground was graded level, wire netting was erected and lines marked with super and lime. An old net from the community club was given to us and we all learned to play even if we served underarm at first. We played at recess time, during our lunch break and on Friday afternoons we played tennis for sport. A bumper board was given to the school and names were drawn from a hat and written on the board. You challenged the person above you on the board and if you won you took that person's place on the board. If you did not win then the person below you challenged you and if you lost you went down one line and so on. This method decided who were the best players and it was a lot of fun too. We also had 'clock tournaments' in which one couple played another for ten minutes. Each couple noted their score and moved on to play the next couple. After two hours scores were added up and each couple knew where they ranked in the tournament.
Ajana was a 'One Teacher' school and in these schools one teacher taught all the grades from kindergarten through to ninth standard. So while some students might be doing arithmetic set out on the blackboard, others could be doing geography from the School Paper. This meant that the teacher might be teaching reading or just talking to one class while I was doing different work on my own. Some how I just learned to concentrate and so shut out the noises around me.
Our school had a set of encyclopaedias. We studied these books and each Friday every one had to give a short lecturette and show the pictures to the class. Our homes did not have books other than school storybooks. We saved the labels from Lifebuoy soap, which every family now used, sent the labels away and received booklets on cricket. Every child had a pin-up picture of Don Bradman.
Each day we had a short period in which selected children told the class of things they did at home. Sometimes a child had nothing to report but sometimes a report had to be cut short because it was about family matters that should not be made public.
Our nature study lessons included learning about bird life. Our main source of information was a book, which I am sure every school had, written by Neville Cayley and called "What Bird Is That?". My cousin, Neil Rochester, had a large collection of bird eggs carefully packed in wool and stored in a large flat box. At school we had a similar box in which the boys put eggs they had collected and so we gradually built up a display where each egg was labelled to help us learn about the many birds found in the Ajana district. When collected, a pin-hole was made in each end and the contents were carefully blown out. The egg was then allowed to dry out before being stored in the wool lined box where it would keep for years. Collecting bird eggs is now frowned on because the birds are now protected.
We also learned about rabbits, which were listed as vermin and so every effort was made to destroy them. However the boys once gave each of we four girls a baby rabbit to take home. We smuggled them into the classroom and hid them behind books in our desks. After school, Pat and I each hid a baby rabbit in our school bags and took them home. We made a bed for the two rabbits in mum's chicken coup but by next morning they had mysteriously disappeared. However, dad did tell us never to bring rabbits home again!