School days recalled

He knew with great respect W T Lees whose name in on the school gates.

My siblings attended the school in the 1930s and 1940s and myself in the 1950s followed by my own children in the 1980s.

The school had a lovely spacious setting with palm trees and a circular lawn in front of the buildings on which we were not allowed to play or walk.

There was a large pine plantation on the northern side of the grounds and many happy hours were spent building cubby houses with the pine needles.

The play equipment consisted of two see-saws and a monkey bar.

There were two shelter sheds and the boys were restricted to one side on the playground and the girls to the other.

We were required to assemble in our classes in the quadrangle every morning and on Mondays raised the Australian flag, sang God Save the Queen and recited the oath.

Being post war, good nutrition must have been government policy as early each morning milk was delivered by the milkman and left under the peppercorn trees.

We were required to drink a glass quart bottle of milk at morning recess by which time the cream had settled on the top and the milk was lukewarm.

Our library was one bookshelf in the headmaster’s office which was quite intimidating, but nevertheless I became and still am a passionate reader.

We practiced tunnel ball, egg and spoon races and running races in the dirt playground and competed in district school sports in Mooroopna — I don’t recall being victorious though.

We had musical events and our highlight in my time was to present Soot and the Fairies for our school families in the Ardmona Hall — soot and fairy wings where appropriate.

We all rode our bikes to school and there was a large bike shed on the northern side of the playground.

Not all roads were bitumen and our bikes clogged up with mud, however, in very wet weather, our parents or neighbours took pity and collected us from school in the car.

I still remember clearly the feeling of trepidation sitting in the classroom waiting to be called up for my turn to be immunised for whopping cough, diphtheria, tetanus etc.

I recall clearly the miraculous introduction of the Salk vaccine for polio, as we all knew families in the district who were dealing with this dreadful disease.

The absolute horror was the school dentist.

A highlight of my time at Ardmona Primary School was being taken to the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne.

We boarded the train in Mooroopna early in the morning, appropriately named and labelled, packed lunch in our school bags, and on very good behaviour.

The two teachers I recall most were Mr Des Keane in Grade 4 and Mr Alf Miller (also headmaster at the time) in Grades 5 and 6.

Both had a strict and a significant presence in the classroom, while offering unique methods to learn mental arithmetic, reading Australian writing and watching the life cycle of a caterpillar in a glass case at the back of the classroom.

Ardmona Primary School, along with most other schools in the Goulburn Valley, saw a large influx of migrants from Europe after World War II, and because Ardmona offered work and housing in the fruit industry, our school became very multicultural.

Children were thrust into school without a word of English which must have been incredibly challenging for the children, and also the teaching staff of course.

In those times, I remember the country state schools being one of the pillars which kept the community together along with the hall, the churches, the general store and the recreation reserve.

All this kept families in touch and provided a great sense of social cohesion, which I suppose as children, we were unaware of at the time.

These country schools fostered the social and academic skills to forge our way into the future.

OTHER HISTORICAL MEMORIES

My sister Dorothy attended Ardmona Primary School during World War II in the 1940s. She recalls pilots being trained to fly Tiger Moths in Darveniza’s paddock east of the school.

On one occasion, a Lancaster bomber landed in the paddock and the children were marched in line two by two across the road to inspect the plane outside, but not inside.

She also recalls air raid drills. When the air raid siren (operated by the favoured boy student of the day) was heard, they all had to stand beside their desk until ordered to file out in an orderly fashion to the air raid shelter, which had been erected into the playground and which apparently was very messy and muddy when wet.

They all emerged looking as if they had indeed been in a bombing event.