CHAPTER Welcome to the Real World
In 1960, at nearly fourteen, I was sent to board at the QCWA hostel in Assville five days a week to go to high school. It was an old, mansion-sized, converted weatherboard house, and the female students were accommodated on a long narrow, closed in verandah. It was filled with eight narrow, single beds with hard, skinny, fibre mattresses. The verandah was so cold in winter, that some of us took to bringing in newspapers to put between the mattress and the wire spring. On the other side of the building, there were boys quarters too.
In the evenings after the dining room tables were cleared, the dining room doubled as a homework room. A gentle-natured woman who had no hope of keeping control over the students, came to supervise. One evening, a boy from the physics class borrowed my notebook and took it back to the boys dorm overnight. When he returned it the next night the back cover was covered in scribble.
Neither my friend nor I could make out what any of the words meant. We were naive at best, and at home on the weekend I indignantly showed the book to my mother. I was sitting in front of the stove at the time and when she saw what was on the back of my book, she ripped the cardboard cover off and thrust it into the flames of the fire. I was astounded.
“That’s filthy, filthy writing!!” My mother stormed, and I never gave that boy the time of day again.
Mum had attempted to explain the facts of life when I was eleven, “Men have this thing like a big banana.”
I knew enough, but in high school, most of all I wanted to fit in. One day when a boy in the class threw a note across while the teacher wasn't looking, I unfolded the paper and read it.
Mine wouldn't wear out on yours would it?
I shrank inside, and took no notice of the boy for the rest of the day. Again, I showed the note to my mother. Again, it became fuel for the fire.
I hated high school. After my little Green Springs school, Assville was large, intimidating and unfriendly. When forced to choose from a limited number of courses rather than individual subjects, for some inexplicable reason I chose to do the academic course. Heartily disliking six of the eight subjects, I found the teachers intolerant and impatient.
The available courses included, domestic science for the girls, manual arts for the boys, commercial and academic. I loved English and French, and the teacher was a delight. For the other subjects, I became tired of reading, ‘can do better’ on my report cards.
Generally the kids who took academic wanted to be teachers or doctors or something equally intelligent. After two years, in the Junior exam, I got two As, a B, and two Cs. I loathed history with such a passion I didn't even sit for the exam!
There were good things at high school, however. One of the hostel girls had a passion for pen friends, and she found me someone to write to in America. Becoming lifetime friends, my pen-friend came from a farming background, and later we made similar life choices.
Enjoying sports and being tall, I was selected for the basketball team. Men didn’t play basketball in Australia in those days. If there was a basketball match on with another school on the weekend, I stayed over at the hostel. One weekend we played a tough team in a country town on a gravel court. When I bravely took a dive and managed to get the ball, the opposition player took me by the arm and dragged me through the dirt! I ended up with skin off my elbow, extremely humiliated and indignant. Their rough play lead us to start barracking for our own team, but we were roundly scolded by the headmaster on Monday morning.
“Young ladies do not barrack!”
Each lunch hour we walked home (a few blocks,) to the hostel where the matron had stacks of white bread on the table and multiple fillings laid out for our lunch. I ate so much white bread and peanut butter...
“You’re getting fat ankles,” Mum remarked.
There were three of us there from Green Springs and on Friday afternoons we hitched a ride home on the cream-carrier truck. The back of the truck was full of empty cream cans and if the driver had any other passengers, we did our best to balance on one of the cans for a seat. Mostly we three sat in the front with the driver. Because I was the tallest, the smallest girl sat on my lap, and her sister sat in the middle. Apart from the weight on my legs, the down side of this arrangement was that I always arrived home with an extremely crushed uniform. We wore navy blue box pleated uniforms that were a nightmare to iron at the best of times. We also wore a green tie and school badge at the neck of our white cotton blouses, (suffocating in summer).
Ninety percent of the science classes were boys and the male teachers made it obvious they thought we few girls were wasting our time. Dare to ask a question, and you risked a large dent to your self-confidence. The teacher smirked and the boys giggled. Consequently, I never asked any questions, although I feel I could have passed physics and done better with Maths A if I had just had some help. I shone in French and English, and failed the sciences.
As Junior neared its end, I grew anxious about what sort of job I was going to do. There was no question about going on at school. I hated it and couldn't wait to leave. I fancied I would like to be a hairdresser but the opportunities in Assville were few and far between. Mum suggested I go nursing at the Assville Hospital and I was horrified, but as I never let her rest about a job, one day she rang and spoke to the matron The next thing I knew we were fronting for an interview.
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