Primary School Confidential (15 page)

At the end of my first day of teaching, I was confronted by a redneck father who looked a lot like Santa Claus (though his beard was much more impressive that Santa's, and contained tobacco and food besides). He demanded to know my qualifications, which I listed, and then my experience, which I also listed: I had one day's experience—and today was the day! Knowing what I know now, I would have told him to jam it up his clacker, but I was twenty-two, remember, and fresh off the boat.

Well, didn't I cop an earful!

I fled to the principal, and I suppose I dobbed. Yes, I dobbed in a parent to the principal. This was going to make me hugely popular in the district.

Mrs Chapman marched outside and gave the man a large verbal serve. You did not fuck with Mrs Chapman. She had no time for crap.

It turned out that my tormentor—the first parent I got to know—was the local mechanic.

I also got to know the school secretary. She was a lesbian who, it transpired, was having a raging affair with one of the school mums.

The school may have been small, but I was learning some huge life lessons very quickly.

I took up residence in the (deconsecrated) church house at Wisemans Ferry, which was said to be haunted by the ghosts of those buried in the graves that were dotted around it. In summer it was as hot as an oven, and in the winter the cold was almost unbearable. (I used to stay one night a week in my classroom, however. Not for any great educational reason, but because I was twenty-two and obsessed with
Melrose Place
and I couldn't get reception at the church house.)

After school on Friday I would walk down to the post office and get a money order made out to the church for the sum of $90, which was the weekly rent. I would usually see two little girls from my class sitting outside the pub opposite the post office, eating a bag of chips and drinking Coke.

‘Hi, Miss Murphy!' they would scream, waving madly.

These two friends were in Year 1, with eyes that had seen way more than the average six-year-old. Both were street smart and cunning; they had to be. Their mums were almost always at the pub, and in an inebriated state pretty much all of the time.

The two girls were as different as night and day. One was pale and blonde while the other had the most glorious dark skin and hair. They never got to school on time, but wandered in
casually, usually about ten-ish. I had a word to Mrs Chapman, who gave the mothers a lecture on the importance of getting their kids to school on time. Punctuality did improve slightly, but I still kept a close eye on those angels. I gave them breakfast every morning when they arrived and made sure they each had a birthday cake on their special day. When you are a teacher, it is one of the most heartbreaking things to see the kids who are parenting themselves.

My kindy kids were beyond divine. There were only two of them, but they were just so dear. The boy, Harry, was the son of a very well-known Australian actress and Dominique was a tall redheaded girl who wouldn't say boo to a goose. She was a dreamer, while Harry was a showman who was able to throw the most magnificent tantrums I have ever seen.

I warmed to him immediately. He questioned everything and loved science. When his mum had to travel up to Sydney to tread the boards at the Opera House, little Harry would come and stay with me (which I am sure is totally against some sort of Board of Education policy). I had such fond memories of him that I named my first son Harry.

One day, a new family turned up. The father was tall and skinny, and the mum was very timid. They had a boy and a girl with them, both looking terrified, because up until that day they had been homeschooled by the local cult. Well, to be honest, I'm not sure whether it really was a cult, but everyone else called it a cult and I was ignorant. It was a big fundamentalist Christian
church with a compound where families lived permanently. I don't know—is that a cult?

Anyway, the girl ended up in my class, and Mrs Chapman got the boy, who turned out to be as close to a psychopath as one could get without actually committing any murders. No bloody wonder those parents wanted a break!

My favourite time of the day was the morning. I'd drive up the hill to school, park the car then pause to survey the scene. Forgotten Valley was the prettiest country you can imagine. On one side was beautiful, lush farmland; on the other was a wide peaceful river.

Most mornings I had to shoo a few wallabies off the front verandah of my cottage/classroom and I would enter to be greeted with the smell of coffee and cigarettes. The teachers' lounge was located in a garage out the back of my classroom, and Mrs Chapman would be there with an assortment of parents, puffing away and drinking huge vats of plunger coffee.

I would spend the quiet hour before the bell rang organising my day. It was quite a challenge, trying to get everyone through the curriculum effectively, and it would have been impossible to do it on my own, so I had parent helpers. I made full use of the fact that I had access to some of the country's finest talent; I had Harry's mum teach drama, and none other than one of Australia's most pre-eminent composers, Nigel Westlake, supported the music program. (He had two sons enrolled at the school.)

My most reliable helper, though, was a woman called Swami Gurupremenanda, who took reading groups. She was a member of the local ashram and had recently left her husband and found herself. She rid herself of possessions and hair, and started a
new life for herself and her three kids, of whom two were at our school. Swathed in orange, with her baby strapped to her back and heavily pregnant, Swami Gurupremenanda was the epitome of calm.

Her young sons both had swami names, and it took me a while to get the spelling right: Shreevidya and Krishnamerti. (But looking at that typed out, I fear I could be wrong.) They were vegetarians, and their diet must have been highly dependent on legumes, as they could produce the most eye-watering farts ever to hit a nostril. They also didn't believe in medicines, so when worms were rife in the classroom, instead of being treated with Combantrin, Shreevidya and Krishnamerti (or is that Shrividya and Krishnamurti?) had to drink excessive amounts of salted water.

One day, Swami Gurupremenanda and the boys didn't turn up to school. The next day, they were back, with a new baby girl strapped to Swami's chest. They'd had a teaching day at home the day before, watching their mum give birth on the rug. Then they just got on with the reading groups, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

The year flew by, and before I knew it, I was up to my armpits in Christmas concert preparations. Now, as any teacher knows, your performance for the entire year is judged solely by this one event. It all boils down to your end-of-year concert. Because I had such a variety of faiths in my class, I decided I was not going to do something Christmassy; it wasn't worth the arguments. So instead my kids did a rendition of my old favourite dance song, ‘Walking on Sunshine', while Harry's mum helped me put on a
play about education, now-and-then style. It was lame-o but the punters lapped it up.

My last day at school was quite emotional. All the kids and their parents gave me gifts—even my little pub waifs had something for me. One gave me seventy cents and the other a half-empty can of deodorant. I accepted their offerings gratefully.

I hugged Mrs Chapman goodbye for the last time and she handed me my reference:

I'd loved my year in Forgotten Valley, but now I had bigger fish to fry, having bought a one-way ticket to London. Still, the memories of that first year of teaching will remain with me always. Recently, I checked Facebook to see what the Macdonald kids were up to. One of my kids had sadly passed away in a dreadful accident, which made me tear up a bit, but the others were doing well. It was great to have a sneaky peek at how those little faces grew up.

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