These extracts taken from a letter received from Mervyn Pryer show what school life was like at “Plumthorpe” for the Simshauser family. Mervyn Pryer taught at “Plumthorpe” in 1941.
‘What a surprise your letter was, and what an attempt to dredge up memories followed!
I know I had a Maurice and Lex Simshauser, but for the life of me I could not now tell you what classes they were in. Yet I did meet them long after when I was in Baan Baa, getting petrol at the garage, when we had a yarn. Ruth and some of the girls wore the usual girls’ tunics, and some of the boys wore ties.
I doubt if I ever really knew any of the parents beyond Mr and Mrs Simshauser, and they only had invited me out for a meal. (The customary way to get to know the “new teacher”.)
The secret of running a one-teacher school, at which I became an expert later at Terry-Hie-Hie, was to have some classes occupied with silent (yes, silent!) exercises, usually Maths or Spelling, while the teacher had time to teach other classes. Hence, the boards were full of work to start the day, and often there was other work on the back of them, ready to be turned round later.
Text books? None at “Plumthorpe”, and few at any other school. Library? You could see a few books on shelves at the back, but the monthly School Magazine, for grades 3, 4, 5 and 6 was the main source of literature. How we all looked forward to the next issue! Today we’d say those children received little educational enrichment, but they were well up in the “basics”, and all were lovely, obedient kids – none of the behaviour problems my son and daughter, both teachers, tell me about nowadays.
There was a tennis court, and, it being wartime, slit trenches. The Education Department insisted that all schools have them. The school sat beside the road with not a human habitation in sight. No telephone, such an amenity being unheard of in those days, even for quite large schools. God knows what I would have done in a case of emergency, send a child with a written message I suppose, to some parent that had a phone.
Someone entered the isolated building once, and did no damage (not like today) and stole my whistle and a hammer I had with my name on it. There was no school bell – the whistle was used. Some weeks later a Mr James (?) spoke to me in Barraba and gave me the hammer, saying someone had used it to smash articles in his shed on the farm and left it there. I felt a bit to blame, as I must have neglected to lock all the windows.
I boarded at “Cairnton”, managed by Mr Saunders. He was a severe, taciturn man (nice enough to me) and Mrs Saunders, an energetic lady. A son, Ken, about my age, worked for Mr Burdeken on “Plumthorpe”, so I had some youthful company. Mrs Saunders came one afternoon a week to teach the girls sewing while the boys did “handwork” (craft these days) with me. “Cairnton” was about three miles from school and I rode a bicycle to get there.
Towards the end of the school year Mr Burdeken, who owned “Plumthorpe Station”, gave a party for the school children. His was a very large property, and most of my pupils were children of families who worked on it. He was wealthy, had a uniformed chauffeur and magnificent car.
All details of the party, games etc, were managed by his staff. All we had to do was prepare a few items – poems, songs, simple plays and so on as a “thank you”. Mr Burdekin took me into his mansion, showed me his collection of paintings, gave me a couple of whiskeys. He thoughtfully did this at the end of the function, because I was none too secure on my bicycle as I wobbled back to “Cairnton”! His whiskey was powerful stuff for me, but how could I refuse his hospitality?
I recall some pupils at the school – the Simshausers, Colleen Thompson, Rally Williams, Esme Saunders and the Saunders family.
I was courting Betty Lillis in Barraba while I was there. She was a willowy blonde working in “Lillis & Treloar”, one of the two big general stores in Barraba, her father owning part of it. They say, “What the eye doesn’t admire, the heart doesn’t desire”, and I, to see her on weekends, had to ride my bicycle to Barraba. I think it was about eight miles – in Saturday morning, home Sunday night. We were married in August 1942 and, as many one-teacher schools had a residence with them, I applied for a transfer to one. We got Terry-Hie-Hie, about 30 miles from Moree. We stayed there for nine years and then I was transferred to Baan Baa.
Our daughter Wendy was born in 1946 and son Robin in 1951. After nine years at Yamba as my last teaching position, I retired to Grafton with my wife where we lived for eight years before she died of cancer. I continue to live at Grafton.’