This post is a move away from telling the stories of my ancestors and other relatives and telling a little of my own story, focusing on my years in primary school.
The field of education, particularly early childhood education, has played an enormous part in my life. I loved school as a child, and those experiences shaped the career I chose as an adult. After finishing secondary school, I pursued a degree in education, specialising in early childhood teaching. For many years, I taught primary school classes across both the State and Catholic systems, before moving on to roles in learning difficulties and disabilities. You could say I've been "at school" for most of my life!
Early Days at St. Mary's Catholic School
My primary school life began in the early 1960s in the small beachside town of Bowen.
My first - and only - primary school was St Mary's Catholic School. Founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1873, it was the first Catholic School in the Diocese of Townsville.
At the time I started school, St. Mary's was still a relatively small school, with a small group of teachers - a few Sisters of Mercy, alongside a couple of 'lay' teachers. There was just one class per grade level, so all pupils (as we were known back then) moved up to the next grade level together.
There were only two primary schools in town: the state school and my Catholic school. We had playful name-calling on the bus: state school kids calling us "cattle ticks", and we called them "press-buttons." Mostly, it was all in good fun because we lived in a very small town where we were all neighbours, living our lives side-by-side, sometimes on the same street.
📝 Memory Box:
"The classrooms at St. Mary's were wooden and old, but the school was alive with learning. We didn't have much in the way of resources, but the dedication of the teaching team made up for any lack of modern facilities."
The Infant School: Sancta Barbara
Grades 1 & 2 at St. Mary's in 1966. I'm in the third row, fifth from the left
When I started in 1965, my classrooms were in the old wooden double-storey building across from the Catholic Church. It was known as the Infant School or Sancta Barbara.
The Infants School, St Mary's, Bowen - photo was probably taken in the 1950s
📝 Memory Box:
The milk was often warm, especially in tropical summers, and smelled of cream gone off, but we drank it anyway - it was our daily calcium dose!"
In the 1960s, the school year was broken into three terms, with terms lasting between 13 and 15 weeks. School holidays occurred in April, August and the the long school break was over December and January. (It wasn't until 1981 that the school year changed from three terms to four terms / two semesters.)
"I would head off to school every day carrying my 'port', as my school bag was known as back then.
Basically it was a cardboard box with a handle, and it would develop rather a peculiar smell which was a combination of mustiness and the aroma of vegemite sandwiches!"
There were two different versions of the school port. The one pictured here on the right, with a handle and two fasteners, was carried in your hand ....
... or there was the one you could sling across your back as it had straps to go around your shoulders.
I only ever remember having the one that had to be carried by hand."
The school port carried the staple lunch item for any Australian growing up in the 1960s - vegemite sandwiches wrapped in baking paper.
No juice boxes, no plastic packaging. Water was the drink of choice, alongside the mandatory does of school milk."
"There was very little rubbish around our school yard, as there was an iron drum fire pit where we would dump our lunch paper wrappings. No kid every got burnt. We knew not to get too close - it was just part of our daily routine. Can you imagine that happening today?"
The 4Rs
Early learning at our Catholic School revolved around the 4Rs: Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic ... and Religion!
Exercise books only arrived in Grade 3, marking a sense of growth arousing feelings of great pride.
Reading was mastered by learning from the Happy Venture Readers, which were full of the really boring adventures of Dick and Jane, Dora (Jane's doll) and Nip (Dick's dog).
Comprehension skills were taught in Grades 4, 5 and 6, using the slightly more exciting 'Wide Range Readers'.
The stories never did fire my imagination and some of them were downright nonsensical!
Maths lessons featured bits of coloured wood called Cuisenaire rods.
Religious education was central to our learning, with daily lessons from the catechism 'My Way To God'.
I still have a few of them in my possession and occasionally go through them just to remind myself of the moral guidance we received from an early age.
📝 Memory Box:
"Our Grade 1 and 2 teacher was a Sister of Mercy (but I can't remember her name). She wore her full habit every day, even in the extraordinarily high summer temps experienced in northern tropical Queensland. I distinctly remember the sound of her habit swishing across the classroom as she occasionally moved from her desk at the front of the classroom to check on our reading and writing. Being at the front of the room, behind the desk, was the usual position of teachers back then, away from the kids, and in the position of power."
Religious Milestones
Communion Day (1966 Grade 2)
Catholicism shaped many of my primary school experiences. Nuns and priests were part of our daily lives at school, and most school events were tied up with significant rites of passage for young Catholics:
First Confession (Grade 2): Terrifying! Choosing sins to confess was hard. There was basically a choice of four - lying, disobeying your parents, fighting with your friends or siblings, and not saying your prayers before bedtime.
First Communion (Grade 2): White dresses and veils for girls; white shirts with ties for boys. The Host was tricky to manage! It would often get stuck to the roof of my mouth and took forever to pry loose.
Confirmation (Grade 5): The Bishop visited town, which made it a very special day. We got to choose another name for ourselves, but it had to be the name of a patron saint who we wished to model ourselves after. I took the name of Cecilia, after Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. It didn't really help with my musical talents!
📝 Memory Box:
"I remember receiving special medals on these important days and prayer books with a holy picture inside."
Prayer was part of our everyday school life. We would start the day with a prayer, recite the Angelus at 12 o'clock every day, and end the day with a prayer.
We learnt traditional Catholic prayers by heart, almost from day one of our schooling. The Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, The Act of Contrition, The Nicene Creed, The Sign Of The Cross, Glory Be To The Father, the Mysteries Of The Rosary, were etched into our very souls.
Around Grade 3, the Guardian Angel Prayer took on special significance for the girls in the class. That was the year we became so-called "Guardian Angels". We wore a red cloak over our Sunday clothes once a month and we joined the entrance procession with the Priest and the altar boys. As they walked up to the altar, the "Guardian Angels' would sit in the reserved front pews at the very front of the Church.
After Mass, there were cakes and cordial as a treat outside the front of the Church. Back then you often spent time with your class mates on a Sunday, after Mass, and there were usually treats for the kids and cups of tea for the adults. I can't recall the purpose or role of a "Guardian Angel", but it was a momentous occasion when you became one!
I'm not sure any young Catholic today would know what a scapular is, or have any notion of how a Novena sounded or have attended the Stations of the Cross at Church. Some would possibly know what rosary beads are, but may not have experienced the hours of prayer we participated in when saying the rosary at school and at Church.
The scapular pictured here is the one I remember wearing as a primary school aged child. It was made of two square pieces of cloth with images sewn onto them, and these were attached to material strings.
There were rules to remember when wearing the scapula. You wore it like a necklace but you had to make sure one segment rested on your chest (near your heart) and the other on your back. You couldn't wear it all akimbo or there would be retribution of some horrible type.
Scapulars could not be worn until they were blessed by the priest and then you were expected to wear it all the time so that you would benefit from its associated blessing. If you took it off, then you weren't afforded that privilege any more. For those of us who wore them most of the time, I can attest to the fact that they would become quite smelly as a result of running around in the tropics and working up a sweat during summertime!
Influential Teachers
Mrs. West (Grades 3 - 4)
This is my Grade 3 photo, taken in 1967, and that teacher standing beside her class is the reason I went on to become a teacher myself. I have vivid memories of Mrs. West and her devotion to her class and her commitment to ensuring every child felt success in their learning. I always felt as if she truly cared for all of us and really knew us as individuals. She was what was referred to as a 'lay' teacher - not a member of any religious order - and she was to be our teacher for Grades 3 and 4.
During the years in Mrs. West's class, there were some other more interesting things added to our week's learning. She introduced art lessons, mostly drawing with craypas.
We also learnt how to draw the country of Australia free hand. Yes, I remember we were tested on this at the end of the year and we were expected to create something that looked exactly the same as the chart that hung on the wall.
It was an exercise that required endless practice but brought a sens of accomplishment when achieved.
We were taught how to sew selected types of stitching ... things like blanket stitch and cross stitch. I was pretty good at it, but I can't remember what ever happened to my samplers, so I obviously wasn't all that proud of my work.
In 1969 I was in Grade 5, and by that time we had moved from the Infant School to the other school building, known as St Mary's School, which was on the other side of our Church.
It was a more modern building, just one storey with a covered hall section at one end and three classrooms at the other end for Year 5, Year 6 and Year 7. In those days, unlike the present day, primary school ended at Year 7. (Today Year 7 is the first year of high school!)
Sister Bernadette (Grade 5)
My Grade 5 teacher was a nun named Sister Bernadette (to whom I felt a certain fondness given that we had the same name). She was a kind-hearted nun who opened the world of music to us. We spent quite a bit of time in the covered hall rehearsing songs for various concerts held throughout the year, and I fondly remember learning the words for "The Happy Wanderer".
Who could forget the chorus of that? "Val-de-re, val-de-ra. Val-de-re, val-de- rah, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Val-de-re, val-de-ra. My knapsack on my back!" Really meaningful stuff.
Of course there was one event that will forever be etched in my memory. A television was wheeled into our classroom one day in July. For most of the class this was our first real TV experience. Having a television in family homes wasn't an ordinary part of family life back then in my hometown.
📝 Memory Box:
"Up until that point, my experiences with watching television were very limited. My family, like so many, would go into town on a Saturday night to listen to the Civic Band or just to wander up and down the main street. Part of the night's entertainment involved stopping and standing in front of the window of the electrical appliance shop. They had a television in the front window and it would be turned on so people could watch for a while. Of course, you couldn't actually hear anything, but watching was enough.
So when a television on a trolley was wheeled into my Grade 5 classroom, I knew something momentous was about to happen. Thinking back now, it was one of those awesome moments of wonder and awe that make us question everything we know about ourselves and our world. I remember distinctly thinking that life might actually extend far beyond my small hometown."
What was my first real television experience (sight with sound) about? Armstrong's first step onto the lunar surface!
Mrs. McKenna (Grades 6-7)
Grades 6 and 7 were spent with another very influential teacher, Mrs. McKenna. I remember her as being quite strict and proper, but she opened a whole new world of knowledge for us. Up until that point, we could tell you a lot about Australia ... its convict and Federation history, its states and their primary industries as well as geographical features; but Mrs. McKenna taught us about interesting places elsewhere ... like Europe and South-East Asia, places I'd never really heard about before. My world up until that point had been very small indeed!
Reflections on Primary School
Looking back on my experience of primary school, I was fortunate enough to be one of those students who loved school and thrived academically.
My childhood experiences - immersed in Catholic education, under dedicated teachers, with fun, simple and meaningful routines - shaped my career and life.
I went on to become a teacher myself and had a career in education for over 40 years.
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