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Life on two acres of arid dirt, on the edge of the Australian outback.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

School's In

In South Australia our children return to school tomorrow for the last 9 weeks of the year. Another year nearly gone.
Our son will be going to high school at the local Catholic school next year. Another milestone in his life. Time has flown by, and is still flying at an incredible rate. It seems like only yesterday he was born.
An appropriate time to post some pictures of how school used to be.
The old school in the Kimba museum.
The old school bell, a big contrast to the siren that is heard in the schools today. I guess they had bell monitors.

The old school building, very hot in summer and very cold in winter, even though this one does have a fire place inside.

I love this neat writing, not taught like it used to be. My mother in law still writes like this today and often receives comments about it. She takes her time to get it just perfect.


The school desks complete with ink pots. My mum told me how the boys sitting behind her would dip the ends of her plaited pigtails into the wells. Boys haven't changed much over time have they?





The bookshelf packed with lots of reading material. The map on the wall was made out of some sort of cloth.




A jar full of old ink pens, my son didn't know what they were. I can just remember using the fountain pen when I was at school in the early days. I also remember having assembly with the whole school standing in straight lines at attention until we we told to stand at ease. We had to sing God Save the Queen before any formalities started. See I can remember things, maybe not recent things but my memory is renewed when thinking about or seeing things from the past.






Today the weather is 34 degrees Celcius (93.2 F) with areas of "raised dust" Yeah! Another dirty day in other words.






We have started cleaning the pool, it will take a bit of effort getting it back to swimming condition as it hasn't been touched since we last used it. The cover has been on all winter and we haven't lost too much water due to evaporation, so that's good news.



Today we were up bright and early to take our son to Little Athletics. This afternoon in a couple of hours he has soccer training so hopefully the weather improves before then.





Hope you are all having a lovely Sunday spent with your loved ones.




Tania


5 comments:

  1. The photos take me back to about prep or Grade 1.

    The school the kids went to before we came here had a bell, I remember someone came out to ring it at home time.

    Did you have nail and hanky inspection?

    Our board was like that, and then when we had RE another lot of stuff was hung up. Some maps pulled down?

    Most of the kids were Catholic in our school and there was a small RE class in our room, the oldest one.

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  2. These photos are great. I love them. I am half of 66yrs of age, but I spent my first school yrs from prep to Gr 4 in a one teacher school. Before it closed down with the attendance roll consisting of 7 kids in total. I loved it so much and I love this old building. Its great. I love the sign and what it reads.

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  3. funny how the boys used to dip the plaits in the inkwells. I dont think it matters how society changes humans are humans and will find things to suit their temprament. In little house on the prarie, a school boy finds a snake and holds it up in front of a girl!!

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  4. I remember sitting in chairs like this in Gr 6, I used to push the glasses off the boys head in front of me and he in turn used to grab my bright orange caterpillar pencil case and pretend he was dying of rabies that it carried. They were such fun days.

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  5. Hi Linda,

    No I don't remember having nail and hanky inspections, but my dad said that he used to get in trouble for dirty hands from helping his father on machinery. He was made to go and scrub it off (I think with solvent soap) and then they were inspected again, he said he was never able to get all the grease completely off.

    and pinkfowerbuttons,

    I never went to one of these schools but they were still operating in the district where I lived. We had one nearby at a place called Mudamuckla.

    My dad can tell lots of tales about his school time, only went to grade seven and then straight on the farm working with his father. I cant' believe how far he walked to school. His sisters went by horse and cart but he walked. My mum was saying she went to a similar school and their lunches were left in the porch, all day in the heat and they never got sick.

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