Taken from the Upper Lansdowne Public School Centenary book
From the first day I spent at Upper Lansdowne School, it became a very important part of my life.
I lived a lonely life on an isolated farm, so my school days provided my only contact with other children.
I cried when sickness or prolonged rain kept me away. One time we were flooded in for three weeks. No, I didn’t cry for three weeks!
The three miles I walked barefoot to school, were not a burden to me. Everybody walked to school. Barefoot as well. I only wore shoes to town once a month and hated them.
I found I was not related to any other child in the school. The large families were a great source of interest and curiosity to me. I had an older sister but felt like an only child.
When my sister came to the school in 1930 there were 108 children attending and part of the hall was rented and used as an extra room. There were two teachers then, but by the time I began, Mr Turner was the only one to teach 40 children.
I had been at school for a year when I became very ill and missed a year. When I restarted there was a new teacher Mr Bill Craig. I thought he was the best thing since corn on the cob.
The summer of 1939 brought not only the declaration of war, but terrible bush fires in the surrounding mountains. They raced over Comboyne mountain. The range was all alight from Killabakh to Comboyne itself. The heat filled the air and burning leaves were landing on the school verandah when I came to school.
Our source of drinking water was of course, corrugated iron tanks. One at the front and one at the back. We drank straight from the tap. We weren’t sissies! One morning I arrived and found one tank on its side. There had been dead frogs in the water. It all had to be wasted.
There was an ongoing contest amongst some of us as to who could eat the greenest lemons with salt and vinegar, without making a face.
I would go to the store and buy a halfpenny worth of salt in a brown paper bag. I brought from home a small bottle of vinegar and an old saucer. My mother didn’t know about this. We picked the wild green lemons, which no way resemble the lemons we buy now, and sat on a high bench under the huge old fig tree in the front yard. Wonder we didn’t kill ourselves.
We had little in way of sports equipment. A few bean bags, and some high jump bars. I remember when Marj Whatson was to enter the high jump at the Taree sports. She was good. The afternoon before she broke an arm, I think at practice.
On picnic sports days, Mrs Newt Atkins made homemade ice-cream. Boy did I love that! I was never any good at sports. My favourite schoolyard game was Puss-in-the-Corner, Jacks and Alerah. Rounders were popular, and marbles. I liked the pretty colours in the marbles.
Although some families had bigger or better farms than others, nobody really had much money. The clothes we wore were often hand-me-downs. I was made to wear a tunic in the winter with brown ribbed stockings. How I hated those stockings! As soon as I reached the main road I took them off and stuffed them in a log and put up with cold legs. My wellington boots met the same fate. One evening I couldn’t find them again. Wrong log? No, someone else had found them. I had a hard time explaining that.
Our one day picnic was always to one place, we were allowed to climb Unger’s Hill. Wow!
I left Upper Lansdowne when I just turned thirteen. I thought it was the saddest day of my life. We moved to Kimbriki, I cried all the way. I never came back to Upper Lansdowne school until 1994. I walked into the school room and it smelt exactly as I had remembered. It must have been the chalk!