Chapter 5 – Parkside Primary School

In 1944, when I was five years old I started school at the Parkside Primary School which was just behind our house. I was able to take a short cut to school each day by climbing over our back fence into the school yard. The horizontal struts of the fence were on our side of the fence so it was easy to climb over to go to school but impossible to climb back that way on the way home so I had to walk the long way round. There was a temporary class room near our back fence which housed the Grade 7’s girls classroom. I used to watch all the “big girls” through the windows and wondered what it would be like to be in the Grade 7 class.

Even though we lived so close to the school I still seemed to be late for school most days. One day my mother was standing on a box by our back fence talking with one of the mothers at the school. I had to step around Mum to get over the fence and as I did I slipped and jagged the side of my knee on a nail. The cut was deep and I was fascinated by the open wound in my flesh which seemed to be full of little white glutinous balls that looked like sago. A trip to the doctor and a few stitches later and I was as good as new.

Parkside Primary School’s main entrance was on Robsart street and there was another entrance from the Glen Osmond road end near the Kenilworth road corner. The school grounds were “L” shaped and extended from Kenilworth road up Robsart street almost to Castle street and the “L” Part extended from Robsart street up Kenilworth Road to Glen Osmond Road. On the other side of the “L” was the police station with a number of small stone cells at the bottom of the policeman’s back garden.

My first class was the Prep class and this was held in a school room at the Castle Street end of the school. There was a long shed with troughs and taps for the children to use at recess time. Some scrubby, scratchy trees ran along the northern fence line with just enough room between tree and fence for a child to hide when playing “hide and seek” or when seclusion was needed to recover from some event in the school yard.There were two big Morton Bay fig trees in the main school yard. One was next to the police station on the north western side of the yard and the other was near the basketball courts at the Robsart Street end of the of the school yard. Under this tree there was a big slippery dip that I regarded as my own exclusive property, at least during after-school hours and during school holidays. I used to slide halfway down the slippery dip and hang there imagining that the little square sand pit at the bottom of the slide was really a pit full of vipers. I would terrify myself with thoughts of their forked tongues and terrible fangs that would “get” me if I slid down too far. Here I played my games and dreamed my dreams in the deep cool shade of the Morton Bay Fig.

The other Morton Bay fig had its branches overhanging the rear yard of the police station and this was another of my favorite haunts. I used to sit up in its branches for hours on end, watching all the exciting things that happened in the prison cells at the back of the station. I was fascinated by the “offenders” I saw put into the cells. They were mostly drunks who were left there to sleep it off, but occasionally there would be someone who walked down there in handcuffs. I was very excited about this and wondered what dreadful crime they had committed. I became friendly with the policeman’s daughter who was the same age as me and in my class at school. I think her family name was Stacy. After school one day, instead of going home, I went to play with her in her back yard and she took me into one of the cells. I was very impressed! There was a bed suspended from the side wall by chains, a folded blanket, a pillow, a chair and not much else. We played there for some time but later in the afternoon I began to feel uneasy because it felt really late and I hadn’t even been home yet, and I knew Mum would be wondering where I was. At that moment my friend’s mother called her in to dinner. I started to walk towards the cell door, but my friend skipped out of the door ahead of me and then slammed it shut in my face.

“I’ll come back after I’ve had my dinner and we can play some more,” she called out as she ran towards the back door of her house. I yelled frantically after her but she had gone. I waited and waited for her to return, realising eventually that she had completely forgotten about me. It was only when her mother came out to empty the dish water into the outside drain that she heard me yelling and banging on the door of the cell and released me. I always remember that day as “my day in prison.”

In our classroom each student used to sit at a desk with a lid that opened upwards leaving a space where we used to keep our school books. On the right hand side of the desk there was an inkwell which was filled with blue ink in which we would dip the nibs of our pens before writing in our book. I used to wear my hair in two long thick plaits and if a boy was sitting in the desk behind me, he never could seem to resist dipping one of my plaits into his inkwell. I had my own way of punishing the offending boy. I would jump up out of my seat, grab my inky plait and whack the boy with it, splattering ink all over his clean white shirt. It didn’t take the boys long to get the idea and stop messing with my hair.

There was not much concern about the safety of children in those days.  As kids, we had so much freedom, freedom such as I was never able to give my own children in later years, particularly after the disappearance of the Beaumont children. We used to play in the school yard until quite late at night because there was no such thing as graffiti; no vandalism, no arson. Instead we used to play games such as “murder in the dark” which was quite terrifying enough for me. We each had a small torch to light our way as we crept around the school rooms, the school yard and out buildings. We used to hide in doorways or behind bushes, waiting for the “murderer” to come looking for us. The main school building had a long dark hallway that ran between the classrooms and we would hide there in the shadows and that was a very creepy place. I can still remember the feeling of exquisite terror as I crept around in the dark. I would shriek with fright when finally I was grabbed from behind by the “murderer,” but I always came back to play the game again on another night.

I loved the swings in the school yard. I used to swing for hours singing the old war songs that were the rage at the time.

“There is gravy, gravy, enough to sink the navy in the store, in the store.

  There is gravy, gravy enough to sink the navy in the corner master’s store.

  My eyes are dim I cannot see, I have not brought my specs with me.

  I have not brought my specs with me.”

Even though things were so much safer in those days, human nature wasn’t any different than today. I was very naive as a young girl and one day, after school, my brothers and some of their friends were playing cricket in the school yard. I was the only girl there and I was amusing myself playing hopscotch on the side lines. One of the school’s “bully” boys came up to me and said,

“I want you to come into the toilets with me. If you don’t come you’ll be in trouble!”

I was really frightened, but it never even occurred to me to call to my brothers who were playing so close by. Instead, I said to the boy,

“Please don’t make me go into the toilets with you. Please, if you will let me go, I will go home and bring you back a penny.”

The boy agreed and so I ran all the way home, never said a word to my Mum, stole a penny out of Mum’s gas money tin and then ran all the way back and gave the penny to the boy. Why I never said anything to my brother’s I’ll never know. To do this simply didn’t enter my head.

I was a student at Parkside Primary School from Prep class in 1944 until Grade 3 in 1947. In Grade 1 I had a teacher who was a wonderful lady and I adored her. Her name was Mrs Robb. I have remembered her with affection all my life since those early school days.  Every day she used to read to us and it was through her encouragement that I became such an avid reader. We all used to sit cross legged on the floor as she read a chapter from the book “The Faraway Tree,”  by Enid Blyton. I LOVED that book! When she had finished reading one chapter we would beg her to read another.

“Please read some more, Mrs Robb, just one more chapter, please, please, please!”

I remember learning to tell the time in Grade 1. I think I must have missed the class or classes when this subject was first introduced. We each had a big clock face with moving hands on it and our teacher would say, “Put the hands on the clock to 8 o’clock. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. I had absolutely no idea what to do, but it never occurred to me to ask my teacher to teach me how to tell the time,  I just desperately tried to cheat off of my cass mates. I remember knitting lessons with big needles and knitting a long red scarf and I remember a silly ditty my brother Charlie taught me to entertain my class mates,

“Slip one, slop one, drip one drop one.” 

I thought it was immensely funny.

I had a little friend in my class in grade 2 called Lois. She had a peaky little face and wore her hair in skinny plaits on each side of her head and I noted with a certain amount of pleasure and pride that my plaits were so much thicker than hers. The two of us became very close friends spending much of our time in our own shared world of make-believe. In my mind’s eye I can see her face so clearly today but I don’t remember her last name. In fact I am not sure if I ever knew it. We sat together in class and chattered and chattered together and drove our poor teacher to distraction. We were always being “told off’” by her for our incessant chattering. One day, in desperation, she sent us up to see the headmistress as punishment. I remember us feeling so brave, so courageous, at the prospect of facing up to the dreaded headmistress and in her office no less! We must have pleaded our case satisfactorily because we both left the headmistress’s office each sucking a boiled sweet, still chattering away to each other about our exciting experience.

At recess times if children wanted to play a game that required more than two people, children would link arms and walk around the yard chanting in rhythmic sing song voices,

“Join on for cowboys and Indians,

Join on for cowboys and Indians.”

When enough children had “joined on” the game would commence. This was the standard way to start up a new game. We all loved hula hoops and skipping and all the children were quite expert in a whole range of rope games. At recess time and lunch time there would be any number of groups of girls and boys playing variations of skipping or rope games. One of our favorite games was to tie a long rope together to form a circle and children would take hold of the rope with both hands and then lean out away from the rope and side step along until we were all going very fast around in a circle. No one ever seemed to worry about it being dangerous whereas I am sure such a game would be banned today for Occupational Health and safety reasons. Even the playground equipment we used to play on is all gone today for the same reason. Gone is the big “ocean wave,” the long side swings and the maypole swings we all loved so much. Another thing I remember is that there were hardly any fat children in our classes at school during those years. Children were so active and played so much sport that even though we all had voracious appetites, we never seemed to get fat.

One of the other games my brothers and I used to play after school was marbles. We used to play in the gutters and we all carried around a big bag of marbles with us for games and for trade, wherever we went. There were any number of games and there were a multitude of rules and ways to win marbles. My brother Charlie was the best at the game and when I played against him, my bag of marbles used to diminish at an astonishig speed, but when I played other boys or girls, my bag of marbles would increase again.

Another game we played a lot was Knuckle Bones. We would collect knuckles from the backbones of meat that Mum would cook until we had five of them. We would throw them up in the air and catch them on the back of our hands. We never seemed to be able to get the meat smell quite out from the knuckle bones even if we were careful to wash them. After a game, our hands used to smell “meaty” and we had to go and wash them  It was quite a skilled game and again had its own complicated way of scoring.

In Grade 1 there was a little boy in my class called Robert Moore. He was a gentle little boy with fair hair and blue eyes and he spoke with a genteel English accent. At the end of the year our teacher produced a play about “the Sleeping Beauty” for our school break up. I was chosen to play the part of the “Sleeping Beauty” and Robert Moore was “the Handsome Prince.” One of the girls in our class loaned me a beautiful tulle dress for the occasion. During the play the “Handsome Prince,” had to kiss me to wake me from my magic induced sleep! Right at the beginning of the first scene, as I climbed onto the stage ready to play my part, I trod on the skirt of my beautiful dress ripping a huge tear in the back of its skirt. I spent my whole time in the limelight clutching my skirt to hide the rip and was completely unable to appreciate my very first “romantic kiss.” That kiss for the next five or six years became a source of misery for me. Whenever I annoyed any one of my brothers they only had to call out, “I know your boyfriend, I know your boyfriend,” or “Robert Moore, Robert Moore,” and I would run crying to my mother,

“Mum they’re teasing me! they’re teasing me!”

At the Glen Osmond Road end of the school yard there was an old stone cottage that was used as a music room for singing practices. Our class would go there and our teacher would play the piano and we would sing from a little song book that all the schools used at the time. I can still see that little book and remember that one of the songs was called “Crimond” which had the words of “The Lord’s my shepherd.” Somewhere in my files I feel sure I still have that little book.

We used to have assemblies in the school yard every Monday morning and we would be taught how to “salute the flag” and sing patriotic songs such as “Rule Brittania,” and “God save the King.” When we had to salute the flag, the children would chant in unison,

  I am an Australian, 

  I love my country, the British Empire, 

  I salute her flag the Union Jack 

  I honor her king, King George the 6th (I don’t think it was the 5th)  

Because I was from a Christadelphian family, I would never salute the flag or sing “Rule Britannia,” or “God Save the King.”

Australia must have identified absolutely with England and the Monarchy, otherwise we wouldn’t have been singing a song with the words,

“Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, Britons never, never, never will be slaves.”

There was a Special Needs class at the school where children who had learning difficulties used to have their lessons. They were not necessarily all the same age, but all were in the same class whatever their age. We used to look at those children as though they were oddities and not “like us” and they were completely segregated from the rest of the school. There were also some half caste aboriginal children in our classes who were from an institution in Fullarton in Florence Street, and they would have been part of the “the stolen generation” as they have been called in later years.