​I grew up the day I started boarding school in early February 1953. I was 10 and a half years old.

My mother, in her late 90s in 2013, said one of the saddest sights she ever saw, was the reflection of my glum, close to tears face in the rear vision mirror of their rapidly receding Vauxhall car.

I don’t think I cried myself to sleep that first night, or thereafter, but I can’t remember for sure. And I didn’t resent my parents for depositing me there. I just never really liked the school until my final year, year eleven in 1959.

But I did grow to appreciate, through my seven years there, the privileged education I was getting. The school had been established nearly a century earlier, specifically to educate the sons of Western District farmers. I was certainly one of those and it was that free for all farm life, including driving utes and tractors, I missed from day one.

On that day we were issued with a specially made, dark blue Onkaparinga school rug/blanket and I quickly discovered, although it was summer, it was a vital piece of equipment. That was because our big, east facing dormitory windows, just holes in the walls really, were open to the elements; a canvas blind sometimes kept out the coldest winds. We wore shorts all year round for the first three years and just accepted cold showers, so I don’t think I really felt the cold at that age. Still don’t. And I was never cold in bed and had that rug for many years after I left school.

One of the first scholastic things we did was to complete an intelligence test: they were all the go at that time and for years afterwards. On the basis of those tests, we were allocated to class groups, presumably matched to our supposed levels of mental acuity.

My first class was Latin, a day or two after the term started. But presumably there had been a rethink about my intelligence and I was hauled out of that class minutes after it started. I really resented that insensitive act and still do.

My cohort did not come anywhere near learning a language other than English until year 10. At that time a hugely enterprising teacher, much against the wishes of the headmaster, wangled French lessons for us “dullards”. We embraced those lessons and enjoyed them and I’d like to think the headmaster eventually congratulated our teacher on his initiative. 

I grew up from that time too in making friends. Until then nearly all my friends were cousins from nearby farms. Three were at school with me but they were one or two years ahead or behind me and we just didn’t mix because of the age difference. I was desperately shy anyway and it took me another decade before I more or less became a little less introverted.

So it was serendipitous that Donough O’Brien, a boy my age, took me under his wing as it were. He later became a doctor so I suppose there was a caring element in his make up.

He discovered I liked to take photos and he quickly taught me how to take better photos and then develop and print them. I don’t think we had cameras any more exciting than box brownies. But the developing of the films and then printing them was really quite exciting. Twenty odd years later, as a photo journalist, I really enjoyed too, the much more precise challenges of developing and printing colour films.

Donough also taught me how to seriously catch fish. Limeburner’s Bay which was only a 10 minute walk away, seemed under Donough’s tuition, to be chockfull of flathead and small sharks, because I think we always caught one or the other. We pretty much had that part of the bay to ourselves which helped I suppose.

And thanks to the school cooks, we and some of our friends, were able to eat what Donough and I caught. I know at least one of them, as an ex shearers’ cook, would never have cooked fish for shearers. We never had it at home then. Too far from the sea you see!

I know too that we all grew up, puzzled I’d have to say, in our second or third year when a special school assembly was called. There was a message and that was that boys – it was a boys only school - had been seen walking with their arms around the shoulders of their friends and that must cease. No explanation was given and I can’t remember when we discovered, that the inference was that we might have become gay if we persisted. Now like most schools, there are boys, girls, gay kids, transgender kids and everything else at the school. That is fine now but we all needed to really grow up in 1953.
 
​
David Palmer

When I was twelve we moved from Melbourne to a farm on Phillip Island. My brother and I attend the small school at Ventnor. The teacher is a larrikin who is averse to teaching lessons of any kind. “Okay, you mugs, outside and I’ll challenge you to a game of alleys.” School requisites are your lunch and a bag of marbles.

The winter gales have arrived. Sometimes we walk the mile to school rugged up in jackets and rain coats, as the wind is too strong for me to battle against on my bike with John on the back. There is no such thing as being driven to school.

One wet Monday morning at the weekly flag raising ceremony, we stand at attention around the flag pole in the rain and salute the flag and recite. “I love God and my country. I honour the King. I salute the flag, etc. It’s considered too wet today for lessons, which means too wet to play outside, so we clear the desks from the school room and play cricket indoors. King George the fourth’s picture is still on the wall. He cops a blow to the head as it is struck by a ball hit by the teacher.

The result of this wonderful non schooling is boarding school in Melbourne. Through means both fair and foul, I persuade my parents to let me leave early. Happily I pick up my share of the farm work. It’s a great outdoor life but the wind is a constant challenge.

The following winter Dad visits family in England. I’m fifteen now and can run the farm while he’s away. We have a shocking wet winter. The dams are overflowing and breaking their banks. The sheep must be gone around twice a day in the rain as they are getting cast owing to the weight of their wet wool.

The wild westerly gales rip in to the Island with the force of a freight train. Huge combers charge across the shallow waters of the sand bar in Westernport Bay, like the flying manes of galloping white horses. Seagulls with their wings outspread face into the gale, empowered like albatrosses, floating on the up draught of the wind.

At the further uninhabited end of the Island beyond Swan Lake, we have a good over wintering paddock for five hundred merino wethers. This is a very lonely area; there is no one around for miles. The only sounds are the crash of the surf and the wind whining through old broken telephone wires. 

By the time my father returns I can mend broken dam banks, strain a wire fence and shear a sheep with blade shears.

Rain drops spit and sizzle as they splatter on the hot glass of the hurricane lantern as Dad and I make our way through the stormy night to the shed. Tomato sauce bottles of warm milk are tucked inside our jackets to feed the pet lambs who are waiting anxiously for their late night feed. We sit on hay bales and play with the lambs, listening to the storm raging outside, laughing because Mother thinks we are raving mad to go out on a night like this, when the wind is howling in from Bass Strait.

I often visit friends who live several miles away across the island. There’s no traffic when I’m returning home on winter’s nights. Everyone is tucked down in the warmth of their houses. I have a tall bay mare that has a wonderful turn of speed. I give the mare her head and she takes off. Dark clouds scud across the sky. At times they part and the puddles on the unmade road reflect the silver light of the moon. The mare stands off and jumps every one of them in her path. Her hoof beats echo through the night. Farmers often say “I heard you going home the other night. It was a wild night to be out on a horse.”

Spring brings sunshine and a sparkling blue sea. Horses and cattle are losing their rough winter coats. A light breeze blows across the land rustling through the tops of the tall rye grass that is coming to seed in the paddocks that have been locked up to be cut for hay.
 
He arrives one Sunday afternoon wearing a fresh white shirt, with a stock whip looped casually over his arm and bearing a small posy of strawberry clover flowers. “I heard that you wanted to learn how to crack a stock whip and I picked these for you.” Suddenly life takes on a whole new meaning, full of hope and promise.

Amongst my treasures, carefully pressed between the pages of a book, there is a small bunch of strawberry clover. The tiny flowers have now turned to dust, but when I think of them I am a young girl, back on the Island with the wind blowing through my hair.

Bev Morton

July 2020