MY MEMORIES OF PIESSE BROOK SCHOOL  
By Gretchen Forrest (Nee Loaring)

My first memories of Piesse Brook School are of a time before I formally attended school. Sometimes my Mum had to go out for the day and I couldn’t go with her, she would send me to school. This must have been in consultation with the teacher, Miss Jean Sloman. I didn’t go early in the morning with my three sisters but later on with one of the tradesmen who delivered around the valley during the week. I think this time it was the butcher. I don’t remember that journey at all even though it would have taken some time, calling at four or five houses between our place and the school.

But I do remember the butcher stopping on Aldersyde Road, below the school and seeing this steep clay bank in front of me. I tried several times to scramble up but slipped and slid back down to the road each time.
 

GRETCHEN LOARING
 

Then I realised the butcher, still in the cab of his van, was calling out to me and pointing to a set of solid wooden steps set in the bank some yards behind. I was then able to get to the top of the bank and make my way up the stony path to the school building set up on the side of the hill. Strangely those steps must have been newly-made as they were still bright pink-red jarrah, and the edges were very sharp. In my mind they still have a menacing quality. The incident at the bottom of the bank and the steps is all I can remember of that day – nothing before or after.

When I started school proper I sat at an “Infants Table” which was a low polished jarrah table, long enough for tow pupils. Mt neighbour (the only other “infant” that year) was Ronnie Newman whose older siblings Marjorie and Clarence were in the higher classes. Infants was what we now call Year One and was sometimes referred to as “Bubs”.

I think I could read when I went to school and sometimes in the next two years I did two years’ work in one year, but I’m not sure whether it was Infants and Class 1, or Classes 1 & 2. I have been told that I was reading “The House That Jack Built” from my reading book one day and was doing it so fast that Miss Sloman thought I was reciting it from memory. So she said “Now read it backwards” and I did so just as fast as before.

In my second year at school, Miss Sloman entered me in the Commonwealth Alphabet Handwriting Competition. The Commonwealth Trades Alphabet was a publication put out to schools to promote Australian Products. There were two competitions for school children to enter in different groups. One was a project on one of the products mentioned (tea, dairying, cocoa, etc.), the other was handwriting. Each letter of the alphabet throughout the book, had a branded product which it stood for (e.g. A was Amgoorie tea).

To help them with the projects, children could send away for information and project material about that product. A verse about the product introduced each letter (A. B. C. etc), and some of the words in that rhyme were in capital letters. For the Handwriting Competition, the child had to write out the words, which were displayed in capitals, in their best copperplate writing. I only remember the first two were A for Amgoorie and B for Berger paint. Miss Sloman would give me a sheet of paper and I would write A is for Amgoorie and B is for Berger Paints and so on through the whole alphabet, (light upstrokes, heavy downstrokes!).

I think X somehow brought in IXL Jam but that is all I can remember. If I made a mistake I was given another piece of paper to start again. I was 6 years old and I laboured long and hard at that writing. It was an All Australian Competition and I won in my age group, which was probably Infants, Classes 1, 2 & 3. Remembering that I was 6 years old, can you believe one of the prizes was a fountain pen! I also received a book of Hans Anderson’s Fairy Tales which I still have.

When I was in the lower classes Rosa Longo came into my class. She came straight from Italy and had no English – but not for long! Miss Sloman was wonderful with her showing objects and getting Rosa to repeat the name over and over, “Cup. Rosa. Cup” showing her a cup. Before long Rosa could talk as well as any of us and very fast. She was liked by all of us and chattered away happily all day.

We were lucky enough to have a piano in the school and it was covered with a woollen cloth to keep out the dust. When we were having fire drill, Miss Sloman used to say that in the event of a fire we were to pull that cloth off the piano and smother flames with it. On the piano there always stood a glass vase and I could not reconcile in my young mind, pulling the cloth off and breaking that vase.

There was a small fireplace set in one corner of the room and the metal chimney jutted out onto the verandah abutting the end of the bench. It was always a race on cold mornings to get the seat besides the chimney at playtime and lunchtime because it was warm. Miss Sloman devised another way to keep us warm in winter. She had the Palmers bring along a billy of milk, which she placed on the hob near the fire during the morning session of school. At morning playtime she would have us file past her with our mug held out and she would place a teaspoon of sugar in each mug. We would then file past again and she would add a teaspoon of cocoa. We each had a teaspoon and would then mix the sugar and cocoa together to get rid of any lumps. The third time we filed past she would fill our mugs with hot milk and we would stir the cocoa up and drink it with much pleasure. I don’t know who paid for the milk, sugar and cocoa – it could have been the teacher herself.

Miss Sloman always had on her table, a packet of Kleenex tissues. This was very unusual in those days as they were not common. I remember they had a faint perfume and if I should smell the perfume today I would be transported immediately back to that schoolroom. To me that box of tissues represented the height of luxury. I look at the way tissues are used (and wasted) today by adults and children alike, and I think to myself that most people don’t have any idea what “poor” means.

During our time as pupils, Mundaring Weir Road was extended over the bridge and up the hill on the other side of the brook. There were two workmen whom we called “Snips” and “Pud”. They gave us rides on the steam roller and grader too, I think. I shudder now at the risks taken and the trouble teachers today would have with their “duty of care”. They would have a fit. But it was glorious fun at the time in our fairly sheltered lives. We also were allowed to go down to the creek at times. (another shudder at that!) One day when I was about 8 I slipped and sat down in the water, which came up to my waist. I was sent home (a mile) to change my clothes. Mum wasn’t in the house when I arrived home and I wasn’t sorry because I was a bit worried that I would get into trouble. I remember scrabbling through a drawer to find some clothes (I didn’t have too many). Mum found me there, fixed me up and sent me back to school again.

During most of my Primary School years it was wartime and about 1942 the Mitchelmore boys, Cyril and Bob came to the school. They had lived in Maylands where there was an aerodrome, so they were evacuated and came to live in the valley..., where their relations, the Lynehams lived. It had been quite and event to have newcomers because the families in the valley had been fairly stable for some time and everyone knew everyone else.

These were city kids and seemed quite sophisticated to us – we were really country kids then, whereas now Kalamunda and district is like a suburb of Perth. I was lucky to have Miss Sloman for three years as she was an excellent teacher, very dedicated, conscientious and hard-working. Other teachers I had were Miss Peacock (one year), Miss Bagley (just a few weeks), whom we called Bagley Beetle for some unknown reason, and Mrs. Miller. Mrs. Miller came just after the beginning of my standard 5 (year 6) so we had her for nearly two years. As we came to school over the hill path we were met by some of the other children and they were agog. “We’ve got a new teacher and she’s a Mrs! And boy is she tough! Mrs. Miller had arrived at our very messy, untidy little school, early this particular morning and had immediately set all the children to work picking up the litter in the yard, cleaning the basins on the verandah, sweeping up and generally improving the look of the school.

Mrs. Miller was also an excellent teacher who set us very high standards. Just as well, because our work had become very sloppy and I know my writing, which had been so good, was almost illegible. For months, we had to measure and rule a line along the centre of every line of every pad and exercise book we used. She made us take all our lower case letters up to that line. It was what saved my writing. It still wasn’t really good when I started at High School but the basis for improvement was there and it improved as my style developed.

One notable wartime effort we made under Mrs. Miller’s tutelage, was the cultivation of a vegetable garden. There was a competition among schools for this project and we set to with a will (anything to get out of schoolwork!) The yard was on a slope and was very stony. How we wrested a garden out of it at all I don’t know but we did spend lots of our free time, and some school time too, picking stones out of what little soil there was. For two years running Piesse Brook School won the competition and was awarded an inscribed silver cup each time. The second year (1944) they actually engraved the points on the cup and we received 299 points out of a possible 300! We used to laugh and say we must have had a caterpillar on a cabbage to lose that one mark!

We had no flat ground at the school to play any sort of sport at all. When we were practicing for the Inter-school Sports Carnival, we use to go down to the reasonably flat stretch of Aldersyde Road below Mundaring Weir Road. There were very few cars about in those days but a scout would be posted at each end to warn us of approaching motor vehicles and we would run our races there. When one of the guards would shout, “Car Coming!” we’d run to the edge of the road while it passed and then go on with our races. The school colours were blue and yellow but we had no uniforms or flags or anything to display these colours that I remember. However we were divided into factions (Blue & Gold) and there was a very small chart on the wall of the schoolroom which had ribbons attached to pieces of elastic stretched around the board. These could be moved up (like a thermometer) as we earned points to show which faction was ahead.

I did get the cane once. One of the girls produced some cigarettes on the way home and we huddled under Mrs. Blamire’s fruit stall and had a puff. She must have seen and heard us and reported us to the teacher who duly gave us all the cane. Very serious for a girl to get the cane. Isn’t it interesting that it was reported to the school and not our parents. If only schools had that respect and influence today.

In my last year at Piesse Brook School, like to two of my sisters before me, I won the Sampson’s Prize. This was given to the best student in each school, by the local Member of Parliament R. S. Sampson. It was always a book and always to my knowledge, a novel by Charles Dickens. Mine was Little Dorrit and I have it today, but I don’t think I have ever read that particular copy. Dickens was just a little beyond the very immature 11 year old that I was at the time.

As a Monitor

I attended Kalamunda School as a Post Primary and then went to Perth Modern School in Subiaco. When I had finished my secondary schooling, I was delighted to be accepted as a Monitor, (the first step at that time in teacher training) and appointed to Piesse Brook School in 1950. The numbers had grown the previous year before – also Miss Loring but spelt with no “a”. I had a very happy year there with Mr. Rose as the Head-teacher. The school just had one classroom but Mr. Rose gave me almost total responsibility for the 3 junior classes. The row of desks of the senior classes was on the east side of the room and the junior desks were in a row on the west side. I don’t remember that we faced different ways but we did teach our respective pupils simultaneously and seemed to manage it very well. Mr. Rose gave me a lot of confidence by letting my natural teaching ability hold sway, with gentle but constructive criticism along the way. I loved going to school and although I enjoyed a full and happy family and social life on the weekends, I couldn’t wait for Monday mornings.

I feel I had a good rapport with the children, even though many had little or no English. I had to five-year-olds in Infants. Mary who was Italian and Joseph who was Slav. Neither could speak English at first but happily jabbered away to each other in their own language. I had other Italian and Yugoslav children as well as Dutch who had little English. There were no special classes for children with English as a Second Language (ESL) as there is today. Although the feeling soon passed. I do remember being frightened of my own voice when I first took lessons or read aloud to the children. (I’m sure my family will NEVER believe that statement!)

The year flew by and I soon had to leave again to attend Claremont Teachers College for two years.

As a Teacher

My first appointment after Teachers College was to Karragullen which was a great disappointment as I had hoped to come home to Piesse brook, which seemed sensible. However, Bert Forrest was the Head-teacher at Karragullen, and he later became my husband, so it was a fortuitous appointment after all. The following year I was appointed to Piesse Brook as a fully-fledged teacher. Numbers had grown to warrant a second teacher and a second room had been built. So Mr. Rose and I did not have to teach in such difficult circumstances as before.

Mr. Rose and I got on very well and respected each other’s professionalism as well as liking each other as people. Mr. Rose had a common touch with the children and a great sense of humour too. We had lots of laughs together. Incidents that happened when I was a monitor and when I was a teacher there, have become confused so I am never sure which year they happened. A couple of incidents I remember which we appreciated for their comic value I can recall well. They both had to do with Ian, a newcomer with a broad English accent.

The first incident also included another newcomer, Roderick, whose accent was perfect BBC English. Roderick was late to school and Mr. Rose suggested to him that he should ask his parents for a bike. He stood up and in that perfect voice said “Do you know what my father is going to by me? A pony!

Not to be outdone Ian rushed out to the table and declared ”D’ya know wot my Dad’s buying me? A horse!

Mr. Rose had a cane, which he used sparingly. His method of administering the cane was to tell the offender to touch his toes (bend over) and he would give a light stroke on the buttocks. At the end of each year he “raffled” his cane. All the children’s names would go into his hat and the one drawn out won the cane to take home and keep. He bought a new cane the following year! The year I was there Ian’s big brother, David “won” the cane and bore it triumphantly outside at lunchtime. Soon there was a great yowl and on investigation we found Ian in tears. “What happened?” Mr. Rose asked him.

“David hit me” Ian sobbed.

“Why did he hit you? He was asked. Between sobs Ian explained in his lovely accent. “Well.... he told me…. to touch me toes …. so I touched me toes …. and he giv me a whack over th’ boom’.

I could go on… and on.

Article:           By Gretchen Forrest (Nee Loaring)

Image:          Kalamunda & Districts Historical Society

Copyright : Gordon Freegard  2008 - 2023