MEMORIES OF PIESSE BROOK SCHOOL  
Pat Pettman (Nee Doyle)

I remember……….
……..trips to the Wildflower Show at the Perth Town Hall. Mr. Rose and the whole school on the Carilla bus with the ‘wildlife’ that would make up our display. One year we took an echidna. I think. I know we took mistletoe. It was on the luggage rack of the bus, hanging over a couple. We were surprised that they didn’t kiss.

In Perth we trekked up to the Town Hall carrying the bits and pieces that would represent our area. We arranged our display and wandered around looking at what the other schools had brought on their buses.

I remember being absolutely enthralled by Harry Butler and Vince Serventy. A great day out. Mr. Rose said he wouldn’t spoil the day by making us write about it when we got back. He was good like that. He didn’t make us write about it then and now, nearly fifty years later, I am. There you go!

……… my mother and Mrs. Lyneham making the sports dresses for every girl in the school. They were bright royal blue, flare-skirted, square necked and sleeveless. They were trimmed with gold bias binding and we wore a gold cord around our waists. For the inter-school sports days we used to train down on the flat bit of gravel road in Aldersyde Road. The training consisted of learning the starting procedure and being reminded to run through the tape and not slow down. We weren’t instructed on the middle bit.

………lunchtimes when the whole school would go to Elephant Rock and clamber all over it with no duty teacher to inhibit us.

…….. that no one wore shoes to school and everyone wore a raincoat and a rain hat when it rained. Now everyone wears shoes to school and no one owns a rain hat and wouldn’t be seen dead in one.

………our lunches. The Italians, with bread and salami and no butter. Some of my lunches were grated Kraft cheese and tomato sauce, mashed Watsonia Camp Pie and tomato sauce and often fish or meat paste which we now call pate. Someone used to have jelly crystal sandwiches. I longed for those. All our lunches were wrapped in ‘lunch wrap’ and carried in a paper bag. In the first weeks of first term there were always bunches of grapes. Hard-boiled eggs were great for cracking on each other’s heads and mums always packed pepper and salt in a twist of lunch wrap. Salt was all the go then. No kid would ever be expected to eat an egg or tomato without it.

………sewing classes that were always a highlight of the week. Something different. All us girls together with the lady teacher. Making dolls clothes for dolls we didn’t have, potholders, place mats and eventually graduating to an apron embroidered with lazy daisy and stem stitch and a nainsook half-slip with a band stitched French seam and lace, top sewn ‘from left to right’ around the hem. I can remember painstakingly gathering some garment – ‘stroking’ the gathers with a needle. A handy skill I haven’t had to use yet and may never have to use. While we did this I think the boys tidied the yard or played with the medicine ball.

………art lessons, the good old Oswald Colour Wheel, purple opposite green etc. Those terrible crayon books interleaved with tissue. Such dark pages, occasionally a buff one. We covered its pages with dull colours from our box of Reeves Pastel Crayons. Nearly everything was outlined in black. I enjoyed a good scribble pattern we usually did one or two a year.

……..that the best days were the Friday afternoon before the Saturday socials. Quaint word ‘social’. I have never been to a social since. We would turn the big classroom into a dance hall, or a ‘social’ hall. That afternoon we would do folk dancing. ‘The Seven Steps’, ‘The Muffin Man’, ‘The Paw-Paw Patch’. All the folk dances asked questions. Do you know…….? Have you heard ………? Where o where is ………? At that stage none of us had ever seen a muffin or a paw-paw and I still have my childhood images of them even though I have eaten dozens of the real things since. I loved ‘sides-together-right’, the ‘German Clap Dance’. No questions there. We would do ‘The Farmer in the Dell’ and include the infants. We used to envy the Dell children who didn’t have to go to school and were educated by their parents. We were told they lived ‘outside the limit’.

……….how not much of our development was neglected. I belonged to the Junior Rad Cross of which I was Secretary. We made some felt animals which, I believe were sent to a children’s hospital. I was also a member of the Gould League Bird Lovers Club and made a solemn vow to protect birds. I received a certificate and a badge. I am pleased to say that vow has not been broken. I did go duck shooting once in the Kimberley. We ate the ducks so maybe it doesn’t count.

………the several annual events that were very well organised and looked forward to by all of us children. They were the Christmas tree, Guy Fawkes Night, the Fancy Dress Ball and the Zoo Picnic, complete with a keg of ginger beer and a drum of ice-cream. I remember that parents went to a lot of trouble to make sure that we all had a good time. Those events and the socials made us feel as though we belonged to a hectic social scene.

………...that for two shillings and six pence (25 cents) a week I used to stay behind after school and sweep the floor – no contract cleaners then. I don’t know who did the verandahs and toilets. Perhaps the boys did them while we were sewing. I know the big boys emptied the toilet pans. They were paid like I was – probably two and six (25 cents) a week.

……….once a year Constable Crabbs coming to teach us road safety. I still remember his rule for walking on country roads – When I am on my right. I am right. I still abide by it today.

……… that Christmas was a great time. Before the Christmas tree we would decorate the school with chains and lanterns. These were made by carefully colouring sheets of squared paper and cutting the paper into strips to make chains or slashing and folding them to make lanterns. Neat people made bright chains, some people just scribbled. They were all stuck together with Clag Glue.

…………The students of the school being a mixed bunch with not one nationality represented by enough members to form a large group. Children arrived without a word of English. I remember the young Italian girls with long black plaits wound around their heads and gold earrings in pierced ears. We were amazed that they had their ears pierced as babies. I wonder what amazed them about us.

………..the tourist buses as a welcome diversion. We would sit on the steps and ‘the bank’ and wave to the tourists in the bus as it turned. On one occasion they must have thrown lollies and money to some of the children. We would race down when a bus came like some members of a cargo cult, waiting for the next shower of lollies and money. It never came.

…………all cuts and abrasions being treated with flavine or Mercurochrome, yellow or red. We were always knocking the tops off our big toes. Mothers tried in vain to bandage the big toe with strips of torn up sheet. The bandage never lasted. The wound would get dirty and every evening, wash-down was punctuated by kids screaming, as mothers tried to clean out wounds with soap and water.

……… walking home from school as a very social affair. Sometimes schoolyard arguments would overflow and there would be a bit of honky-knob chucking and verbal abuse. For me it was a time for leisurely walks and chats. At one time I used to walk to Mr. and Mrs. Bateman’s to get a billy of milk to take home. Other times I would stop off at Boyanich’s and watch them wash oranges in half 44 gallon drums. And try to read Daisy’s library books before they had to be returned. I enjoyed walking home the long was with Lesley McWhirter. We would stop off at her Aunty Mick’s – Mrs. Loaring. We were always made welcome. WE would regard it as our right to walk into her kitchen and spend as much time as we liked. Her house fascinated me. It seemed full of wood and books and there was a lot of talk about birds, probably re-forcing my Gouldian vow. If I walked straight home I would often read a book all the way, just glancing up every now and then to make sure I was still on the road. On hot summer days we would walk from shade to shade with red sweating faces, sometimes taking a sip out of the billy of milk.

From a distance, it looks pretty idyllic, but I know times were hard. Some children worked hard on family properties and for them school was a release from work. No one went hungry but I doubt that any family today would want to go back to those days of no electricity, no domestic appliances, crowded house and little money. None of Piesse Brook kids have to find themselves by going back to alternative lifestyles and grass roots living. It wasn’t a life that many parents nowadays would choose for themselves or their children. How lucky we were that there was no choice. We toughed it out and didn’t even know it. They can’t take that away from us.

We can say, ‘When I was your age I walked to school bare-footed, had to wear a raincoat and a sou’wester AND take an Echidna to Perth on the bus’!

Article:           Pat Pettman (Nee Doyle)

Copyright : Gordon Freegard  2008 - 2023