AE 1426 - The Goss: What Was High School Like in Australia? - Part 1

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:08

If I said Australian high school, what's the very first thing that pops into your head?

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Blank. Is an Australian high school. Yes. One Australian high school or high school in Australia? Yeah. Choose your own adventure, though. Choose your own adventure. Well for me, it's it's twofold because obviously I went to high school. Mm-hmm. Was threefold. I went to high school, I taught at high school, and then I had children at high school. So you've got many different thoughts. I've got various versions of what high school means.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

G'day guys, welcome to the Aussie English Podcast. Grab a cupper, get comfy, and let's have a yarn.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

Alright, guys, welcome back to the Aussie English Podcast. So today we're talking about high school in Australia, and Dad and I will probably have similar but different perspectives on this. Every country has its own version of high school, and Australians often assume that our experience is normal, but there were so many tiny routines and traditions that made it uniquely Australian. Today we're gonna rebuild what it actually felt like to go to high school here. So hopefully it'll remind Australians of their own school days and give everyone else a bit of a glimpse into growing up here in Australia. So Dad, what do you remember about the moment you arrived at school each morning?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

The first morning of high school is still in my memory, and that was in 1970. So there you go, that's giving away my age. I think people already know that. Back in those days, obviously it was the middle of so we're just the end of summer, it's early February, so it was hot, but we had to wear a blazer, so a thick woolen coat, as you did when you were at school. Um a cap, a felt cap. That sounds like cricket. I know. In fact, it was it was green, it was like the Australian cricket. Um it was, it wasn't a baseball cap, it was like a uh baggy green cap that the uh the cricketers wear, not quite as baggy, but they must have been phased out though, those caps. I don't remember ever seeing it. No, no, they disappeared after a couple of years of of my school, and by the mid-70s they were gone. Yeah. Um from certainly from my high school and most of the state high schools at the time. So I wear it. Not functional. No, so I went to a state high school. Yeah, wow, okay, and you had a blazer as well. A blazer as well, long socks, yeah, shorts. We couldn't wear long pants until we were in third form. So year nine um of high school. Um and even then, yeah, everybody wore shorts in summer, but um and even in winter we did. But yeah, first day of school. So I've marched off to school in my blazer and my long socks and my brand new pants and grey short sleeve shirt. Um you could take your blazer off once you got to school, but you had to wear it until you got into class. So were you going with a lot of friends that you already knew from the primary school? Yeah, so um the I went to a local primary school, which is a very large school, nearly a thousand kids. Back then. Back then, um, and then went to the local high school. The we had two high schools nearby, one was a co-ed school, so boys and girls, and the other one was just a purely girls school. So uh more than half the girls that I went to primary school with went to the girls-only school. And so there are a lot more boys at our high school than there were girls. Um but yeah, arrived the first day, it was hot, I remember it distinctly, and we had the uh assembly outdoors. We didn't have a a gym or an indoor stadium big enough that was being built at the time, actually, when the year I started. Uh we didn't have a gym big enough to fit us all in to uh hold an indoor assembly. So we're standing outdoors, two hundred and something kids in you know, first form, year seven. Um, and um then they just called out names. So 7A and they went through the 40 names of the people who are in 7A and then 7B, and they went through the 40 names, and 7A marched off to their sc room with their form teacher. Yeah, and I was in 7F, the sixth out of six. So we're an hour later, we're still standing out there in the now morning sun, and then went off to our um uh room, and I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened as soon as we got in the room.

SPEAKER_03 4:41

See, it's funny for me, it's the opposite, like because I was I went to Geelong College when I was a high school student, and I'd been sent to a school where no one from primary school went. Yes. And so it was like starting from scratch again, didn't know anyone. I don't you know what I do remember I think it was the first day where I it's hard for me to remember if it was an assembly or if it was that entrance exam, because I remember first meeting and interacting with two of my friends, Sam and Tristan, yeah, when I was in year seven. Um, and I remember the hall that it was in, but I can't remember because I know they did the exam as well, but I can't remember if it was the exam or if it was the welcome assembly and everything like that. Um but I remember the classroom too, mainly that. I think that's where my main memories begin for um high school. It was the classroom that I was in because it was such a different looking back, it's kind of like that Harry Potter type vibe of classrooms, right? Where like in primary school you're at these small little desks with little chairs that are kind of just your standard formula.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

You went to a very new primary school.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

Yeah, exactly. And then when I went to high school, it was like it was one of these schools that had this old-fashioned what'd you say, like um buildings and the desks were old, so you would go into these rooms and you're like, these feel like they're 30, 40, 50 years old, yeah, and the desks are all old. There's a big blackboard in front of you, whereas I don't remember having that same vibe from the primary school, everything was whiteboards and texture and all that sort of stuff. But we had the same thing with the blazer, the long socks, the shorts. Yeah, so I remember a tie was the hardest thing for me.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah, I remember the we used to wear a tie at primary school. Oh my god, okay.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

How weird is that. I don't think there'd be any primary schools besides the private schools now in Australia. There'd be and I don't even think the primary school this is in the 1960s. The private school primary schools don't make them wear ties until year seven, I think.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Exactly. Yeah. Um but yeah, so I I remember classes at you know in that first few weeks of school very well. But that transition from the standing out in the heat in the sun to then being marched off to the room, and I remember which room it was, but then whatever happened in that room at the time where you know it was there, welcome to high school, and uh you're I'm your English teacher, or blah blah blah. Um but no, I do remember the classes pretty well from there. But uh yeah, it was just an interesting little process to go through. And it was a it's a funny transition because back in the 1960s and 70s, you know, tr the idea of transition from one year, you know, school year to another one just didn't exist. Yeah, it was just suck it up by prince and princesses and you off you go. So having had a fair degree of responsibility as a grade six child at prior that you know at primary school, um, to suddenly being one of the little kids and treated like little kids with no responsibility whatsoever. And of course you've got you've got 17 and 18-year-olds at the same school. These are adults. It's far when you're a 12-year-old. I remember I was talking to Kel about that in one of the things. Yeah, because when you started school, you went to uh an middle school as your first seven years. Seven and eight. Yeah, but it was sort of grade five to grade eight. Yeah. Um and then you went to the high school. There were nine to twelve after that.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

But even then, from year nine, it was still felt a bit like that. You were like, oh geez, these guys are like adults. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

They're huge kids. And I remember them really well. It's like these people that you know you think of now and you go, yeah, they're 18 years old. But you know, they were just a boy, just a girl. Yeah, but yeah, these are men who are shaving and girls who look like women.

SPEAKER_03 8:14

I had that on the bus though, especially when because I used to have to get a bus from obviously the school was half an hour away driving, so I had to get a bus each morning, and I remember the older kids sat on that back seat at the back of the bus. And that was kind of the hierarchy thing. It was like pretty much anyone sat anywhere, but the back of the bus was always the year 12 kids, yeah. Year 11, year 12 kids. And I remember looking at those kids and just thinking, my god, they're huge. You know, and old. Looking back, you're like, you're only a few years away from being the same. It's only five years. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was nuts. So what what was the morning routine like for you? What was the morning routine like for you?

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Um the morning as in before school or at school?

SPEAKER_03 8:56

Yeah, well, I guess going through the pro where you got up in the morning, then what happened all the way to start?

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Yeah, got yeah, so get up in the morning, have well at that time when I was, you know, just starting high school, it was literally was is get up in the morning, have breakfast, go to school.

SPEAKER_04 9:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Um and school was kilometre and a half just over that away. So you just walk. So it was walk or ride your bike. Yeah. Um if it was belting down with rain, yeah, every now and then mum would drive us. I was gonna say she'd make us run. She'd make us run. Yeah, get there quicker. Um she'd chase us with a stick. And yeah, and this is uh yeah, so exactly she'd drive. Stick out the window. Hurry up, yeah, rats. No, so um so that was ride your bike or walk to school, and um and some of the kids who lived a bit further away used to catch a bus, but it was just there was no school bus, it was just the public, you know, buses that they would take. Because there was a there were two bus stops right outside the school for two different you know, bus lines that that went past. Um and then it was you'd usually get there 15 to 30 minutes before school started. But after a few weeks you knew knew enough people, you'd hang around with your mates and you'd be f playing a lot of down ball, you know. Yeah. Tennis. We called that four square. Yeah, we didn't play four square. We literally it was just a a tennis ball up against a wall.

SPEAKER_03 10:18

Yeah, I wonder I wonder how much ball into the walls was related to whether or not you had like concrete um blocks nearby. Because they would often put those lines in them so that I guess if they broke, they broke along the wall.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Well we we we yeah, we invented it so that you didn't have any rules at all. It was all you needed was a wall and enough space to bounce a ball on the wall. So it's sort of like squash, was it? Yeah, but you had to you you had the it was handballed, so you're literally hitting a tennis ball with your hand into the wall, um, but you had to bounce it in there. Yeah. And so one bounce hit the wall, and then the ball comes off the wall, one bounce, and yeah, the next person has to hit it. And so you could play in twos or threes or fours, and if it was threes or fours, you'd have to cycle through.

SPEAKER_03 11:02

And then you'd play doubles and you know, we had the four squares, so it would be you would have four squares of of concrete usually, blocks of it, or you would some even if it was bricks, you would know where the kind of crosses, the cross line is. And then I remember Dunce was the the guy at the bottom, and as you won't. You'd progress up the four squares. And there was like I can think it was Dunce Jack Queen's King or something like that, you know, like um, I guess card game or something. But you had to bounce the ball in your square before it went into the other person, so you couldn't just smash it because then it wouldn't bounce you down.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

To bounce it in yours, land in somebody else's, and then they had to do the same. So yeah, so there was a bit of that. Um during the winter it was much more you know kicking a ball around, soccer ball or a football. Yep, did that as well. Australian football for those who think soccer is football. Yeah. Um and that was about it, really. And then you yeah, there was a morning assembly every morning. So you stand outside. Um there was a morning assembly every morning. Um and it was outside, you were still outside, yeah, until we got the the school hall got built that year. So by the end of the year, there was a hall that would fit the whole school in.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

So it was only outside because there was no hall.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

But we didn't it wasn't the whole school at the assembly, the it was in various quadrangles. There was sort of you know the junior schools, yeah, you you know, equivalent to what we now call 7-8 and then 9-10 to 1112 or somewhere else. Um once we got the the whole indoor stadium thing, um, then we only held uh school assembly once a week. Yeah, that's whole school assembly at the time. That was the day that was the thing that I did when I was. And it was only in that first year that I can remember it as standing outside every morning and in the in the rain, didn't matter. You know, standing outside. Did your blazers smell like wet dog if they got wet?

SPEAKER_03 12:49

Oh yeah, it was wool. I always remember that. Yeah, they were pure wool. I always remember. I still have it. I still have that blazer. So do I. I've got mine in my um thing somewhere. So we're just gonna open a beer here. Yours is only twenty-something years old though.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Mine's more than that. Well, I guess it's probably the last one. Mine's getting close to 50 years old. Yeah. Yeah, you lost one. Thanks very much. Cheers. Yeah, I remember dreading it.

SPEAKER_03 13:12

If it if it was raining on the way to school and you're walking, you were like, shh, oh no. I'm gonna smell like dog for the next hour and not just you.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Then you everyone but you've got to hang it up in your because we had two lockers. We had a coat locker and a normal locker which you had your books and stuff in. Yeah. And then you'd hang the thing in the coat locker, and the coat lockers were shared. So you get two wet uh woolen blazers by the end of the day.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

Especially if it heated up or something later. Yeah. Yeah, I distinctly remember that smell of just wet dog and always just being like, This is like, surely they have another way of making these.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

And the and the the other thing that flashes to my mind, which is no surprise given the um you know testosterone-driven 12-year-old that I was at the time, is that we had a um so the the leadership in the school, the the teaching leadership in the school was a principal who was in this case was a man, yeah. And then we had a headmistress who was in charge of the girls. And the head mistress was a dragon. She was a horrible human being. Aren't they always? I know. But there are the and I've I've had these sort of reminiscences with people, and some of the um the people, particularly people older than me who went through the school before me, who had her as an English teacher, said she was wonderful, and she probably was a good English teacher. I never had her as a teacher. But you know, it's as soon as they become mistresses or principals or whatever, they just turn into absolute she know what's and she she used to walk around with a with it was a a ruler, the yardstick they used to call them a yard, yeah, like a meter ruler for those who use the metric system, um, that were designed to you know as blackboard rulers, so that you could draw a long, you know, meter line on a blackboard. So the big handle at the front of it, and you go and she used to walk up the um the girls' corridor. So the boys and girls were separated um into different corridors where their lockers were, and she would walk up the girls' corridor, the year seven and eight girls' corridor, first and second form, as we called it at the time, yeah, and with her yardstick, and she would lift their dresses, the school dresses, to check the colour of their underwear. They had to wear regulation coloured underwear. It had to be either white or this horrible tan colour, which was the one of the school colours. Our school colours were green and brown.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

That would not pass the pump test tonight.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

There's a hundred twelve-year-old boys standing at the end of the corridor. Oh my god. And she just kept doing it every morning. It was just oh, it was it was just the the most blatant bullying of Oh, so she didn't need to do it, but she just did. Yeah, well, does it really matter what colour underwear girls are wearing?

SPEAKER_03 15:43

Like Yeah, okay. This is No, for some reason, and when you were telling that story, I'm like, were they required to do that every day as a way of kind of like keeping people in place and humiliating people, or is that just her being a bitch? That was just her.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

I don't I don't think many other schools did underwear checks for girls. And certainly not public ones.

SPEAKER_03 16:01

Was the fashion at the time. That's just how teachers behaved.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Well, there was a lot of that. You know, teachers had and she'd probably been teaching since the late 1940s. She had it done to her, and she's like, oh no, I'm gonna pass it on everyone else.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

Here's the trauma that I had.

unknown 16:16

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Agreed. So if if um someone had never been to an Australian school, what tiny detail do you think would surprise them about this sort of routine or well again from the there aren't many schools left.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

I don't think there are any left now.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

That post-World War II, in the yeah, by the l by the mid-1950s.

SPEAKER_03 16:37

It was about when you were a teenager, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Yeah, something like that. Um there was there was this push to uh to rebuild schools, to grow, you know, to grow schools. And um the state government put a lot of money into them, but they built these schools out of they called them light timber construction. They were very cheaply built. Um and they they had these sort of cement, you know the cement bricks that you you get, the cement blocks. Oh, you mean the ones you get from Bunnings now that have the big gaps? Besser bricks, they used to be called. They used to be called Besser bricks. Cinder blocks. They look like cinder blocks, but they actually weren't. They were tiles.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

And they were just hung. They had little, you know, they were cement, but they just had these little hooks on them. So the buildings were all with these timber battens on them, and these these tiles were just hung over the side as the walls. And so is that so they could be taken apart later or easily? It was meant to be they they they they were meant to be temporary buildings. They were meant to be there for about ten years while the government got the money to rebuild the schools as you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

And the government never got the money.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

I went through the school. The school was built in the uh late 1950s, 58-59. Oh, okay. In that period. But it was pretty new, though. It was pretty new, but but by the time I got there, it was the these buildings had already outlived their out their you know, used by date. And and they were still there. A lot of these buildings were still there 30 or 40 years later. Now they've all been replaced now, but so that was the thing that you know, people who went to school in Victoria in the 1970s went, LTC buildings, light timber construction, they all look the same. And they're all built on this H pattern of two long corridors with a crossover corridor in the middle, yeah, um, and all the and the rooms were either side of those two long corridors. So you could walk into a school, and you know, twenty years later I was at teaching at university and teaching education and visiting education students on their teaching placements in schools, and I'd walk into them and I'd go, I know my way around this building. You know, 20 years ago, it's exactly the same pattern as the high school I went to. And so, yeah, so that was that was something that people who went to school when I did just knew what a high school looked like. Yeah. Unless you were in the inner suburbs of Melbourne. And I can only talk about Victorian schools, but in the inner suburbs of Melbourne with some of the older schools were old brick two-story buildings, and uh they were very different.

SPEAKER_03 18:55

But the thing that would have been classic around my era would have been the portable classroom, right? Yeah. They seemed to be everywhere at that time. I don't know if they're still like that or if they've all the day.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Because there was a period in the nineteen, early nineteen nineties, late eighties, early nineties, where there was a decision made by the Education Department in Victoria to not build a high school for more than seven hundred or a primary school for more than three hundred and fifty. Kids. Kids. I was gonna say one thousand? Yeah, no, permanent buildings.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

And then as the s if schools grew, yeah, they would put portables in. So the idea was to make them flexible because because populations of schools come and go as the the local population grow. Well that happened from my primary school, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:35

I remember I think probably the initial years I was at three and four, I was in the main building. Yeah. But then once I got to five and six, there were, I don't know, four portables. Portable rooms. Now there's fifteen portables.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

How would you describe what it is, a portable classroom? Um they were usually double classrooms, again, built where they could literally ship them in on the back of a truck. They split them in half.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

Yeah. I guess they're like prefab buildings.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Prefab buildings. And they're and they just external air conditioning, you know, make sure I know. And they they literally bolt them together and then and they can take them away in a day.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

Yeah, and there would be like a ramp in the between the two, there would be two pairs of classrooms on either side. So it's literally like a block of four. And the ramp would go up into the classrooms in the middle, and you would just shuffle out into your all the all the um bags and coats and everything would be on the outside of the classrooms and you go in. But yeah, with high school it was completely different for me because I went to a Well, the younger high school part of it, like the uh middle school, would have been slightly more recent.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yeah, because that wasn't an old school, but then Whereas the main school for 9 to 12.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

I think it's 150 years old.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Uh it's older than that now, 170 something. So the Brits will be laughing, but people from Britain will be like, that's not old. It's it's old for well, that school was created about 15 years after Geelong was settled.

SPEAKER_03 20:52

Yeah. So I know, yeah. Yeah, it's nuts.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

So I think the other thing that sorry to interrupt you, but I think the other thing that would uh shock is probably a strong word, but surprise people is corporal punishment.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Yeah, yeah, we've talked about that before, but you want to explain when, how, why?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah, that like I was at an era by the time I got to high school, I was at an era where teachers didn't dish it out themselves. But if you were being punished for misbehaviour either in the classroom or in the schoolyard, you got sent to the deputy principal who would literally, you know The local sadist Yeah, stick your hand out and they'd pull out a lump of wood and smack you over the body with it.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

Ten of the best. Yeah, exactly. I mean we laugh now, but I can't imagine, yeah, that would have been it's so weird to think that back then it was so normal to hit kids with wood.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

And I remember I remember the guy's name. I won't use it. He's dead, it's fine. No, no, well the the the vice principal would be. Yeah. Um, but the student not. Uh he was in he I think he left school after year eleven, but yeah. Fifth form it. This guy was the this guy was the toughest guy I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. Um, and I remember the rumour had it, and of course nobody else was in the room, and he was so tough that he wouldn't tell the story about himself. But rumour had it that when he got sent to the vice principal, um the and the and the vice principal were you know was going to give him the belt over the hand that he actually grabbed the stick and then turned around and said, now it's your turn. You bend over. The punishment stopped, allegedly. Now that's a myth, and it became just broadcast across the school at the time.

SPEAKER_03 22:35

Um that might it must have been an awkward situation where you would have had teenagers that probably got bigger than a lot of the teachers by the end of the high school, and then you were like, put your hand out, and if they said no, no, what are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Well, they just expelled them from school. Yeah, okay. But but in the end, you get expelled for refusing a punishment for something that was completely trivial, like talking back to a teacher or swearing in class or hitting another kid, which you know schoolyard violence was was common but not not extreme. Really?

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Yeah, because um mention that quickly, because that's probably another part of it. Did you have a lot of violence at school?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Oh, there was always the you know the fight behind the shelter shed. Really? Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:18

See, that was the kind of thing when I was at Geelong.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

You would have been expelled straight away. Five hundred kids. It was never gonna be a secret. Like, why behind the shelter shed? Because five hundred kids would know about it.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

You don't want the teachers to stop you. Yeah. Exactly. No, that was, yeah, I never got to see any of that. I think I saw one fist fight once that was after school, and it got broken up pretty quickly, and I think the teacher, I remember the teacher saying, like, you guys need to leave now, or I'm gonna tell the principal and you will get expelled if I if I mention what I just saw, you guys are fucked. Yeah, like you need to leave. Go in opposite directions. Yeah, exactly. Which was crazy. It was almost like he was more angry that they had put themselves in a position of being expelled than the other thing. Put him in the position to actually cover for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you had a quite a few fights, did you?

SPEAKER_00 24:04

I didn't I didn't I never got in a fight at school. Yeah, neither did I. I was big. I wasn't particularly aggressive. I was believe it or not, I was actually quite shy when I was young, probably up until the age of about 14 or 15. Yeah. Um but I was big for my age. So, you know, people didn't tend not to pick on big kids. Funny enough. Um Although, you know, one of the kids that used to get bullied, and bullied was emotional bullying, not physical bullying. Of course. Um that was what we experienced as well. And there was a lot of that going on. Like, and there was a I remember there was a kid, um, I will use his first name, Tim. Fuck him. Yeah, uh, and if Tim you're listening, you'll you'll know the uh the story. Tim had a um a growth disorder. Okay. Um when smaller than others. He was he was about the size of an eight-year-old when he started high school. Now he ended up a pituitary gland. Yeah, and he ended up having growth hormone and so on. And by the time he was fifteen, he was you know the same size as he was. He was one of those kids in our school as well. Uh but and he was a lovely kid, but because he was so small, you could just pick on him. Yeah, and yeah, you you literally lock him in a coat locker and and and turn it around so that he couldn't get out. Where's Tim? Oh bang, bang, bang. Jesus. Um and and um and you know, there are other you know ridiculous things that used to go on, but yeah, bullying kids. But bullying doesn't change, it's just the method of it.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

I don't think we had at least at my school, we didn't have that kind of excusing it at all. Yeah, we didn't have that kind of m overt stuff, because again, I think it was just punished too harshly. Yeah. The stuff that used to happen would be on the bus or before or after school, where they could effectively be like, Well, it wasn't at school. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Um once you got your blazer off, you can do whatever you like.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

Yeah, that's it. But it was never, I don't know, you couldn't really get away with too much. It was usually just the emotional verbal.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

But funnily enough, I loved high school. Yeah, absolutely loved it. And um But you you don't think of it like that at the time, but then in hindsight, you look back and go, yeah, they were pretty good years, six years of high school. And and I think a lot of it was the school. Um the teachers mostly were really good, um, not necessarily great teachers, but great people.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

Yeah. Um I guess that often makes it, right? It does. I remember having university quite a bit where you would have teachers for a certain subject where one would switch over in the middle of the semester and you would be like, Why has this subject gotten so much better? Yeah, or so much more interesting. Yeah, and it would be like, Oh, it's about the teachers, like, you know, enthusiasm or connection. Ability to tell a story. Exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

So it's being human, yeah. Um and So who who was your favourite teacher then at school and why? My favourite teacher was an art teacher, and I I I enjoyed art, but art was I was an academic. I used to enjoy maths and science, and you know that's what I intended to do um all the way through school. But uh so art was I enjoyed doing art, but I never took it seriously. Yeah. But there was an art teacher, a young American guy, and that was one of the other things. In the early 1970s, there was an extreme shortage of teachers in the state of Victoria.

SPEAKER_04 27:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

And so the Victorian government, the education department, were importing young teachers from uh Europe, Britain in particular, and America. And so we had a lot of first year out teachers, like 22, 23-year-olds who had come from America or Britain, or we actually had one Egyptian guy who was hysterical. Um because he almost didn't speak English. He probably spoke perfect English, but he was completely unintelligible. You know, his his accent was so thick. Yeah. Um but but and this guy was an American and you know, he's a young guy, like he probably you know by the time I I I think I was in sort of third form, so 14, 15, and he was like 22. Yeah, weird. So he's he just turned to be one of your mates.

SPEAKER_03 27:50

It's so weird. I had one of my friends through high school, same year as me. I remember we finished, we went to uni together, he ended up working in the drama department of a high school, an all-girls high school from 21 on. And I was just like, Are you crazy? Yeah. Are you wanting to go to jail? Like these girls, like the you're teaching U12 students, or you're helping you're you're an aide, you're working with them, they're they're three years younger than you, dude. You are looking for trouble. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

I know another flashback to again testosterone driven, although at this time I was probably might have been six, four, like you know, seventeen, eighteen years old. And the school was put every year they'd put on a play or a musical production or whatever, and the the play they were doing this time was the Diary of Anne Frank. So very serious, morbid, yeah, morbid sort of thing. But it and um and one of my friends was was in it, uh female friend. Um was she Ann? No, she was a um sister. Yeah, okay. And so a bit part in it. Yeah. But there was a um a quick costume change that was required in it. And I I wasn't in the the um the cast, but I was in the back crew, you know, doing stage and all that sort of hoo-ha. And and this young lady, extremely attractive young woman said, Ian, I need help getting out of my costume. Can you help? Because there were no no girls on the on the back stage crew. I trust you. And I trust you, you're a friend, you're a friend of my boyfriend, you know. And and the female teacher who was um sort of supervising the background, I'll um she is no longer alive, so I can call her Olivia Howard, her name was. She was in her 60s by the time we started talking.

SPEAKER_03 29:39

Isn't that fucked up to think you're in the 60s now?

SPEAKER_00 29:42

I know, exactly. But uh and and and I I remember this young lady undressing and me unzipping her and helping her with her clothes off. And she's standing there in her underwear, just bra and knickers in her underwear, and I'm handing her clothes. Yeah. And Mrs. Howard, who was one of my favourite teachers, and I was one of her the teacher's pet when I was started at school because I was good at maths, she was a math teacher. She was absolutely mortified. She says, she's this young woman. And you're just like, Would you say no? Here, put your clothes on. We and she thought you guys had gotten down to it a lot. No, I don't think she I think she knew what was going on. It was the fact that I was there doing it. You can help, you do it. Someone think of the children. I know, I know. She was just mortified. Uh and we used to laugh. She and I, um the the young lady, not the teacher, used to laugh about that for ages afterwards. I think we've given uh poor old Granny Howard a heart attack.

SPEAKER_03 30:40

So once you got into school and you've gotten ready and gone to class, how were the class, how were the days sort of like?

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Well it changed from when I first when I first arrived, we had eight forty-minute periods a day.

SPEAKER_03 30:55

Okay. So these and what's a period? A period is a class. So yeah, an English class.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

An English class would last 40 minutes. We had eight of them.

SPEAKER_03 31:03

Good grief. Eight, I know.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

So you'd have two and then morning break, then two, then lunch break, then two, then the afternoon break, then two, and then go home. Good grief. That sounds like stacked. I know. But the the real challenge was that for for some things like the specialist subjects, like art, phys ed in particular, they were double periods. Phys ed, physical education. Yeah, you can't do sport, physical education. You can't have 40 minutes. Change all goes, get changed, right? Go out there, here's a football, right?

SPEAKER_03 31:32

Now get back in, have a change in that. Um I hope you enjoyed your five minutes of play.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Exactly. Um and and so, yeah, but everything else was a single 40-minute period. And so you'd end up with, all right, I'm in English here, and then I've got maths next period, but it's five minutes walk away. And you sort of run to the next class and then you know line up outside the room and go in and they sit down and think about that. And then we by the time I was in, I think it was probably um fourth or year ten, eleven, they changed it to five one-hour periods. Yeah, that was more like what I've done. Which is a bit of overkill because it's hard to break five into having three breaks during the day. So they had to do two breaks. Yeah, they had a morning break, then a late lunch, and then you were done. Um after that. So it was for me too. I think it was an hour period was a long time. Yeah. Um and and and then a double period was fantastic. You know, for art, you spent half the day doing art or sport or whatever. That was that was really good. Um and so yeah, it's always a a mixture of those things. But yeah, the the fact that and having gone from primary school, where you sit in the same class with the same teacher for everything, but except you might go to the long-term. Language class or physics or sport or art were in a separate room, but everything else was in the same room and the same teacher. And of course, you understand that high school is structured differently, but then when you've actually got to cope with the what room are we in? We're in room eight. Where's room eight? And you have to have your room eight last year, it's now room six this year. You kept having to go back and forth to your locker getting together. And it wasn't. Oh, and that was always the circus. It was the instruction came out about once a week for years of take two periods worth of books with you. You don't have time to go to your locker between. And then they would have the locker police, the teachers marching up and down the lockers in between period one and two or three and four, going, Don't go to your locker, get on the button, having other books. I don't care, get back to class, but I'm just gonna be sent out of I don't care, move on.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

So I missed that. I actually really liked getting when you got your your next year's set of books that you were gonna learn from. Oh, yeah. And it was like it was a very condensed kind of like, here's all the information you're gonna get. Everything I'm gonna need for a year. Yeah, that was fun, wasn't it? Getting those. I love getting your your books and your all of your um stationary and everything. I'm still a stationary addict.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:51

I walked through office works hour, you know, which is pink. So what was recess like? So you you went to classes or whatever in the morning and then the bell would go? The bell would go.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Oh yeah, bells. When you got eight, 40-minute periods, the bells are running, uh literally ringing all the time.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

And the ones only just stopped before it started.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

And then they had warning bells. Yeah. Before school, you'd have a warning bell of you know, 15 minutes before class, and then right on class start time. And then at recess you'd have a five minute warning and then the clock a bell, and then at lunchtime you'd have the 15-minute warning and then the bell, and then after so bells are going all the bloody time. Um must have driven people who live near the school nuts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:33

I know you didn't really think about that, did you? The fact that there were houses across the road from one of these schools, and that the bells are going all the time. Yeah, during semester.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah, so you'd you you'd you'd grab your books from your locker and you'd go off to class and you'd do your 40 minutes and then you'd run off to wherever the next class was, and you'd but what was recess like?

SPEAKER_03 34:50

What did you do for recess usually?

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Uh-huh. How long was it? Uh off the top of my head, 15 or 20 minutes. Yeah, I think. Lunchtime was an hour. Yep. Yeah. Um, which is a long time. And then another 15 minutes. So it was an hour and a half break, I think. So 15, 60, and 15. Um and then and so 15 minutes wasn't long enough to do much. I know, you pretty much just eat something and be like, well, the bell's about to go. Yeah, but but mostly it wasn't eat for us, it was just get out and either that or it was queue up at the canteen to buy something. That was with lunchtime where that happened. I know, yeah, exactly. And then and then you'd be off to class again. What were the items you were getting at the canteen typically? The best, the best winter was the best. Because our school, I don't know who invented it. Um I could lay claim to the to the uh increase in in the uh item, but at at one stage um somebody in the canteen, one of the canteen women, whether it was a parent or the woman who ran it, decided that over winter they would put uh bread rolls in the pie heaters, so they get extra pie heaters. Heat them up. So you can have a hot bread roll. And then you can have a hot bread roll with a sausage roll inside it. Jesus. And chips. Inside it as well. With hot potato chips, but a packet of crisps. So you'd buy a you and your mates, you'd buy a packet of you know a small packet of chips between about four of you. You'd buy a bread roll and a sausage roll, then you'd put the chips in there and then you'd eat that. It was just complete and utter carb overload. Yeah. But it's funny that we had that specific.

SPEAKER_03 36:25

Sausage roll roll. Everyone always not the roll, but the sausage roll itself. We always got they were in little plastic bags at the time. Nine little holes in there.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Um Yeah, so we that the sausage roll roll and then the the chip addition was.

SPEAKER_03 36:40

Did you have canteen orders as well where you would have orders? You'd get like a little paper bag, write your order on it with your name, put your money in it, the coins usually, maybe a five dollar note, and then have that. Wouldn't have been for you, but for me it would have been, yeah, that would have gotten you know all of the canteen's food.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Exactly. You'd buy the canteen for five dollars at 1970. Um Yeah, we did. And I can't remember like at primary school it was easy when you were doing it because it just came to your class. Yeah. And they it was Ian, you're on canteen duty this week. You go and you buy this big you'd go and pick up this big metal crate. Yeah. And two of you would struggle to carry this thing back to the I wonder if it was at high school you had to take it yourself in recess or something. Yeah, uh high school I think you had yeah, but then you had to go and pick it up from the canteen. Yeah, exactly. You had to go get it yourself, yeah. Yeah, so there was no delivery to the rooms or anything. I know. Those soft primary school kids. Primary school kids.

SPEAKER_03 37:26

And what about every lunch? What would you do when you had a bit more time? Sport. Yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Sport, soccer, footy, sport, girls. Sport, girls, sport with the girls. Yeah. Sport, sport.

SPEAKER_03 37:37

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Mostly.

SPEAKER_03 37:39

I I spent a lot of time in the library looking back funnily enough. It was with the nerdy kids. I ended up sort of falling in with them. We would play soccer on the main oval and or play chess and watch like Family Guy on our laptops, because we had laptops back then. This was you know some of the early years of bringing laptops into the high school, and it was weird because I think we got them from year eight. And looking back, God, they were these Toshiba bricks. We had these huge computers, and they had we were amazed, we were like, whoa, three gigabytes of data, 64 megabytes of RAM, and you would be like, whoa. And what else? We had like um we would at the time everyone was torrenting, pirating. In fact, we wouldn't have had torrents, it would have been wares back then. Yeah, just pirating and using websites to get um music. Music and videos, movies, yeah. So getting things like American Pi, and you would have to download it in two sections. Yeah, and it would be awful, awful like um resolution. And we would oh the funny thing was that back then we had like the ability to burn CDs. We didn't have it was before DVDs. Yeah. And this was when you would the computers could burn CDs.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Oh, you can just copy the music off a CD.

SPEAKER_03 38:47

Yeah, and so well we would still we would download all this stuff and often just copy the files onto a onto a CD and then people would just share it around. Yeah. So everyone had the latest music and everything, and um yeah, it was it was a funny time.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

Yeah, yeah, so yeah, sport was a thing. And it was soccer mostly.

SPEAKER_03 39:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Because soccer was easy.

SPEAKER_03 39:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Um where 'cause And and more people probably wanted to play it.

SPEAKER_03 39:08

Yeah. AFL's a bit more technical, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:09

And at at at lunchtime the um first year I don't think it happened much, but after that we had a uh teacher, he was a St Kilda footballer, foot uh VFL at the time, which became the AFL. Um and he had the genius idea that you could lend out sporting equipment at lunchtime. So that used to be the race to the yeah, the the sport equipment. So yeah, I want a football, I want a soccer ball, I want a yeah, cricket ball and stumps and a bat, or I want and then um over winter he used to open up the gym, the the the stadium, which had yeah, volleyball courts and table tennis, and badminton was the thing because you could fit six badminton courts on this thing. Yeah. And it was before basketball became a thing. It was really weird. Like basketball wasn't popular here? No, it really wasn't. And the trouble with basketball is it takes up a lot of room. The court. Yeah. Whereas badminton, you could play doubles, and so we'd we'd play a lot of badminton during winter and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 40:07

Yeah, we would always have those basketball courts where you would have like three different sports worth of lines. Oh, yes, I know.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Yeah, it's a tennis court, a netball court, a four-square all over the place.

SPEAKER_03 40:18

Yeah, you would just be like, good grief, what are we what are we looking at? Where are the yellow lines? Did you have no hat, no play? Did you have no hatred, no play? No, no, no. Which is why I've got skin cancer. Yeah, good. No, none of that no hat, no play business. I guess that came in when I was in primary school, didn't it? I remember I think it came in around the time you still have primary school. Yeah. Wide-brimmed hats, no hat, no play, and we had to have sunscreen on, I think, too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

And school provided the sunscreen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:47

Yeah. What was sports carnival days like? Did you enjoy those? Well we uh I loved it because I was good at it. Um I've got a story for you, sorry. I there was this guy I went to school with called Nick, and it was always really funny because he hated sport. He was this typical, really intelligent, you know, Nick. You remember Nick? Um and read like he I remember going to his house one day, and I think it must have been when Harry Potter came out, and it was that day, and he's like, Oh, I finished it this morning. And I'm like, What do you what the fuck do you mean you finished it this morning? He's like, Well I just read it. What do you mean? You read the whole book? You know, and these were the chunkier ones, like four or five, right? Harry Potter four or five. And he's like, Yeah, I'd have smashed it out three hours, and I'm like, that'd take me a week. Like he was an animal, but he would always um he always had a hamstring injury the day the athletic sports. He did trumpet for year seven and eight. And it was so funny for for all of high school, I thought he did trumpet. Because he would always be each week he would ha he would bring to school his trumpet in his little trumpet case. He stopped trumpet in year eight. But he can't bring it to school. So we could do music practice instead of sport. No, well he always used it to get out of classes he didn't like or out of sport. Oh, I've got a trumpet lesson. Yeah. So it's like, where did you go? And he's just like, the toilets. But he used to use that, he used to somehow use um trumpet or something to get out of um all of the sports carnival training.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

So we had money with that. We had because you had uh Saturday sport.

SPEAKER_04 42:24

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

Private schools have Saturday, compulsory Saturday sports.

SPEAKER_03 42:27

Yeah, to train two days a week before school or after school, and then on weekends you'd compete against other schools.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

And whereas we didn't have that. Our sport, our inter-school sport was Wednesday afternoons. And so if you're in a school sports team, um you were and they were s fairly selective. So there was a junior team and a senior team in m most sports. So it wasn't every year level, but um and so I played soccer most of the time. Um and so a soccer team from sort of mid-year eight onwards, second form onwards. Um and and so you'd go off and either another school soccer team would come to your school and play, or you'd go off to their school and play, and be bust off and do it every Wednesday afternoon. Now, if you weren't playing in and those sports seasons were quite uh short because you only played within the closed zone, so you weren't travelling unlike you, you weren't traveling uh from Geelong to East Melbourne too.

SPEAKER_03 43:21

Exactly, yeah, it'd be like a whole Saturday.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

So we would only play like five other teams, so you'd play for five weeks and you were done. Um so the rest of the time, Wednesday afternoon was organised sport, so you could pick a sport, you know, alright, we're playing golf, so we you know we lived in Bea Morris, so we're across the road from some of the best golf courses in Australia. So you'd go off to Sandra Gam golf course and play golf, or you'd play basketball or bad bittin' or table tennis or something in the gym, you'd just play, or squash, you'd go down to the local squash courts and play. Um so that was sort of Wednesday afternoons. But then we had swimming and athletics as well. So the swimming sports were in first term, athletic sports are in fourth term. And so So the we had houses at school, so four teams at school. Yeah. And so we'd yeah, we'd have our house sports, and then the winners of those would go on and represent the school at the local sports, and then there would be regional and then all state um sports. So um fortunately I was good enough in both, so swimming and athletics, that I go made the all-state every year. And so that was you know, summer and tail end of summer and the beginning of summer was was swimming and athletics. So um and that was great fun. Uh still really enjoyed because I was doing athletics outside of school as well. Stopped doing swimming when I was about twelve, so I didn't get to high school to do swimming outside of school, but still did it at school.

SPEAKER_03 44:46

Yeah, yeah, we had a swimming pool at school. Used to have to do that. I can't remember how often, if we had a swimming lesson or something once a week, or if it was once every four weeks.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Our swimming training was an outdoor pool at either Morabin or uh Clayton. So you have to be there at seven o'clock in the morning.

SPEAKER_03 45:03

Oh wow, okay, brutal.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Do an hour of training and then get showered and dressed and sent to school.

SPEAKER_03 45:08

Would you get dropped off or there have to be parents who drop you off and then drop you back?

SPEAKER_00 45:12

It wasn't there was no you organise it. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 45:16

So school is obviously more than just buildings and classes. Who who were some of the um the characters that you remember from school?

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Well, funnily enough, um days it today, Thursday, two nights ago, I had I booked tickets to see Colin Hay, the lead singer from the band Men at Work in the 80s, who was I come from a land on and I I didn't go um because I was sick, but you know, I bought him for your mum and and her brother went. And he was at um school four years ahead of me at school. So um so he was a character then, you know, you everybody knew Colin.

SPEAKER_03 45:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Because he A, he was Scottish, which was unusual. Um B he was a very good football soccer player. C, he was a musician, and he was an extremely good musician. So whenever there was a a school thing on and you know there was an assembly with performances and stuff, Colin would be up singing and doing stuff. And I remember to this day, just sitting here going, This guy's incredible, he's gonna do something. And you know, at the age of 72 or 3, his birthday was the other day too. Um he's still travelling the world playing music. So he was one of the major characters. We also had a couple of other highly um you know who was he was just trying to think where and he was probably a couple of years before I got to the school. Um we had the world's best squash player.

SPEAKER_04 46:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

Like two years after he left school, he was the world champion. Jeez. And and so actually one of the one of my favourite stories about him is um not about him, but about his sister. And I've given away the punchline already, but um I was doing squash one Wednesday, you know, one term of school, we were playing squash, and there were four of us that used to go and play down at the local squash court. So every Wednesday lunchtime we'd get on our bikes and ride three or four kilometres down to the local squash court. And the one of the young female art teachers was the teacher designated to supervise us. Her supervision was she would drive her car down there, make sure we were there, and then hang around and then leave. Well, yeah, have a cigarette in the car. No, no, she was good. But and then one day one of the um one of the four of us was sick and couldn't go, wasn't at school, and she just said, Oh, I've got my um gear in the car, I'll fill in.

SPEAKER_03 47:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

And I drew the short straw and had to play her.

SPEAKER_03 47:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

And um back in those days, squash scoring is a bit different now, but back in those days, um she just said, Oh, you can serve. That was the last time I had the ball in my hand. She beat me nine love, nine. She was just that good at it.

SPEAKER_04 47:58

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:59

And I went, You've played this before, haven't you? Because I thought I was good. I was not a great squash player, but I thought I was alright. And she said, Yeah, my brother taught me. And I said, Your name's you know, Mrs. She's probably in her mid-twenties, you're married. What's your name? She said, Hunt. I went, You are kidding me. Jeff Hunt. She said, Yep.

SPEAKER_03 48:19

Yeah, so he was a famous player back then.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Yeah, and he was the best player in the world. And he he had a a squash center um nearby, and she just said, Yeah, that's alright. I'll I'll I'll pay you back for this though. Yeah. She said, You come down Saturday morning to Jeff's thing and I'll get him to give you a lesson. So I had a lesson from the world champion. Didn't make me any better, but yeah. I understood what I had to do, I just wasn't capable of doing it.

SPEAKER_03 48:42

It's funny, I remember when I was doing fencing, I had a lesson once from the um Commonwealth champion. Yeah. And she couldn't teach for shit. It was amazing that she was so good. But when like because I think she was just there, and the coach was like, Oh, do you want to give Pete a lesson in Sabre? You know, teach him some stuff, and she's like, Yeah, no worries. And I remember she just thrashed your shit. Well, she just didn't know how to explain what she would. She was just like, I I just do it. I just do it. And I'm like, well, that doesn't really help me. I'm gonna need a bit of an explanation.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Yeah Well the one thing the one thing Jeff told me, uh which stuck with me forever, is that he said, squash has got nothing to do with how well you hit the ball, it's controlling the court. Yeah. He said you need to get back to the centre of the court. At all costs. At all costs. So you're you're not hitting the ball so that your opponent can't get to it, you're hitting the ball so that you get back to the centre to get the next shot. Yeah. So that you're only ever two steps away from from it. So if you get stranded away from the centre, you're done.

SPEAKER_03 49:46

Yeah, gotcha. Alright, guys, this episode actually ended up being quite long. I think we ended up talking for over an hour and a half, so I've decided to sort of chop it here, and I will include the second half of this episode as a bonus episode for premium podcast members. If you would like to listen to the second half and support the podcast at the same time, please sign up to be a premium podcast member at ozzieenglish.com.au forward slash podcast. You'll get bonus episodes, you'll get all 1400 or so free episodes, but you'll also get the premium podcast player for all of them, so that you can listen and read at the same time, and you'll get all of the downloadable PDFs for all of the episodes that have them as well. So again, if you want to sign up for that, level up your English while supporting the podcast, check out the premium podcast membership at ozzieenglish.com.au forward slash podcast. The link will be in the description. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.