An Alice Girl

by Tanya Heaslip

  What must she have thought of it all?

  ‘When she got there, she got a shock because the children were too terrified to speak to her. They’d never seen anyone like her. They ran away and hid. Some of them were doing lessons by Correspondence School, but that wasn’t enough to help them talk to a stranger.’

  I thought about this, too. M’Lis, Brett and I were also shy when we met new people.

  Imagine not having met anyone before.

  Mum went on.

  ‘Apparently, Adelaide went back and told John Flynn that something had to be done about these children. And on her next trip to Alice Springs, it came to her. She was at the Royal Flying Doctor Service and heard mothers calling in over the radio to talk about medical problems with doctors at the base. Then she had a brainwave—why not also use the radio to teach children?’

  Now I could see how it all linked together.

  Mum’s pile of potatoes was reducing but she kept talking. She told me that it took Adelaide four years to make it all happen, but that she was helped by three men in Alice Springs, who did all the necessary practical things. The head of the Royal Flying Doctor Service loved wirelesses, so he got involved in buying some, building some, and then he got them out to stations. And two headmasters of the first Alice Springs school, called the Hartley Street School, worked out all the lessons and teaching side of it all.

  ‘How do you know all this, Mum?’ I was amazed.

  ‘Well, I’d never heard of School of the Air, or seen a pedal radio, until I went to Hamilton Downs, and Aunty Dawn told me all about it. I thought it was the most wonderful story. I really admired this amazing lady, Adelaide Miethke.’

  ‘So, what happened next?’

  Mum went on to tell me that School of the Air was officially launched in 1951. There was a huge opening, hundreds of people came to Alice, and it was reported in newspapers internationally as ‘the largest classroom in the world’.

  Very sadly, John Flynn died before the launch, but I just hoped he was happy with the outcome.

  Mum said, ‘What is sad is that Adelaide Miethke had the vision and pushed so hard for it to happen. But today, if you ask anyone about Adelaide, they’ve probably never even heard of her.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘So yes, if you ask anyone about John Flynn, they’ll say, “Yes we know him, wonderful man”. That’s because lots has been written about him. But Adelaide, I’m afraid not as much.’

  She paused. I knew she loved John Flynn because she always talked about him and what he’d done for the bush. I was a bit confused. ‘But why don’t people know about Adelaide as much as John Flynn?’

  ‘Because Adelaide was a woman and John was a man. And it’s that simple and that complicated. I have to tell you, Tanya, the world is not always fair to women.’ She scraped at the potato a little more roughly.

  I gazed at Mum, trying to understand what she was saying. It sounded very confusing. But I didn’t want her to get distracted from the story. ‘What happened after the opening?’

  ‘In the early days, the lessons on School of the Air went for half an hour, a couple of days a week. The teachers from the Hartley Street School wrote scripts and read them out aloud to the children. Then they decided they needed to encourage the children to talk. Some were too frightened to speak at all. It was called “mic fright”.’

  Really? I stared at Mum. I couldn’t imagine it. I already loved holding the microphone in my hands and chatting away, in play or for real.

  ‘So, the school got a teacher up from Adelaide, called Molly Ferguson. Molly was young and gorgeous. Everyone loved her. The children talked with her, she sang them songs, she wrote them plays, and she remembered their birthdays.’

  ‘How wonderful!’

  ‘But the next bit is not so wonderful. Molly only taught for four or five years before she was whisked away to be married, and had to retire.’

  ‘But why?’ I demanded. ‘Mrs Hodder is married and she teaches.’

  ‘Things were different back then,’ said Mum, darkly.

  We’d peeled all the potatoes and Mum picked up a sharp knife to chop them. She chopped very hard and I watched, moving away just a little bit.

  ‘There is one good thing’, she said, looking up over her knife. ‘The Queen gave her a very big award called an MBE, so perhaps that might have helped.’

  I had an image of the Queen in her glittering crown and golden gown handing over a grand award to Molly. But I guess that wouldn’t have helped the children in the bush, who probably missed Molly terribly, forever. It would be like losing Miss Clarke.

  I went away, thinking hard about all these things. So much about life just didn’t make sense. Why did men get more praise than women? Why were men rewarded for their great works, while wonderful women like Adelaide almost forgotten?

  I didn’t understand.

  But one thing I did understand. School of the Air was the best thing, ever.

  Thank you, Adelaide Miethke, I said to myself that night. Thank you.

  9

  No Mic Fright for Me

  Every day Mrs Hodder would say brightly, ‘VJD calling, this is Mrs Hodder here. Good morning, everyone! Are you receiving me? Over.’ And then she’d start a roll call, calling out the international radio code for every student in the class.

  Every child would scramble to switch on the handheld microphones on their two-way radios.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Hodder. Nine Sierra Victor Uniform, Tanya speaking. Receiving you loud and clear. Over!’ I would join the jumble of voices boomeranging back to greet the Queen of the Wireless from cattle stations spread far and wide.

  No mic fright for me! I couldn’t wait to tune into class each day.

  All the voices talked one over the other, some louder than others because they had better reception, some almost lost in the din. None of this was a problem for Mrs Hodder. She took the chaos in her stride.

  ‘Good morning, everyone!’ Her tones, crisp and cheerful, always sent a thrill through me. ‘Well, we are going to learn some new and big words this morning. Please open page three of your book. Over.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Hodder,’ we chorused and waited for her next round of instructions. Sometimes I would tremble, such was my wonder at what I might be able to do next.

  Each grade received half an hour each day on air on a different topic. There were questions and answers on maths and social studies, spelling tests, lots of reading aloud from books, reading from our own compositions when we got older, and being read to by the teachers, which I especially loved.

  Best of all was Monday, which was Assembly Day for all the students.

  ‘Now, girls and boys, it is time for the National Anthem. So, please stand up next to your radios and sing along with us here in the studio.’

  Mrs Hodder belted out ‘God Save the Queen’ on a piano in the studio, while a roar of children’s voices bellowing over the top almost obliterated the static. The chants crashed and dipped and melded one into the other.

  We couldn’t see the other children but we could hear them. Our imaginations put faces to them, hair and eye colour, freckles and grins, riding boots and hats.

  And Mrs Hodder was our binding glue.

  Once we finished, she clapped her hands. ‘Wonderful singing, everybody. Keep up the good work! Over.’

  To me, Mrs Hodder was our Queen. She spoke so beautifully, unlike anyone else I knew, and she sounded like she could be royalty. Not that I’d ever heard the actual Queen speak, or knew what royalty sounded like, but it was just what I imagined.

  Being on the radio with Mrs Hodder was like a play, like theatre, and I loved it.

  It never occurred to me that this wasn’t the way most other Australian kids did school. I never thought for a moment it was anything but the normal way to learn.

  The headmaster of the School of the Air was Mr Ashton. Mrs Hodder taught us younger ones, grades one to four, and Mr Ashton taught grades five to seven. They often did ‘patrol�
�, which meant every now and then they shut down School of the Air and headed out to meet students on stations.

  On their first visit I counted down the hours as Mum plaited my hair and I donned my best shirt and trousers and boots.

  Of course, I’d met Mrs Hodder when I was very little, but I had scant memory of it. It was like I was meeting her anew.

  When the official entourage finally pulled up in the yard, amid dogs barking and lots of dust, I clung anxiously to Mum’s leg as Mrs Hodder descended from the vehicle, fresh in a smart frock, leaning over me with a big smile.

  She and Mr Ashton looked at our schoolroom, oohed and ahhed, and then after a cup of tea and scones they were gone in another shower of dust, whisked away to the next station. It was just like a visit from the Queen and her consort, and we talked about it for months afterwards.

  Then there was the School of the Air ‘Get-Together’ in Alice Springs.

  Get-Togethers were introduced as a way for children to meet not just their teachers, but each other. They were held in the August school holidays and lasted three days. And they were chock-a-block full of activities: meeting the firefighters, visiting the police station, and going to lots of races and picnics out at the Old Telegraph Station and Simpsons Gap, where there were wide, dry areas of creek for us kids to run and play in.

  I was overwhelmed by a mixture of shyness and eagerness at the prospect of meeting all the faces belonging to the voices. It was a freezing August week with vast blue skies and winds off the desert. Mum dressed M’Lis, Brett and me in matching jumpers, warm corduroy pants and boots. M’Lis and I also had a little poncho around our shoulders. We looked terribly smart.

  On the first day, Mum took us to the School of the Air for roll call, this time face-to-face. As we walked through a wide glass door, with Mum on one side and Miss Clarke on the other, I thought my legs might give way with the enormity of the moment.

  We found Mr Ashton and Mrs Hodder inside, meeting and greeting all the children. Mr Ashton was very formal and smartly dressed in a shirt and tie. He held a large clipboard, which was the roll call sheet. I gazed up at Mrs Hodder, and yes, she remembered me! As she bent over me and said, ‘Well, hello Tanya!’ I thought I would melt into the floor.

  But there were more thrills to come. The School of the Air was a magical theatre—a large room with a wireless full of knobs that Mr Ashton and Mrs Hodder pushed and pulled and dialled and twirled. In the corner was the piano on which Mrs Hodder played us her songs. We gazed in awe at the room and the equipment that our teachers used to speak to us each day.

  But best of all, just off to the right of the entrance foyer was a small dark room, slightly musty, lined with shelves that in turn were crammed full of books. I stared into it, my heart beating fast.

  ‘This is our library,’ Mrs Hodder said. ‘It’s where your books came from. Your mum tells me you are enjoying them, Tanya?’

  My heart now tripled in speed. I nodded up and down, looking at Mrs Hodder and my feet in rapid succession, unable to find words.

  ‘Would you like to go in, then?’

  Would I?

  She led me in there, smiling. ‘I think you’ll like this room, Tanya.’

  I was allowed to stay in there for what seemed a very long time. It was heaven. I didn’t want to join the rest of the School of the Air children when they went off to see the firefighters and the police station. I wanted to stay in the library, to spend hours soaking in that magical world of words. I stood, gazing at the spines of the stories, tentatively opening the covers, smelling the beautiful musty pages, and I knew in that moment that words would always have the power to transport me to other worlds.

  We saw another side to Miss Clarke and Mum at the Get-Together.

  They had a marvellous time!

  They met up with other mothers and governesses from around the Territory and exchanged stories, surviving-life-on-a-station tips, and also put faces to names. They laughed a lot and wore their best clothes. Mum had long boots as well, and had grown her hair a little, which she curled every day before we went out.

  M’Lis, Brett and I remained hopelessly shy. We had no idea how to talk to other kids. All the other children seemed as scared as we were, so the first day was like a Mexican stand-off, all of us hiding behind our mother’s skirts, clumped with their siblings for protection, not knowing what to do or say. Dogs, cattle, stockmen—yes, all bush kids knew what to say and do with them. But other children? Other children were an entirely different race from an entirely different planet.

  Eventually by day three, overdosed with sugar from cakes and jelly at the CWA Hall, most of us found the courage to talk to one another. M’Lis, Brett and I were helped by the fact we stayed throughout the Get-Together with Mum and Dad’s friends the Braitlings.

  The Braitlings had four kids, and we became very good friends with them, right away. Shane and Denis were older than me, and seemed very adventurous. Jacquie was blonde and slim and M’Lis’s age, and they were in the same School of the Air class. They quickly became close friends. Matthew was slightly younger than Brett; he was full of energy and cheek, and he and Brett became great mates, too. They also had a governess, Miss Gabby, who was very kind to us all.

  The Braitlings owned what we called a ‘town house’—that is, a house in town. Lots of families who lived a long way out bush had a town house. We thought they were very lucky. Grandma Braitling lived in the house fulltime, and the Braitlings stayed there when they came in from the station.

  Grandma Braitling was an extraordinary woman. She’d lived in the toughest conditions in the middle of nowhere all her life (mostly in the stock camp, on a horse) and took no nonsense. She still didn’t.

  The Braitlings’ town house was big and brick, with a large, wild garden and soft-pink walls inside. There was a big kitchen and eating area (important given how many people always seemed to be visiting), a sitting room where the grown-ups sat, and a long, L-shaped passageway leading to many bedrooms and a bathroom. A glass door with elaborate scrolls and swirls—the first I had seen—opened onto the passageway from the front garden. I thought it was amazing.

  One of the exciting things about the Braitlings’ house was that it contained an endless supply of comics. They were piled in corners and under beds and on shelves. We devoured them at night after the Get-Together activities.

  I’d lie in the passageway, tongue sticking out as I concentrated on reading the words with the pictures. Best of all was Richie Rich, The Beagle Boys and The Phantom. The first two were American and I was completely absorbed by all the things the characters got up to. They were different to the characters in my English books, too. Funnier, wilder and naughtier, perhaps. The Phantom was exotic and mysterious. I traced my fingers over Diana’s beautiful face and tiny waist and wondered if I could ever look like her.

  There were also Cowboys-and-Indians comics, which the boys not only read but re-enacted up and down the corridor. The noise of whooping and spear-throwing and gun-shooting would drive Mum and Mrs Braitling to their feet. They’d fling open the door and shout, ‘Enough of that noise! We can’t hear ourselves think in here!’

  But it was difficult keeping a group of bush kids quiet, especially inside. We were so used to running around making noise in our own wide open spaces that we didn’t know how to contain ourselves inside a regular house. So, the grown-ups would send us outside, where we’d play Cowboys and Indians in their back garden, dying wildly and extravagantly all over the lawn.

  On our last night, Miss Clarke and Miss Gabby got dressed up and put on lipstick and went out to dinner with all the other governesses. It seemed so grown up. I wanted to grow up and go out to dinner too. I also felt sad that the Get-Together would be over tomorrow. But at least on Monday we would be back on to School of the Air. That thought prompted a discussion.

  ‘Aren’t we lucky to have School of the Air?’ I asked the assembled six, after the governesses had left.

  Nobody really looked up. Brett an
d Matthew took no notice at all because they weren’t yet on School of the Air (although they were allowed to go to the Get-Together). I repeated my question, and finally someone said, ‘Perhaps’; I think it was Denis.

  ‘Only perhaps? But it’s so much fun,’ I said, enthusiastically. ‘We can pick up the microphone and talk to Mrs Hodder and she can talk back and we can sing and we can read aloud and …’ I trailed off. Nobody seemed to be listening. ‘It’s better than just school,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Yeah,’ Shane and Denis emerged from their comics. ‘It’s better than school, because we get out of the schoolroom for half an hour.’ I folded my arms. ‘Well, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing than being on the School of the Air.’

  ‘We can,’ came back the general response. The group rattled off things like being outside playing and working with the men and being with horses and cattle and tinkering with the Land Rover and driving it around.

  ‘Even you, M’Lis?’ I said, a bit desperate now.

  ‘Especially me,’ she giggled.

  I gave up. I was the only one who absolutely loved School of the Air, it seemed. The only other things I’d loved as much was reading and writing, but I got to do all of that, and more, with Mrs Hodder, for half an hour each day.

  It was strange. Not only did I not have mic fright, ever, I couldn’t wait to get that microphone in my hand, and start talking to it, singing to it, laughing in it, and hearing the voices come back to me. I adored everything about the magical way of the wireless.

  All thanks to John Flynn, Alf Trager and Adelaide Miethke.

  I thought about how different I was to the others. I was drawn to the overseas lands of my storybooks and dreamed about visiting them. Why was I the only one who felt like this about all these things and longed to spend more time with them? I took that puzzling thought home with me but couldn’t make sense of it.