Emigrating to Australia was a very big deal indeed. I hadn’t been further than places like Land’s End, Pembroke and New Brighton – certainly not out of the UK. The last few weeks were a blur – school finished then we moved into a caravan for a bit. Although 1976 is remembered as a hot summer 1975 was very warm as well and I remember watching quite a lot of that year’s Ashes series on the television (black and white not colour). Earlier in the summer one of my cricketing heroes Clive Lloyd had demolished the Australians in the first world cup final and I learned a lot about the sport that year.
Early August our departure date arrived and we made our way down to Heathrow. Two stops required in those days (ours were Bombay and Perth) so it was a full 24 hours or so. Australian mid year breaks were in May and September at the time. I was hoping to hold out doing fuck all until the end of the latter but no such luck. Mum frogmarched me down to the local primary school and after a cursory glance at my academic record I was placed in the top set under the beady eye of Mrs B.
Early 30s short haired and – at least in my view- a top notch teacher Mrs B was an excellent introduction to the Australian school system. As a latecomer to the school year I was placed in a set of desks with a few weird people but the kids were very welcoming. My tight charcoal shorts, pale blue shirt and strapover brown sandals were roundly laughed at but I got Mum to quickly kit me out in longer looser grey shorts and black lace ups to fit in. The Brummie accent went in about a fortnight, I learned to play rugby league and before you know it I was just one of the gang.
The reading wasn’t much different but the school library was much bigger. The custodian of this establishment – Mrs McD was more or less like English librarians. Kind, generous and encouraged kids to read. Probably drank two bottles of Gordon’s every night but was someone I enjoyed talking to. It was a bit of a blur those few months but I did read Lord of the Rings. A thousand page book is quite the ask for a 10 year old kid but anyone who has read it knows its pretty easy to read and in bite sized chunks.
Unknown photo studio commissioned by Tolkien’s students 1925/6 (private communication from Catherine McIlwaine, Tolkien Archivist, Bodleian Library), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
One of the other teachers played semi-pro golf and one was very theatrical.
Can you act?
No
Can you scream and shout and dance about?
Yes
Then you can act
A thinly veiled woofta God knows where he ended up. Mental institution or some kind of care home is my best guess but he was a good laugh and didn’t bother me at all.
At the end of that year we prepared to enter the final year of primary school. I drew the short straw and got Mrs O’B. We were all terrified of her. A 50 something martinet dressed from top to bottom in the sort of polyester that makes static electric sparks fly and wielding a cane that looked like Joe Frazier’s forearm.. My mother and her saw eye to eye immediately and between them kept me on the right track.
She marched into the classroom like someone going over the top at Ypres or the Somme and enforced learning even if we weren’t that keen to do so. Made Torquemada look like a bastion of liberalism and tolerance. She was fair though – scrupulously fair
And you know what she was the best teacher I ever had. Ruthless with the lazy but generous with those who did their best whatever their ability.. I was a high achiever and generally on her good side but I saw her make low achieving kids swell up with pride receiving praise when they’d outdone themselves in spelling or comprehension.
The bastard in the next room – Woods his name was – used to send kids down to the corner shop to buy his fags. His preferred method of corporal punishment was to get 11 year olds to touch their toes and take a full on baseball shot at their arse with the flat side of a wooden meter ruler. He must be dead by now but if I ever see him in the street…
He was a little git too so a half decent left hander would probably finish him off. We were shuffled around for maths so I did a couple of hours a week in his classroom. He had the quality I always disliked in teachers – unpredictability. I didn’t mind the strict as long as you knew where you stood. He was a nasty petty man who probably wouldn’t be allowed near 11 year old kids these days.
The ”won’t back down” at the title of this piece comes from the insistence of the NSW school system on the use of slope cards. This was a piece of card inserted under the page being written on containing lines sloping from bottom left to upper right. It was meant to guide your handwriting to slope the same way and induce conformity. I’d been taught to write in an upright style and I flatly refused to participate in such nonsense. Fortunately Mum backed me up on this and after some kind of extended negotiation I was granted exemption.
On the reading front nothing much seemed to advance in the school arena. I was introduced to some Australian kids’ stuff but it was pretty similar to the UK really.
Once again public libraries came to my rescue. In Oz they operated pretty much like the UK ones and for a kid with no money offered a way of reading all and everything. I made the significant move from the child to adult section. The first two adult books I remember reading were Peter Benchley’s Jaws and Isaac Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage.
Roger Kastel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=jaws&title=Special%3AMediaSearch&type=image
Decent books both but not exactly War and Peace or David Copperfield. As an 11 year old though this was exploring new boundaries. Themes in adult books are a lot deeper and more complicated than those for kids. I don’t pretend to have any deep insights into literature at that age but it was a start. There were also lots of long words I didn’t understand so a fair bit of time had to be spent looking them up.
It also had to be determined where I went to high school. The local school had just opened and was pretty good There was also a grammar school nearby though and I did the exam for that. 800 boys applied for 120 places but I managed to get in – and schools wouldn’t let a lot of kids even do the exam. It was not a place for the academically faint hearted and I wouldn’t send my own kids there but it suited me.
© ArthurDaley 2026
