The NSW curriculum included arts and crafts, music and dance, science, and physical activities to ensure the children were healthy. As my pupils lived in a remote spot, I wanted them to experience the widest range of subjects and activities possible. Each curriculum area was important in its own right, and none would be neglected by me. I also believed that a child’s weaker performance in one area might be balanced with a stronger performance in another. I wanted all the children to experience success and to form a belief that they could do well in some areas of learning—all of them deserved to see themselves as competent.
The children were already scientists. If observation is the bedrock upon which science is based, then at Weabonga we had a whole laboratory of eager experimenters. As country kids they looked around constantly for the signs and warnings of what might happen in their environment, and they had a sharp understanding of their surroundings.
All could read the clouds. Following a schoolyard break they would tell me, quite accurately, the weather the next few hours would bring. As I passed them by in the village on my way home, one might yell, ‘You’ll be jake, Sir. It won’t rain for an hour or two.’
Snow in the village wasn’t frequent, but the children were accurate forecasters. ‘See the green in that cloud over the Sugarloaf?’ they’d say to each other, pointing to the sky. ‘It’ll be snowing like billy-oh in a tick.’ And the sky would glower a dirty khaki, and snow it would.
So we learnt the names of all cloud types. We drew cloudscapes and kept rainfall records. We averaged out rainfall over days of the month.
Natural sciences were natural to the kids, so we did much careful observation of the bush around us. We enjoyed nature rambles, with my pupils tramping along, roughly together. On one autumn trek, a hot little hand slipped into mine. Generally I didn’t promote or accept such familiarity, but when I looked down and saw it was Charlie, our littlest, I held the hand softly.
As we walked, Charlie said, ‘Native apple.’
Nothing further.
I let it ride for a few seconds then asked, ‘Where, Charlie? I’m not great at recognising trees so you’ll have to help me. Which one is a native apple?’
He nodded and pointed his free hand in the direction of a copse. ‘There. That one.’
‘Good-oh, but there are several different trees in that group. How do I know the native apple?’
‘Easy,’ replied Charlie, with a hint of exasperation, ‘you look at the colour because all the others are all grey and the native apple is the greeny one and the native apple’s branches go out straight from the tree, they don’t grow up only, they all grow sideways. It’s easy to tell. Trees look different.’
That was the longest one-on-one communication I’d ever enjoyed with Charlie. I pressed his small hand. ‘Thanks, Charlie. You’ve taught me something important.’
We exchanged a smile: one of Charlie’s delightful, warming expressions.
I soon included physics in our studies. When I introduced the concept of a lever, Will immediately went to an example, citing an experience with his dad and a green tree. Will’s dad was Max Baulderstone, one of the Sunday tennis players.
‘What do you mean, Will?’ I asked. ‘A green tree? Please tell us more.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘One day a few months back Dad took me and Gary in our ute to the McCreas’ farm up on the Niangala Road. He was dropping off some gravel to the McCreas.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Will’s brother Gary chimed in, ‘I remember that.’
‘On our way back home, the ute had a flat. Dad said a bad word and told us he didn’t have the car jack in the back. He said he’d taken it out of the ute to carry the gravel and had forgotten to put it back in.’
‘Yeah,’ offered Gary, ‘it was a real bad word. We’re not allowed to say it so we said to Dad we’d tell Mum.’
‘Dad said fair cop but told us not to worry. “I can fix this,” he said.’
Max had found a young, green eucalypt, fairly tall but slim. Gary explained: ‘Dad told us it couldn’t be a dead branch as that’d snap under a ute’s weight.’
Their dad shimmied up the thin tree to the very top and, with his body mass on it, bent it to the ground. By pressing and forcing and jumping on it close to the base, he eventually broke the stem. He now had a long pole.
‘Dad told us, “Okay, boys, collect a couple of big rocks, flat as possible.”’
These rocks were packed carefully under the appropriate axle, and Max introduced one end of the tree trunk under the ute.
‘Dad called out, “Stand clear.”’
Making sure everything was stable, Max swung his weight on the furthest end of the tree trunk and raised the car from the roadway.
‘Dad told us, “Now, you fellers hop on here and hang your weight on the end of the tree. Here, where it’s low to the ground. But, for gosh-sakes, be very careful. If you feel the branch move just let it go and run like hell out of the way.”’
I was hoping Max had crossed more than his fingers, as I listened in trepidation.
The boys said they’d reassured Max. ‘Okay, Dad. We know what to do.’
Their combined weight was enough to keep the car raised, and Max effected the wheel replacement. The car was let down under his supervision, tree and rocks removed, and the trio continued on their way home.
‘Wonderful, Gary and Will, and so well told,’ I responded. ‘We were all really anxious from your retelling to know what happened.’ Then I asked the inevitable teacher-type question. ‘Now, everybody, what name could we give to the green tree trunk when their dad made it lift the car?’
‘It was a lever,’ most called.
‘And, what was the fulcrum?’
‘The rocks stacked up under the axle,’ called out Joe Wallace.
‘Well understood and correct, Joe,’ was his reward.
While appreciating the spontaneous bush ingenuity of Max’s solution, I was startled by the inherent danger for him and especially for the two boys. But I chose not to comment that morning on safety.
A week or so later we picked up a focus on the care the children needed to exercise around farms. Farm work, I knew from reports in the Northern Daily Leader, was among the most injury-prone and dangerous of occupations—and, from the boys’ telling, I could see why. But that day we continued with stories referring to a lever.
Mike, who often visited his grandfather Cyril O’Callaghan’s property and helped with farm jobs, spoke out: ‘Just like a wool press.’
‘How, Mike?’
‘Well, a wool press has a long handle, and the presser pushes that handle down, and the handle presses down on the wool. And the pressing can be so strong that a lot of wool can be pressed down to a fairly small pile, which you can pin up to make a bale.’
‘Absolutely correct, Mike. Well done. What do we call the long handle on the wool press?’
‘It’s a lever,’ the children responded, with a bit of a giggle. They seemed to love the fact that a simple piece of familiar, everyday machinery included something with a formal, even scientific name.