On the Wallaby Through Victoria

by Elinor Mordaunt

Among the State schools in Victoria there are bursaries and scholarships available for the secondary schools and universities; while for any boy to climb from the position of a State school pupil into that of Prime Minister is simply a matter of capability and grit.

Continuation schools have been established in Melbourne, Ballarat, and Bendigo for the purpose of giving a preliminary training to teachers, which must afterwards be followed by two years in the Melbourne Training College, when they are free to be appointed to sixth-class positions as State-school teachers, at an annual salary of about £120 for the men teachers and £100 for the women.

These positions are often by no means the tame affairs that they are in England, particularly to the city-born boy or girl. Lately there has been much agitation about the question of decent dwelling-places for State-school teachers in country districts, some of the statements made in the daily papers by these teachers, about two years ago, being little short of revolting. Often the young teacher boards out with some neighbouring “cocky” farmer and his wife, and, at the best, this may be better than sharing a wooden shanty with flies and white ants, where water is always scarce, and company of any sort an impossibility. But at the worst—and the worst of these “cocky” farmers’ homes are sordid beyond any word—it may prove pretty well unendurable, particularly to a young creature who has grown accustomed to the bustle and gaiety of college life; while the mental picture that rises to my mind of the sort of meal set out before a nerve-racked and wearied teacher in some such place, with the sickening slough of half-melted salt butter, the black, drawn tea, the indecent slab of boiled beef—the whole dotted with flies as thickly as a cake with currants—justifies completely the desperate assertion made to me by one delicately pretty young school-marm “I’d marry any man in the world who had a refrigerator.”

But this is the darker side of the picture, though in any case the life of a teacher in a back-block school is one of “alarms and excursions” till time and experience have mellowed it. Still, in all but the loneliest places there are certainly compensations. People are hospitable and friendly; distances are ignored; there is generally someone to lend a horse to the teacher, particularly if she be a girl and a good sort, and someone to teach her to ride, too. There are dances and picnics, moonlight picnics being rather a speciality in Australia, and plenty of wholesome fun. People will work incredibly hard on their farms up in the back blocks, particularly if they go in for dairying; but with all this they have a most extraordinary faculty for enjoying themselves, and there is many a morning when the young school teacher will ride home with an admiring escort none too early to start morning school, after dancing gaily all night. Australia is a good place to be young in, particularly when riding through the Bush in the early dawn; the clear air sweet with the scent which the dew brings out from the young gum-leaves and sweet briar; a good horse under you—and “possibilities” of divers sorts riding by your side; while the Bush dances, where there are as often as not six men to every girl—the men dancing together when they can get no better partners—would be a revelation to any English girl used to balls at home, where, though all the arrangements are far more elaborate, partners are few, and it is the men, and not the girls, who can pick and choose.

In some country places the dwellings are so scattered that the question of schooling becomes a very difficult one. In thinly-populated districts, if an attendance of twenty children can be secured, a full-time school is established; under this number the part-time system is arranged for, one teacher attending at two different schools on alternate days. In other scattered districts payment is made to assist parents in conveying their children to school; in any case a great many ride, and it is no uncommon sight to see three or four youngsters astride upon a sturdy pony, with their school-bags slung over their backs. Often when the attendance is not sufficient to warrant the Educational Department in erecting a school-house, the parents will club together to build a room, at a very small cost, as they provide the labour themselves; while the importance which is generally attached to education is proved by the fact that there are some 600 State schools in Victoria, with an attendance of between twelve and twenty pupils only. In still more sparsely populated districts a teacher goes from house to house within a certain radius, giving a lesson, setting tasks, and correcting them at his next visit; while in New South Wales travelling schools have been established, where the teacher moves about, gipsy-like, with a van, which is at once his home and school, fitted with blackboards and books and all the impedimenta necessary for housekeeping—far less, it must be owned, than would be required by an English man or woman of the same class, for they all seem, somehow, to travel lighter out here, and both the personal and domestic machinery of life is far less complicated:—tea, flour for a damper, sugar, matches, a blanket, a waterproof sheet, and a billy-can, and there is little to fear save thirst—and incidentally bull-dog ants. In Melbourne one may, with a settled income at one’s back, live as complicated and luxurious a life as is possible in any other city. But, on the other hand, when one has learnt the two great lessons of how to do without and how to put up with, one can get more fun for less money here than in any other country that I know of. The rural school-teachers may—and probably do—have a much rougher time than they would in England, but beyond a doubt they have a brighter and healthier; while their life is certainly far removed from the utter drabness which characterizes the existence of the ordinary middle-class man or woman at home.

Essentially Australia is, as I have said, a country for the young. The children are thoroughly well looked after, while as they attain to a larger growth they look after themselves in a way that sometimes makes one squirm. One of the first things that I noticed when I landed was that, in the hotels and coffee-palaces, the girls walked into the dining-room in front of their mothers. They took up the menu-card, examined it, and made their choice before handing it on to their meek parent. For the mothers are meek, there is no doubt about it—the fathers being generally too busy over their own affairs and the making of money for their families to count for much,—and I often look at them in wonder, trying to imagine the modern, breezy, self-assertive young woman of the present day ever being trained to such a perfection of self-obliteration by her daughter.

Partly, I believe, this supremacy is owing to the fact that there seems no stationary class. The people are always going up or down in the social scale. Those people who are rich, and in a way influential, to-day, are the people who served in the shops, dug the gardens, or washed the clothes of those who were rich yesterday; while the whole of the populace seems to slip about from one position to another like the pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope. A great many of the people one sees in public places are “jumped up.” They had no chance of any education when they were young: their hands have been roughed and their shoulders bowed with toil during their youth and early middle age. Education—the mere getting of a certain form of stereotyped knowledge—riches, and what is known as “smartness,” are worshipped by the young—particularly those of the towns—in Australia. They are not ashamed of their parents because they are what might be called “common”; they are simply impatient with them because they are slower in their old-fashioned methods, and not so “smart,” so quick in the up-take, as themselves. In the main I think the children are very loyal to their parents. The lack of courtesy, of patience, and consideration is all fully en évidence, but I have never heard the sullen or bitter complaints against the tyranny and misunderstanding of fathers and mothers in Australia that I have heard in England. Apparently—and actually—the young people go their own way, and take the lead and tender their advice on every matter with a freedom unknown to even the most modern youth in the Old Country; but at the back of it all there is a real sense of comradeship.

In a great number of cases the Australian mother has had a bitterly hard time in her youth, and yet there has lingered in her nature something eternally young that enables her to enter with the greatest zest into her daughter’s enjoyment, by which she seems, indeed, to attain herself to a vicarious youth. You do not hear so many references to “the good old days” as in older countries, or the assertion, “I didn’t go to dances when I was young; why should you?” “I didn’t have any pleasure or amusement; why should you expect it?” etc., etc. On the other hand, you frequently hear the assertion, “One is only young once, and I am determined my children should have a gayer time, a better education, better clothes, and a better chance than ever I had.” It all goes too far, of course, and the children get an inflated idea of their own importance, as I once heard a Melbourne woman say: “The Australian baby begins to suffer from a swelled head at two months.” There is very little of parental discipline or of the machine-like regularity of nursery life—the machine-like servants stolidly going their inevitable round of daily duties; the machine-like, precisely punctual meals; the awful ceremony of the trivial daily round that bulwarks one’s earliest days at home.

In any but the largest households a proper nursery is unknown; in any case the youngsters have most of their meals with the grown-ups. Besides, domestic affairs are usually in the same kaleidoscopic condition as everything else. The servants leave en bloc before the Cup, or because some important ceremony in another State holds out to them the chance of larger wages as waitresses or cooks. Then the mother turns to and does the cooking; and the father brings back cold meats and salad-stuffs from the city, and helps wash up the dishes in the evenings, unless there are visitors to supper—and nothing of any sort ever stops the constant entertaining that goes on—when they are expected to do their share; the children run the errands, and dust, and sweep, and enjoy themselves thoroughly; adjourning with their parents, in a mass, to a restaurant for meals when they all get tired of the work, till a fresh domestic staff is procured.

The entire household is on a more intimate footing than at home. The children know all about Bridget’s young man, and will give her a hand with the dishes on any one of her many days out; or, when her temper is good, wander at their own sweet will in and out of the kitchen, with incessant demands for what is known as “a piece”—a liberal slice of bread, butter, and jam.