[Leonie Fitzgerald]
I can remember a particular child. She was so very bright and her mother didn't speak English, came to school, and she'd convey to me she wanted her to do well. And the girl was so dedicated. But you could see they had very little, but there was so much love between them. I had that feeling. This is so important to the mother, to the child, and you are a key person who can make it happen. And last I heard of her, she was doing really well in secondary school.
[Peter Ruff]
The time we had Balloong, that was the name of the school. We had animals in the classroom, echidnas, lizards, Bats were resident in the room as well behind the cupboard. And the locals said, make sure that you put the fire out at night because the bats go in and out the chimney. So that's what we did and made sure the fire was out at night and the bats had a happy life in the in the schoolhouse.
[Geoffrey Pell]
And so, yes, amongst with all the kids in year nine, we we organised a lamington production that produced something like from memory, I think it was about 120 dozen lamingtons. That was all fine. We got all the lamingtons distributed. There was one problem that that night I went down with food poisoning with with considerable reluctance that I looked to phone in school the next day to find out if anyone else had gone down with food poisoning. I'm pleased to report that the suburb survived the school survived. And I just had an individual case. It was scary. That was scary.
[Judith Meikle]
Each teacher who took a senior class was given an award. Now, my my award was for a grouse teacher that and her flaming red hair. I have kept it for all these years and I'll every so often I'll open it up and I'll look at it and I'll have a little smile and I giggle to myself and I'll remember those students and the lovely time that we had spent together.
[Jennifer Zimbachs]
This photograph is at Elwood Primary School where the librarian had the most wonderful idea that she would put on a pet parade and the students embraced it. And we were a school of 860 students, which is a lot of pets to bring to school. My dog was well-behaved, but we had parrots that flew away. We had cats that were lost. We had dogs that fought in the quadrangle. We had kids crying. We had, you name it, we had it. But it was a great idea, that went a little askew. But it was a lot of fun.
[Peter Greenwell]
Every now and again you go back to a reunion and someone will come up to you and say, you've made a real difference to my life. And you think, really? I didn't know that. So those sort of things, they're precious moments and you do cherish them, but you don't see that at the time. You just see yourself going in and doing your job, trying to be decent, but not not thinking that you'd have that much impact on someone's life.
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