Bordertown Primary school

Since we lived so far out of town, and there was no school bus, I started school in 1952 at Bordertown, staying with Grandma and Grandpa Monday to Friday. I used to walk to school, usually with some other kids who lived around there. I don't remember much about the weekly pick-up and drop-off arrangements. 

Some of the old school buildings are still there, where the Naracoorte Road meets South Terrace. That was before Bordertown had a high school, so if you wanted to get past the Intermediate Certificate (year 10 in SA I think, three years of high school) you had to go elsewhere, usually Adelaide. I remember one of my teachers was Mrs Ridgeway, who was Auntie Meg’s mother.

When I was six I broke my arm, and that’s something I clearly remember. Peter would have been three, and Dad left the two of us in the machinery shed while he went off to get something from the shearing shed. There was a pile of cyclone wire coils where we were playing, and I fell off one of them. It was lying on the ground, so it was only a short distance to fall, but there was just a narrow gap between that and a coil of barbed wire. In trying to avoid the barbed wire I fell on my arm and got some scratches on my back. I remember it didn’t seem to hurt, but I called out to Dad ‘My arm’s gone funny’, so he came back and I was carted off to Bordertown hospital with Mum in the back of the car holding a face washer to my forehead, worrying about the rough road. I had a full anaesthetic (ether through a face mask – I remember that!) and spent the night in hospital, and a bit of time in a plaster cast from my shoulder down to my hand, with just the thumb and fingers sticking out.

I also remember being chucked off a horse that bolted with me aboard. Old Blackie was very docile and harmless, except for this day. Blackie galloped up towards a fence, stopped suddenly and off I went. No damage that time.

Dad usually had a man working for him on the farm. The first I think was an Italian called Joseph (Giuseppe), and after him was a couple, Mario and Louisa. Baby Roger was largely adopted by Louisa, and I think he could probably say Italian words before English. They lived in a little cottage that was still standing at the farm a few years ago.