With Its Hat About Its Ears: Recollections of the Bush School

“I’m the new teacher. I’ve been sent from Perth.”
“Hang on till I tie the dogs up.”

In that dialogue there is the apprehension of thousands of first meetings between teachers and communities.

The weatherboard galvanised iron or stone one-teacher schools began their rapid spread across rural Australia with the selectors and compulsory education acts of the 1870s. They were the schools of the blockies and the cockies, the dairyfarmers, potato growers, wheat, wool and fat lamb farmers, cane growers, orchardists, railway and road workers, storekeepers, timberworkers, publicans and policemen, shearers and fencers and all the others that made up rural communities.

Since 1930 over 6000 Australian one-teacher schools have closed. With their passing the map of rural Australia has been thinned. Hank Nelson examines what was taught, and what is now remembered.

The teachers who went into the communities to eat rhubarb and rabbit, dance to the accordian on the polished school floor, take a turn in the family bath on Friday, and play tennis on dirt courts were critical observers of behaviour across Australia.

With Its Hat About Its Ears is rich with the nostalgia of sack race and barn dance.

Hank Nelson has linked the reminiscences of teachers and pupils with detailed archival research. The result is engaging anecdote and significant social history.