In 1936 I passed an enjoyable year in the Infants Class with the WA Correspondence School. My teacher gave me great encouragement with her friendly and helpful remarks on my papers, and her remarks were copyplate legible.
I never experienced the good fortune to meet her in voice or person, and I’ve forgotten her family name. I can however, recall she had the title of “Miss” as did most women teachers of those times, when married women were largely deprived of any other employment beyond homemaker, child bearer, and child minder. The rule in those days was that you had to be 6 years before starting Correspondence School, and so, being a December child, I could not commence school earlier, in 1935, when I was ready for school.
My mother performed the outstanding task of helping me with my lessons, coping with three younger children, and expecting child number five. Mother and Father owned an isolated wheat/sheep farm between the towns of Corrigin and Brookton. Mother also had to deal with supporting my farmer father, and have very limited household amenities; no electricity, no running water in the farmhouse, no phone, no radio, certainly no T.V. and no transport when my father was working on distant paddocks. Mother didn’t have the physical strength to crank up the farm truck or harness the cranky sulky horse.
Course materials and corrected work from the school were delivered by train once a week to the Kunjin Post Office, 8 ½ miles away.
In 1937 my sister was five, so was able to attend the nearby bush school of Kunjin (17km round trip by bicycle) with me, so Mother did not have the demand of tutoring me. I fell ill with Rheumatic Fever and “St Vitus Dance” and so I could not attend any school for 8 months, and my sister deprived of her school companion attended the Correspondence School for most of 1939.
Later my parents moved to a dairy farm in Mundijong from which all the forthcoming 10 children walked 2km to school.
I left primary school aged 14 years, and after a period of assisting my mother at home, I entered the workforce as a domestic maid. At 18 years of age, despite my limited education, I was admitted into the apprenticeship style training for general nurses at Royal Perth Hospital, followed by the same style of training for midwives at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth. After graduation I was employed as a clinical nurse at Kalgoorlie District Hospital. It was here that I again attended the WA Correspondence School when I completed my Leaving Certificate (Year 12). Having the Leaving Certificate entitled me to undertake courses in Nursing Administration and Education at the Australian School of Nursing in Melbourne, after which I was qualified to return to Royal Perth Hospital as a Nurse Educator for the Hospital Diploma of General Nursing Practice.
Later when I married and my husband’s vocation took him to various Australian towns and cities, I continued to work as a Clinical Nurse, Nurse Teacher and Administrator. Distance education remained a constant in my life, as I was able to obtain a Bachelor Degree of Health Administration (Nursing degrees were not available in those years) through distance education with the University of New South Wales. The degree (and two units of University level English) enabled me to teach English language at a Medical University in Beijing, China for one year with my husband. On our return to Australia I completed a Diploma in Pastoral Care and Theology through Notre Dame University, largely by distance education. I considered continuing at the Master's level through distance education again however, as I nursed part-time and my husband needed pastoral assistance in his role as a rural priest, I decided to forgo further study by distance education.
Now retired and widowed I can reflect gratefully on my varied experiences with distance education.
