Shadowing Practice: What Was High School Like in Australia? - Part 1 - Learn English Speaking with Video
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If I said Australian high school, what's the very first thing that pops into your head?
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Blank.
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An Australian high school.
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Yes, one Australian high school or high school in Australia.
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Yeah, choose your own adventure.
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Choose your own adventure.
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Well, for me it's twofold, because obviously I went to high school, was threefold.
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I went to high school, I taught at high school, and then I had children at high school.
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So you've got many different thoughts.
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I've got various versions of what high school means.
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G'day, guys.
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Welcome to the Aussie English Podcast.
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Grab a cuppa, get comfy, and let's have a yarn.
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All right, guys.
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Welcome back to the Aussie English Podcast.
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So today we're talking about high school in Australia, and Dad and I will probably have similar but different perspectives on this.
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Every country has its own version of high school
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and Australians often assume that our experience is normal but there were
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so many tiny routines and traditions that made it uniquely Australian.
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Today we're going to rebuild what it actually felt like to go to high school here
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so hopefully it'll remind Australians of their own school days
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and give everyone else a bit of a glimpse into growing up here in Australia.
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Yeah.
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So, Dad, what do you remember about the moment you arrived at school each morning?
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First morning of high school is still in my memory.
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That was in 1970.
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So, there you go.
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That's giving away my age.
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I think people already know that.
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Six hundred and fifty.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Back in those days, obviously, it was the middle of just the end of summer.
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It's early February, so it was hot, but we had to wear a blazer, so a thick woolen coat,
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as you did when you were in school, a cap, a felt cap, woolen felt cap.
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That sounds like cricket.
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I know.
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In fact, it was green.
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It was like the Australian cricket, and it was.
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It wasn't a baseball cap.
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It was like a baggy green cap that the cricketers wear, not quite as baggy.
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They must have been phased out, though.
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Those cabs, I don't remember ever seeing them.
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No, no, they disappeared after a couple of years of my school.
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By the mid -70s, they were gone, certainly from my high school and most of the state high schools at the time.
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So I went to a state high school.
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Yeah, wow, okay, and you had a blazer as well.
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A blazer as well, long socks, shorts.
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We couldn't wear long pants until we were in third form, so year nine of high school.
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And even then, everybody wore shorts in summer.
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And even in winter, we did.
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But yeah, first day of school.
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So I marched off to school in my blazer
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and my long socks and my brand -new pants and a grey short -sleeved shirt.
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You could take your blazer off once you got to school, but you had to wear it until you got into class.
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Were you going with a lot of friends that you already knew from primary school?
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Yeah, so I went to a local primary school, which was a very large school, nearly 1 ,000 kids back then back then wow okay
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and then went to the local high school the we had
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two high schools nearby one was a co -ed school
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so boys and girls the other one was just a purely girls school so
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more than half the girls that i went to primary school with went to the girls only school
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and so there are a lot more boys at our high school than there were girls
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but yeah arrived the first day it was hot i remember it distinctly and we had the
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assembly outdoors we didn't have a gym or an indoor stadium big enough
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that was being built at the time actually
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when the year i started uh we didn't have a gym
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big enough to fit us all in to hold an indoor assembly
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so we're standing outdoors 200 and something kids in you know first form year seven um
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and um then they just called out names so 7a
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and they went through the 40 names of the people who were in 7a
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and then 7b and they went through the 40 names
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and 7a marched off to this their room with their form teacher yeah
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and i was in 7f the sixth out of six
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so we're an hour later we're still standing out there in the now morning sun yeah
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and then went off to our room
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and i have no recollection whatsoever of what happened as soon
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as we got in the room see it's funny for me it's the opposite like
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because i was i went to geelong college
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when I was a high school student and I'd been sent to a school where no one from primary school went.
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Yes.
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And so it was like starting from scratch again.
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Didn't know anyone.
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I don't...
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You know what?
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I do remember, I think it was the first day where, it's hard for me to remember if it was an assembly or if it was that entrance exam,
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because I remember first meeting and interacting with two of my friends, Sam and Tristan, when I was in year seven.
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And I remember the hall that it was in, but I can't remember, because I know they did the exam as well, but I can't remember if it was the exam or if it was the welcome assembly and everything like that.
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But I remember the classroom too, mainly that.
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I think that's where my main memories begin for high school it was the classroom
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that i was in because it was such a different
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looking back it's kind of like
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that harry potter type vibe of classrooms right where like in
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primary school you're at these small little desks with little chairs
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that are kind of just standard
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and you went to a very new primary school yeah exactly
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and then when i went to high school it was like it was one of these schools
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that had this old -fashioned you say like um buildings
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and the desks were old so you'd go into these rooms
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and you're like these feel like they're 30 40 50 years old yeah
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and the desks are all old there's a big blackboard in front of you whereas i don't remember having
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that same vibe from the primary school everything was whiteboards
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and texture and all that sort of stuff
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but we had the same thing with the blazer the long
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socks the shorts yes i remember the tie was the hardest
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thing for me yeah tie as well yeah i remember they
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we used to wear a tie at primary school oh my god okay how weird is
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that i don't think there'd be any primaries besides the private schools now in Australia.
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And I don't even think the primary schools...
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This is in the 1960s.
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The private school primary schools don't make them wear ties until year seven, I think.
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No, exactly.
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But, yeah, so I remember classes in that first few weeks of school very well.
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But that transition from the standing out in the heat in the sun to then being marched off to the room, and I remember which room it was,
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but then whatever happened in that room at the time where it was there, welcome to high school, and I'm your English teacher or blah, blah, blah.
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But no, I do remember the classes pretty well from there.
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But yeah, it was just an interesting little process to go through.
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And it's a funny transition because back in the 1960s and 70s,
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the idea of transition from one school year to another one just didn't exist.
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It was just suck it up, prince and princesses, and off you go.
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So having had a fair degree of responsibility as a grade
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six child at primary school to suddenly being one of the little kids and treated like little kids with no responsibility whatsoever.
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And, of course, you've got 17 and 18 -year -olds at the same school.
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These are adults as far as when you're a 12 -year -old.
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I remember I was talking to Kel about that in one of the previous episodes.
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Yeah, because when you started school, you went to a middle school as your first seven and eight.
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Although it had a few of the upper primary school years there too.
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It did, yeah, but I think it was grade five to grade eight.
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Yeah.
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And then you went to the high school, then nine to 12 after that.
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But even then, from year nine, it still felt a bit like that.
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You were like, oh, jeez, these guys are like adults.
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Yeah, exactly.
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They're huge kids.
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And I remember them really well.
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It's like these people that you think of now and you go, they're 18 years old.
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just a boy just a girl yeah
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but yeah these are men who are shaving and we i had
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that girls who look like women i had
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that on the bus though especially when
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because i used to have to get a bus from obviously the school was half an hour away driving
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so i had to get a bus each morning
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and i remember the older kids sat on
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that back seat at the back of the bus yeah and
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that was kind of the hierarchy thing it was like pretty much anyone sat anywhere
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but the back of the bus was always the year 12 kids yeah year 11 year 12 kids
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and i remember looking at those kids
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and just thinking oh my god they're huge you know
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and looking back you're like you're only a few years away
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from being the same it's only five years yeah exactly yeah
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that was nuts
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so what was the morning routine like for you excuse me
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what was the morning routine like for you um the morning as in before school
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or at school yeah well i guess going through the program
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you got up in the morning then what happened all the way to starting school.
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Yeah, so get up in the morning, have, well, at that time when I was, you know, just starting high school, it literally was just get up in the morning, have breakfast, go to school.
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Yeah.
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And school was a kilometre and a half, just over that away.
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So you'd just walk.
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So it was walk or ride your bike.
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Yeah.
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If it was belting down with rain, every now and then mum would drive us.
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I was going to say, she'd make us run.
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She'd make us run.
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Yeah, get there quicker.
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she chases with a stick yeah and this is yeah so she'd drive
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stick out the window hurry up you rats no so um
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so that was ride your bike or walk to school
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and um and some of the kids who lived a bit further away used to catch a bus
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but it was just there was no school bus it was just the public you know buses
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that they would take
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because there was There were two bus stops right outside the school for two different bus lines that went past.
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And then you'd usually get there 15 to 30 minutes before school started.
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After a few weeks, you knew enough people, you'd hang around with your mates and you'd be playing a lot of down ball, tennis ball.
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Yeah, we called that four square.
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Yeah, we didn't play four square.
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It was just a tennis ball up against the wall.
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Yeah, I wonder how much the name of that sport was related to whether or not you had concrete blocks nearby,
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because they would often put those lines in them so that I guess if they broke, they broke along the lines.
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Yeah, and we invented it so that you didn't have any rules at all.
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All you needed was a wall and enough space to bounce a ball onto the wall.
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So it's sort of like squash, was it?
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Yeah, but it was handball, so you're literally hitting a tennis ball with your hand into the wall, but you had to bounce it in there and
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so one bounce hit the wall
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and then the ball comes off the wall one bounce
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and the next person has to hit it and
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so you could play in twos or threes or fours and
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if it was threes or fours you'd have to cycle through and then you'd play doubles
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We had the four squares so you would have four squares of concrete usually, blocks of it or even
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if it was bricks you would know where the cross line is
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and then I remember Dunce was the guy at the bottom And as you won, you would have to...
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And you'd progress up the four squares.
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Yeah, and there was like, I think it was Duns, Jack, Queen's, King or something like that, you know, like, I guess, card game or something.
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But you had to bounce the ball in your square before it went into the other person's.
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So you couldn't just smash it because then it wouldn't bounce in the other person's.
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No, you had to bounce it in yours, land in somebody else's, and then they had to do the same.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, so there was a bit of that.
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During the winter, it was much more, you know, kicking a ball around, soccer ball or a football.
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Yep, did that as well.
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Australian football, for those who think soccer is football.
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Yeah.
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And that was about it, really.
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And then there was a morning assembly every morning.
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So you'd stand outside.
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So there was a morning assembly every morning.
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And it was outside, you were saying?
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Outside, yeah, until the school hall got built that year.
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So by the end of the year, there was a hall that would fit the whole school in.
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So it was only outside because there was no hall.
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But it wasn't the whole school at the assembly.
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It was in various quadrangles.
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There was sort of the junior schools, equivalent to what we now call 7 -8 and then 9 -10 to 11 -12 or somewhere else.
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Once we got the whole indoor stadium thing, then we only held school assembly once a week.
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Yeah, that was...
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We didn't hold the whole school assembly every day.
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That was the thing that I did when I was in school as well.
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But we remember that distinctly.
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And it was only in that first year that I can remember it, of just standing outside every morning.
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And in the rain, it didn't matter, you know, standing outside.
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Did your blazers smell like wet dog if they got wet?
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Oh, yeah.
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It was wool.
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I always remember that.
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They were pure wool.
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I always remember.
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I still have it.
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I still have that blazer.
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So do I.
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I've got mine in my thing somewhere.
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So we're just going to open a beer here.
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Yeah, yours is only 20 -something years old, though.
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Mine's more than that.
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Well, I guess it's probably the last one I had.
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Mine's getting close to 60 years old.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, you lost one.
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Thanks very much.
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Cheers.
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Yeah, I remember dreading that.
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It has typically opened a beer.
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If it was raining on the way to school and you were walking, you were like, shit.
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Oh, no. I'm going to smell like dog for the next hour and a half.
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But not just you.
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Everyone.
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But you've got to hang it up in your – because we had two lockers.
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We had a coat locker and a normal locker, which you had your books and stuff in.
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Yeah.
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And then you'd hang the thing in the coat locker, and the coat lockers were shared.
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So you'd get two wet woolen blazers by the end of the day.
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Especially if it heated up or something.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I distinctly remember that smell of just wet dog and always just being like, this smells like surely they have another way of making these.
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And the other thing that flashes to my mind, which is no surprise given the testosterone -driven 12 -year -old that I was at the time,
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is that the leadership in the school, the teaching leadership in the school, was a principal who, in this case, was a man.
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And then we had a headmistress who was in charge of the girls.
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And the headmistress was a dragon.
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She was a horrible human being.
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Aren't they always?
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I know, but I've had these sort of reminiscences with people, and some of the people, particularly people older than me, who went through the school before me,
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who had her as an English teacher, said she was wonderful, and she probably was a good English teacher.
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I never had her as a teacher.
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Yeah, no, it's as soon as they become mistresses, or principals, or whatever, they just turn into absolute.
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And you know what?
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And she used to walk around with a ruler, the yardstick they used to call on the yard,
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you know like a meter ruler yeah for those who use the metric system um that were designed to
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as blackboard rulers so that you could draw a long you know meter line on a blackboard
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so the big handle at the front of it and you go And she used to walk up the girls' corridor.
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So the boys and girls were separated into different corridors where their lockers were.
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And she would walk up the girls' corridor, the year seven and eight girls' corridor, first and second form, as we called it at the time, with a yardstick.
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And she would lift their dresses, the school dresses, to check the colour of their underwear.
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They had to wear regulation -coloured underwear.
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It had to be either white or this horrible tan colour, which was one of the school colours our school colours were green
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and brown that would not pass the pub test today and of course there's a hundred
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12 year old boys standing at the end of the corridor
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and she just kept doing it every morning it was just
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the most blatant bullying so she didn't need to do it
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but she just did does it really matter what colour underwear girls are wearing
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for some reason when you were telling
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that story i'm like were they required to do
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that every day as a way of kind of like keeping people in place
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and humiliating people or is that just her that was her
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that was just her i don't i don't think many other schools did underwear checks for girls
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and certainly not public ones was the fashion at the time
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that's just how teachers behaved well there was a lot of
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that yeah teachers had
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and she'd probably been teaching since the late 1940s she was
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in her early 60s she had it done to her and she's like, I'm going to pass on everyone else.
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Here's the trauma that I had.
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Exactly.
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Good grief.
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So if someone had never been to an Australian school, what tiny detail do you think would surprise them about this sort of routine?
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Well, again, there aren't many schools left.
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I don't think there are any left now.
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Yeah.
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But post -World War II, by the mid -1950s...
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It was about when you were a teenager, right?
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Yeah, something like that.
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There was this push to rebuild schools,
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to grow schools, and the state government put a lot of money into them, but they built these schools out of, they called them light timber construction.
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They were very cheaply built, and they had these sort of cement, you know the cement bricks that you get, the cement blocks?
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Oh, you mean the ones you get from Bunnings now that have their big gaps in the middle?
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Besser bricks, they used to be called.
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They used to be called Besser bricks.
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Cinder blocks or something?
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Cinder blocks, yeah.
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They looked like cinder blocks, but they actually weren't.
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They were tiles.
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Oh, okay.
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And they were just hung.
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They had little, you know, they were cement, but they just had these little hooks on them.
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So the buildings were all with these timber battens on them, and these tiles were just hung over the side of the walls.
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Is that so they could be taken apart later more easily?
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Yeah, it was meant to be, they were meant to be temporary buildings.
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They were meant to be there for about 10 years while the government got the money to rebuild the schools.
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And the government never got the money.
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I went through the school.
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The school was built in the late 1950s, 58, 59.
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It was in that period there.
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So it was pretty new then.
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It was pretty new.
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But by the time I got there, these buildings had already outlived their use -by date.
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And they were still there.
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A lot of these buildings were still there 30 or 40 years later.
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Now, they've all been replaced now.
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So that was the thing that people who went to school in Victoria in the 1970s went, LTC buildings like timber construction, they all look the same
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and they're all built on this h pattern of two long corridors with a crossover corridor in the middle yeah
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and all the and the rooms were either side of those two long corridors
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so you could walk into a school
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and you know 20 years later i was at teaching at university
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and teaching education and visiting education students on their teaching placements in schools
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and i'd walk into them i go i know my way
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around this building you know 20 years ago it's exactly the same pattern as the high school i went to
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and so yeah so that was that was something
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that people who went to school
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when i did just knew what a high school looked like
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yeah unless you were in the inner suburbs of melbourne
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and i can only talk about victorian schools
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but in the inner suburbs of melbourne with some of the older schools were old brick two -story buildings
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and uh they were very different the thing
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that would have been classic around my era would have been
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the portable classroom right yeah they seem to be everywhere at
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that time i don't know if they're still like that because Because there was a period in the early 1990s, late 80s, early 90s,
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where there was a decision made by the Education Department in
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Victoria to not build a high school for more than 700 or a primary school for more than 350.
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Kids.
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Kids.
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I was going to say 1 ,000?
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Yeah, no, permanent buildings.
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Yeah, okay.
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And then if schools grew, they would put portables in.
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And the idea was to make them flexible because populations of schools come and go.
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Yeah, gotcha the the local population grows well
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that happened from my primary school right i remember i think probably the initial years i was a three
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and four i was in the main building yeah
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but then once i got to five
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and six there were i don't know four four portable rooms
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now there's 15 portals how would you describe what it is
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a portable classroom um they were usually double classrooms again built
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where they could literally ship them in on the back of
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a truck they split them in half yeah I guess they're like pre -fab buildings, right?
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Pre -fab buildings.
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External air conditioning.
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I know.
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And they literally bolt them together and they can take them away in a day.
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Yeah, and there would be like a ramp in between the two, there would be two pairs of classrooms on either side.
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So it's literally like a block of four
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and the ramp would go up into the classrooms in the middle and you would just shuffle out into your, all the bags and coats and everything would be on the outside of the classrooms and you go in.
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But, yeah, with high school, it was completely different for me because I went to a, well, the younger high school part of it, like the middle school, would have been slightly more recent.
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Yes, that wasn't an old school.
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Whereas the main school, 9 to 12.
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That was the second oldest school in Victoria.
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I think it's 150 years old.
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It's older than that now, 170 something.
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The Brits will be laughing.
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People from Britain will be like, that's not old.
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It's old.
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Well, that school was created about 15 years after Geelong was settled yeah i know yeah yeah it's nuts
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so yeah but i think the other thing that sorry to interrupt you
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but i think the other thing that would shock is probably a strong word
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but surprise people is corporal punishment yeah yeah we've talked about
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that before but you want to explain when how why yeah
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that like i was in an era by the time i
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got to high school i was in an era where teachers didn't dish it out themselves
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but if you were being punished for misbehavior either in the classroom or in the schoolyard,
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you got sent to the deputy principal who would literally, you know...
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The local sadist.
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Yeah, stick your hand out and they'd pull out a lump of wood and smack you over the hand with it.
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Ten of the best.
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Ten of the best, yeah, exactly.
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I mean, we laugh now, but I can't imagine, yeah, that would have been...
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I know, I know.
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It's so weird to think that back then it was so normal to hit kids with wooden implements.
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Yeah, and I remember the guy's name.
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I won't use it.
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He's dead, it's fine.
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No, no. No, he's not?
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The vice principal would be, but the student not.
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I think he left school after year 11, but fifth form at school.
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Sick of being kids.
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This guy was the toughest guy I've ever seen in my life.
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Yeah.
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And I remember the rumour had it, and of course nobody else was in the room, and he was so tough that he wouldn't tell the story about himself.
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But rumour had it that when he got sent to the vice principal, and the vice principal
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was going to give him the belt over the hand that he actually grabbed the stick and then turned around and said,
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now it's your turn The punishment stopped,
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allegedly Now, that's a myth and it became just broadcast across the school at the time
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It must have been an awkward situation where you would have had teenagers
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that probably got bigger than a lot of the teachers by the end of high school and then you were like, put your hand down and
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if they said no no what are you going to do well they just expelled them from school yeah okay
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but but in the end you get expelled for refusing a punishment for something
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that was completely trivial like talking back to a teacher
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or swearing in class or hitting another kid
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which you know school yard violence was was common
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but not not extreme really yeah because um mention that quickly
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because that's probably another part of it did you have a lot of violence at school Oh, there was always the fight behind the shelter shed.
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Really?
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Oh, yeah.
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See, that was the kind of thing when I was at Geelong College.
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Right, I'll meet you at lunchtime behind the shelter shed.
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You would have been expelled straight away.
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Yeah, but 500 kids.
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It was never going to be a secret.
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Like, why behind the shelter shed?
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Because 500 kids would know about it.
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You don't want the teachers to stop you.
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Exactly.
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No, that was, yeah, I never got to see any.
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I think I saw one fist fight once, and it was after school, and it got broken up pretty quickly.
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And I think the teacher, I remember the teacher saying, like, you guys need to leave now, or I'm going to.. tell the principal and you will get expelled.
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If I mention what I just saw, you guys are fucked.
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Like, you need to leave.
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Go in opposite directions.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Which was crazy.
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It was almost like he was more angry that they had put themselves in a position of being expelled.
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Or they put him in the position to actually cover for them.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So you had quite a few fights, did you?
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I never got in a fight at school.
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Yeah, neither did I.
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I was big.
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I wasn't particularly aggressive.
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Believe it or not, I was actually quite shy when I was young, probably up until the age of about 14 or 15.
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But I was big for my age, so people tend not to pick on big kids.
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Funny that.
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One of the kids that used to get bullied, and bullied was emotional bullying, not physical bullying. Of course.
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That's the best kind.
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It was actually quite a big kid.
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That was what we experienced as well.
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And there was a lot of that going on.
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And I remember there was a kid, I will use his first name, Tim.
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Because fuck him.
452
Yeah, and if, Tim, you're listening, you'll know the story.
453
Tim had a growth disorder.
454
Okay, he was smaller than others.
455
He was about the size of an eight -year -old when he started high school.
456
He had a pituitary gland.
457
Yeah, and he ended up having growth hormone and so on, and by the time he was 15, he was the same size as everybody else.
458
There was one of those kids in our school as well, yeah.
459
And he was a lovely kid, but because he was so small, you could just pick on him.
460
Yeah.
461
And, you know, you literally lock him in a coat locker and turn it around so that he couldn't get out.
462
Where's Tim?
463
Oh, he's bang, bang, bang.
464
Jesus.
465
And, you know, there are other, you know, ridiculous things that used to go on, but, you know, bullying kids.
466
But bullying doesn't change.
467
It's just the method of it.
468
I don't think we had, at least at my school, we didn't have that kind.
469
I'm not excusing it at all.
470
Yeah.
471
We didn't have that kind of overt stuff because, again i think it was just punished too harshly yeah the stuff
472
that used to happen would be on the bus or before
473
or after school where they could effectively be like well it
474
wasn't at school yeah um once you got your blazer off you can do whatever you like yeah that's it
475
but it was never i don't know you couldn't really get
476
away with too much it was usually just the emotional verbal
477
but funnily enough i loved high school yeah absolutely loved it
478
and um you you don't think of it like
479
that at the time but then in hindsight you look back and go So, yeah, they were pretty good years, six years of high school.
480
And I think a lot of it was the school.
481
The teachers mostly were really good.
482
Not necessarily great teachers, but great people.
483
Yeah.
484
I guess that often makes it, right?
485
It does.
486
I remember having
487
that at university quite a bit where you would have teachers
488
for a certain subject where one would switch over in the middle of the semester and you would be like, why has this subject gotten so much better or so much worse?
489
Yeah, and it would be like, oh, it's about the teacher's enthusiasm or connection.
490
Ability to tell a story.
491
Exactly, yeah.
492
Or just being human.
493
Who was your favourite teacher then at school and why?
494
My favourite teacher was an art teacher.
495
And I enjoyed art, but I was an academic.
496
I used to enjoy maths and science, and that's what I intended to do all the way through school.
497
So I enjoyed doing art, but I never took it seriously but there was an art teacher, a young American guy and that was one of the other things.
498
In the early 1970s, there was an extreme shortage of teachers in the state of Victoria and so the Victorian government,
499
the education department, were importing young teachers from Europe, Britain in particular, and America.
500
And so we had a lot of first year art teachers, like 22, 23 year olds, who had come from America or Britain or we actually had one Egyptian guy who was hysterical
501
because he almost didn't speak english he probably spoke perfect english but he was completely unintelligible
502
his accent was so thick yeah um but
503
and this guy was an american
504
and you know he's a young guy you probably you know
505
by the time i i think i was in sort of third form so 14 15 and he was like 22.
506
yeah isn't that weird so he's he just had to be one of your mates it's
507
so i had one of my friends through high school same
508
year as me i remember we finished we went to uni
509
together he ended up working in the drama department of a high school, an all -girls high school from 21 on, and I was just like, are you crazy?
510
Yeah.
511
Are you wanting to go to jail?
512
These girls, like you're teaching year 12 students or you're helping, you're an aide, you're working with them.
513
They're three years younger than you, dude.
514
You are looking for trouble.
515
Yes, I know.
516
Another flashback to, again, testosterone -driven, although at this time I was probably, It might have been sixth form, like 17, 18 years old.
517
And the school, every year they'd put on a play or a musical production or whatever, and the play they were doing this time was The Diary of Anne Frank.
518
It's a very serious, morbid sort of thing.
519
And one of my friends was in it, a female friend.
520
Was she Anne?
521
No, she was her sister.
522
Yeah, okay it's a bit part in it yeah
523
but there was a um a quick costume change
524
that was required in it and i i wasn't in the the uh the cast
525
but i was in the back crew you know doing stage
526
and all that sort of hoo -ha and
527
and this young lady extremely attractive young woman said ian i
528
need help getting out of my costume can you help
529
because there were no no girls on the on the backstage I trust you.
530
I trust you.
531
You're a friend.
532
You're a friend of my boyfriend.
533
And the female teacher who was sort of supervising the background, she is no longer alive, so I can call her.
534
Olivia Howard, her name was.
535
Granny Howard.
536
Granny.
537
She was in her 60s by the time we started school.
538
Isn't that fucked up to think you're in their 60s now?
539
I'm not that old.
540
I know.
541
Exactly.
542
Exactly.
543
And I remember this young lady undressing and me unzipping her and helping her with her clothes off.
544
And she's standing there in her underwear, just bra and knickers in her underwear, and I'm handing her clothes.
545
And Mrs. Howard, who was one of my favourite teachers, and I was one of the teacher's pet when I started the school because I was good at maths.
546
She was a maths teacher.
547
She was absolutely mortified, she was like, would you say no?
548
Put your clothes on.
549
So she thought you guys had gotten down to it or something?
550
No, I think she knew what was going on.
551
It was the fact that I was there doing it and I said, you can help, you do it.
552
Someone think of the children.
553
She was just mortified and we used to laugh.
554
She and I, the young lady, not the teacher, used to laugh about that for ages afterwards.
555
I think we've given poor old Granny Howard a heart attack.
556
So once you got into school and you've gotten ready and gone to class, how were the days sort of structured?
557
What was it like?
558
Well, it changed from when I first arrived, we had eight 40 -minute periods a day.
559
Okay.
560
And what's a period?
561
A period is a class.
562
Or a chunk, right?
563
An English class would last 40 minutes.
564
We had eight of them.
565
Good grief.
566
I know.
567
So you'd have two and then morning break, then two, then lunch break, then two, then the afternoon break, then two, and then go home.
568
Good grief.
569
That sounds like stacked.
570
I know.
571
But the real challenge was that for some things like the specialist subjects like art,
572
phys ed in particular, they were double periods.
573
Phys ed, physical education, sport.
574
Yeah, you can't do sport, physical education.
575
You can't have 40 minutes.
576
Quick, change.
577
Get changed right go out there here's a football right now
578
i hope you enjoyed your five minutes of play exactly um
579
and and so yeah but everything else was a single 40 minute period
580
and so you'd end up with all right i'm in english here
581
and then i've got maths next period but it's five minutes of walk away
582
and you sort of run to the next class
583
and then you know line up outside the room and go in
584
and they sit down and think about that
585
and then we by the time i was in i think it was probably fourth form, year 10, 11.
586
They changed it to five one -hour periods a day,
587
which is a bit of overkill because it's hard to break five into having three breaks during the day, so they had two breaks.
588
They had a morning break, then a late lunch, and then you were done after that.
589
I think that's how it was for me too.
590
I think it was recessing last time.
591
An hour period was a long time yeah um and and
592
and then a double period was fantastic you know for art you spent half the day doing art
593
or sport or whatever that was that was really good um
594
and so yeah it's always a mixture of those things
595
but yeah the the fact
596
and having gone from primary school where you sit in the
597
same class with the same teacher for everything except you might go to the language class
598
or sport or art we're in a separate room
599
but everything else was in the same room with the same teacher
600
and of course you understand that high school is structured differently but then
601
when you've actually got to cope with the you know what
602
room are we in we're in room eight where's room eight
603
it was room eight last year it's now room six this year you kept having to go back
604
and forth to your locker and it was oh
605
that was always the circus it was the instruction came out
606
about once a week for years take two periods where the
607
books with you you don't have time to go to your locker in between
608
and then they would have the locker police the teachers marching up
609
and down the lockers in between period one and two
610
or three and four going don't go to your locker get on it
611
but I haven't got my books I don't care get back to class
612
but I'm just going to be sent out I don't care move on I miss
613
that I actually really liked getting when you got your next year's set of books
614
that you're going to learn oh yeah
615
and it was like it was a very condensed kind of
616
like here's all the information you're going to get everything I'm going to need for a year yeah
617
that was fun wasn't it getting those i love getting your your books
618
and your all of your um stationary
619
and everything i don't know i'm still a stationary addict yeah i walk through office works out you know
620
which is yeah pink paper so what was recess like
621
so you went to classes or whatever in the morning
622
and then the bell would go the bell oh yeah bells
623
when you got eight 40 minute periods the bells are running literally ringing all the time
624
and the ones only just stopped before Yeah, and then they had warning bells.
625
Before school, you'd have a warning bell of 15 minutes before class and then right on class start time.
626
And then at recess, you'd have a five -minute warning and then a bell.
627
And then at lunchtime, you'd have the 15 -minute warning and then the bell.
628
So bells are going all the bloody time.
629
It must have driven people who live near the school nuts.
630
Yeah, I know.
631
You didn't really think about that, did you?
632
The fact that there were houses across the road from all these schools and that the bells are going all the time.
633
The bells are going all day.
634
Yeah, during semester.
635
Yeah, so you'd grab your books from your locker
636
and you'd go off to class and you'd do your 40 minutes
637
and then you'd run off to wherever the next class was.
638
But what was recess like?
639
What did you do for recess usually?
640
How long was it?
641
Off the top of my head, 15 or 20 minutes.
642
Yeah, I think that was about that.
643
Lunchtime was an hour, which is a long time.
644
And then another 15.
645
So it was an hour and a half break, I think.
646
So 15, 60 and 15. and then and
647
so 15 minutes wasn't long enough to do much i know you pretty much just eat something
648
and be like well the bell's about to go yeah
649
but mostly it wasn't eat for us it was just get out
650
and either that or it was queue up at the canteen to buy something
651
that was always lunchtime where
652
that took 12 minutes of your 15 minutes i know yeah exactly and then
653
and then you'd be off to class again what were the
654
items you were getting at the canteen typically the best the best winter was the best, because our school, I don't know who invented it,
655
I could lay claim to the increase in the item, but at one stage, somebody in the canteen,
656
one of the canteen women, whether it was a parent or the woman who ran it, decided that over winter, they would put bread rolls in the pie heaters,
657
so they get extra pie heaters, so you could have a hot bread roll, and then you could have a hot bread roll with a sausage roll inside it Jesus
658
and chips inside it as well yeah not hot potato chips
659
but a packet of crisps so you buy you
660
and your mates you'd buy a packet of you know a
661
small packet of chips between about four of you you buy a bread roll
662
and a sausage roll and you put the chips in there
663
and then you'd eat that it was just complete
664
and utter carb overload yeah but it's funny that we had
665
that but you run it off by 10 minutes later sausage rolls
666
and sausage roll roll everyone always not the roll
667
but the sausage roll itself we always got they were in little plastic bags at the time
668
that had little holes in them.
669
Plastic hadn't been invented.
670
Yeah, so the sausage roll roll and then the chip edition was my age.
671
Did you have canteen orders as well?
672
Yeah, lunch orders.
673
You'd get like a little paper bag, write your order on it with your name, put your money in it, the coins usually, maybe a $5 note and then have that.
674
Wouldn't have been for you, but for me it would have been, yeah.
675
That would have gotten you, all of the canteen's food.
676
Exactly, buy the canteen for $5 in 1970.
677
Yeah, we did.
678
And I can't remember, like at primary school it was easy
679
when you were doing it because they just came to your class.
680
It was, Ian, you're on canteen duty this week.
681
You go and you buy this big, you go and pick up this big metal crate and two of you would struggle to carry this thing back to the...
682
I wonder if it was at high school you had to take it yourself in recess or something.
683
Yeah, high school I think you had, yeah, but then you had to go and pick it up from the canteen.
684
Yeah, exactly.
685
You had to go and get it yourself.
686
So there was no delivery to the rooms or anything.
687
I know.
688
Those soft primary school kids.
689
I know, primary school kids.
690
And what about every lunch?
691
What would you do when you had a bit more time?
692
Sport.
693
Yeah, pretty much sport soccer footy sport girls sport girls sport with
694
the girls yeah sport sport mostly i i spent a lot
695
of time in the library looking back funnily enough it was
696
with the nerdy kids i ended up sort of falling in
697
with them we would play soccer on the main oval and
698
or play chess and watch like family guy on our laptops
699
because we had laptops back then this was you know some
700
of the early years of bringing laptops into the high school
701
and it was weird because i think we got them from year
702
and looking back god they were these toshiba bricks we had these huge computers
703
and they had we were amazed like whoa three gigabytes of data 64 megabytes of ram
704
and you would be like whoa
705
and what else we had like um we would at the
706
time everyone was torrenting pirating in fact we wouldn't have had
707
torrents it would have been wares back then yeah just pirating
708
and using websites to get um music music and videos movies yeah
709
so getting things like american pie And you would have to download it in two sections.
710
Yeah.
711
And it would be an awful, awful, like, resolution.
712
It was 480 pixels wide.
713
It was terrible.
714
And we would, oh, the funny thing was that back then we had, like, the ability to burn CDs.
715
We didn't have, it was before DVDs.
716
Yeah.
717
And this was when you would, the computers could burn CDs.
718
Oh, you could just copy the music off a CD.
719
Yeah.
720
And so, well, we would download all this stuff
721
and often just copy the files onto a CD and then people would just share it around.
722
Yeah.
723
So, everyone had the latest music and everything and, yeah, it was a funny time.
724
Yeah, sport was a thing.
725
And it was soccer mostly because soccer was easy.
726
And more people probably wanted to play it.
727
AFL is a bit more technical, right?
728
And at lunchtime, the first year, I don't think it happened much, but after that we had a teacher.
729
He was a St Kilda footballer, VFL at the time, which became the AFL,
730
and he had the genius idea that you could lend out sporting equipment at lunchtime.
731
So it used to be the race to the sports office.
732
There's only one of everything.
733
I want a football.
734
I want a soccer ball.
735
I want a cricket ball and stumps and a bat.
736
And then over winter, he used to open up the gym, the stadium, which had volleyball courts and table tennis
737
and badminton was the thing because you could fit six badminton courts on this thing.
738
And it was before basketball became a thing it was really
739
weird like basketball wasn't popular here no it really wasn't
740
and the trouble with basketball is it takes up a lot
741
of room the court yeah whereas badminton you could play doubles and
742
so we'd play a lot of badminton during winter we would
743
always have those basketball courts where you would have like three
744
different sports worth of lines oh yeah yeah it's a tennis
745
court a netball court a badminton court four square all over
746
the place yeah you would just be like good grief what
747
are we what am i looking at where are the yellow
748
lines did you have no hat no play did you have
749
no no no no hat no play no no no
750
which is why i've got skin cancer yeah good no none of
751
that no hat no play I guess that came in
752
when I was in primary school didn't it I remember I
753
basically came in around the time you started primary school yeah
754
wide -brimmed hats no hat no play
755
and we had to have sunscreen on I think too yeah
756
and the school provided the sunscreen yeah yeah what was sports
757
carnival days like did you enjoy those I loved it
758
because i was good at it um yeah yeah i remember
759
i've got a story for you sorry i there was this guy i went to school with called nick
760
and it was always really funny
761
because he hated sport he was this typical really intelligent you know nick you remember um
762
and red like he i remember going to his house one day
763
and i think it must have been when harry potter came out
764
and it was that day and he's like oh i finished it this morning
765
and i'm like what do you what the fuck do you
766
mean you finished it this morning he's like i just read
767
it just read it done nothing else what do you mean you read the whole book you know
768
and these were the chunky ones like four
769
or five right harry potter four or five
770
and he's like yeah i just smashed it out three hours
771
and i'm like that would take me a week like he was an animal
772
but he would always um he always he always had a
773
hamstring injury the day the athletic sports he did trumpet for year seven
774
and eight and it was
775
so funny for for all of high school i thought he did trumpet
776
because he would always be each week he would have he
777
would bring to school his trumpet in his little trumpet case he stopped trumpet in year eight
778
but he can't bring it to school
779
so he could do music practice instead of sport no well
780
he always used it to get out of classes he didn't like
781
or out of sport oh i've got a trumpet lesson Yeah.
782
And I was like, where did you go?
783
And he's just like, the toilets.
784
But he used to use that, he used to somehow use trumpet or something to get out of all of the sports, carnival training stuff.
785
We had, because you had Saturday sport.
786
Private schools have Saturday, compulsory Saturday sport.
787
You had to train two days a week before school or after school.
788
And then on weekends you'd compete against other schools.
789
And whereas we didn't have that, our sport, our inter -school sport was Wednesday afternoons.
790
Yeah.
791
And so if you're in a school sports team, and they were fairly selective, so there was a junior team and a senior team in most sports,
792
so it wasn't every year level.
793
Yeah.
794
And so I played soccer most of the time.
795
And so it was a soccer team from sort of year eight onwards, second form onwards.
796
and so you'd go off and either another school soccer team would come to your school
797
and play or you'd go off to their school and play and you'd bust off and do it every Wednesday afternoon.
798
Now, if you weren't playing in, and those sports seasons were quite short because you only played within the closed zone so you weren't travelling,
799
unlike you, you were travelling from Geelong to East Melbourne.
800
Exactly, yeah, it'd be like a whole Saturday.
801
So we would only play like five other teams so you'd play for five weeks and you were done.
802
So the rest of the time, Wednesday afternoon, was organized sport.
803
So you could pick a sport.
804
You know, all right, we're playing golf.
805
So we lived in Beaumaris, so we were across the road from some of the best golf courses in Australia.
806
So you'd go off to Sandringham Golf Course and play golf, or you'd play basketball or badminton or table tennis or something in the gym.
807
You'd just play, or squash.
808
You'd go down to the local squash courts and play.
809
So that was sort of Wednesday afternoons.
810
But then we had swimming and athletics as well.
811
So the swimming sports were in first term athletic sports were in fourth term
812
and so that we had houses at school
813
so four teams at school we had eight yeah yeah and
814
so we you know we'd have our house sports
815
and then the winners of those would go on
816
and represent the school at the local sports
817
and then there would be regional and then all state sports
818
so fortunately i was good enough in both so swimming and athletics that I made the All -State every year.
819
And so that was summer and tail end of summer and the beginning of summer was swimming and athletics.
820
And that was great fun.
821
Still really enjoyed because I was doing athletics outside of school as well.
822
Stopped doing swimming when I was about 12, so I didn't get to high school to do swimming outside of school but still did it at school.
823
Yeah, yeah, we had a swimming pool at school.
824
Used to have to do that.
825
I can't remember how often, if we had a swimming lesson or something once a week, or if it was once every couple of weeks.
826
Yeah, our swimming training was an outdoor pool at either Moorabbin or Clayton
827
so you have to be there at seven o 'clock in
828
the morning oh wow okay brutal do an hour of training
829
and then get showered and dressed and back to school would you get dropped off
830
or it had to be parents drop you off
831
and drop you back it wasn't there was no you organize it yeah exactly
832
so school is obviously more than just buildings
833
and classes who are some of the the characters that you remember from school well funnily enough I Today,
834
Thursday, two nights ago, I booked tickets to see Colin Hay, the lead singer from the band Men at Work in the 80s.
835
I come from a land down, I'm down.
836
I didn't go because I was sick, but I bought them for your mum and a brother.
837
He was at school four years ahead of me at school.
838
He was a character then.
839
Everybody knew Colin.
840
A, he was Scottish, which was unusual.
841
B, he was a very good football, soccer player.
842
C, he was a musician, and he was an extremely good musician.
843
So whenever there was a school thing on and there was an assembly with performances and stuff, Colin would be up singing and doing stuff.
844
And I remember to this day just sitting here going, this guy's incredible, he's going to do something.
845
And at the age of 72 or three, his birthday was the other day too.
846
he's still traveling the world playing music
847
so he was one of the major characters we also had
848
a couple of other highly um you know who was he was just trying to think where
849
and he was probably a couple years before i got to
850
the school um we had the world's best squash player yeah
851
like two years after he left school he was a world champion
852
and and so actually one of the one of my favorite stories about him is um not about him
853
but about his sister and i've given away the punch line already
854
but um i was doing squash one wednesday you know one term of school we were playing squash
855
and the four of us that used to go
856
and play down at the local squash court
857
so every wednesday lunchtime we'd get on our bikes and ride three or four kilometers down to the local squash court
858
and the one of the young female art teachers was the teacher designated to supervise us
859
so her supervision was she would drive her car down there
860
and make sure we were there and then hang around there
861
because they have a cigarette in the car she was good but and then one day one of the
862
one of the four of us was sick
863
and couldn't go wasn't at school
864
and she just said oh I've got my gear in the car I'll fill in yeah
865
and I drew the short straw and had to play her yeah and
866
back in those days squash scoring is a bit different now but back in those days she just said,
867
you can serve that was the last time I had the ball in my hand she beat me nine love
868
and I went you've played this before, haven't you? because I thought I was good, I was not a great squash player but I thought I was alright and she said,
869
yeah, my brother taught me and I said your name's Mrs she's probably in her mid -twenties, you're married what's your name? she said,
870
Hunt I went, you are kidding Jeff Hunt, she said, yep Yeah, so he was a famous player back then.
871
Yeah, and he was the best player in the world.
872
And he had a squash centre nearby and she just said, yeah, that's all right, I'll pay you back for this though.
873
She said, come down Saturday morning to Jeff's thing and I'll get him to give you a lesson.
874
So I had a lesson from the world champion.
875
It didn't make me any better, but I understood what I had to do.
876
I just wasn't capable of doing it.
877
It's funny, I remember when I was doing fencing, I had a lesson once from the Commonwealth champion and she couldn't teach for shit.
878
It was amazing that she was so good
879
because I think she was just there
880
and the coach was like do you want to give Pete a lesson in sabre
881
teach him some stuff and she was like yeah no worries and I remember
882
she just didn't know how to explain she was just like I just do it
883
and I'm like well that doesn't really help me I'm going to need a bit of an explanation
884
Well the one thing Jeff told me which stuck with me forever is that he said
885
squash has got nothing to do with how well you hit
886
the ball it's controlling the court yeah he said you need
887
to get back to the center of the court at all costs at all costs
888
so you're you're not hitting the ball so
889
that your opponent can't get to it you're hitting the ball
890
so that you get back to the center to get the next shot yeah
891
so that you're only ever two steps away from from it so If you get stranded away from the scene, you're done.
892
Yeah, yeah, gotcha.
893
All right, guys, this episode actually ended up being quite long.
894
I think we ended up talking for over an hour and a half.
895
So, I've decided to sort of chop it here
896
and I will include the second half of this episode as a bonus episode for.. premium podcast members.
897
If you would like to listen to the second half and support the podcast at the same time,
898
please sign up to be a premium podcast member at aussieenglish .com .au forward slash podcast.
899
You'll get bonus episodes, you'll get all 1400 or so free episodes, but you'll also get the premium podcast player for all of them
900
so that you can listen and read at the same time
901
and you'll get all of the downloadable PDFs for all of the episodes that have them as well.
902
So, again, if you want to sign up for that, level up your English while supporting the podcast,
903
check out the premium podcast membership at aussieenglish .com .au forward slash podcast.
904
the link will be in the description thanks again and I'll see you next time
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 904 sentences and 10083 words to shadow. The speech runs for 50:40. The speaker talks fast, about 199 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| squash noun | /skwɔʃ/ | Cucurbita maxima, including hubbard squash, great winter squash, buttercup squash, and some varieties of pumpkins. |
| soccer noun | /ˈsɑk.ɚ/ | Association football. |
| classroom noun | /ˈklɑːsɹʊm/ | A room, often in a school, where classes take place. |
| podcast noun | /ˈpɑdˌkæst/ | A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on… |
| swim verb | /swɪm/ | To move through the water, without touching the bottom; to propel oneself in water by natural means. |
| locker noun | /ˈlɑ.kɚ/ | A type of storage compartment with a lock, usually used to store personal possessions for public use, such as in schools, railway stations, place of work… |
| bounce verb | /baʊns/ | To change the direction of motion after hitting an obstacle. |
| trumpet noun | /ˈtɹʌmpɪt/ | A musical instrument of the brass family, generally tuned to the key of B-flat; by extension, any type of lip-vibrated aerophone, most often valveless and not… |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| tennis noun | /ˈtɛnɪs/ | A sport played by two players (or four in doubles), who alternately strike the ball over a net using racquets. |
| brick noun | /ˈbɹɪk/ | A hardened rectangular block of mud, clay etc., used for building. |
| athletic adjective | /æθˈlɛt.ɪk/ | Having to do with athletes. |
| underwear noun | /ˈʌndɚˌwɛɹ/ | Clothes worn next to the skin, underneath outer clothing. |
| sausage noun | /ˈsɔsɪd͡ʒ/ | A food made of ground meat (or meat substitute) and seasoning, packed in a section of the animal's intestine, or in a similarly cylindrical shaped synthetic… |
| coat noun | /ˈkoʊ̯t/ | An outer garment covering the upper torso and arms. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| look back verb | To think of (past events) in retrospect (in hindsight). | |
| get back to verb | Return to (an activity) | |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| get out verb | To leave or escape. | |
| give away verb | To make a gift of (something). |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to wear · used to have · used to walk |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if it was bricks you would know · if schools grew, they would put |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | have been phased · being built · been sent |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | school, which was · people who were · men who are |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 226 contractions and reduced forms, such as you'd, you're, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: athletic /æθˈlɛt.ɪk/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, thick /θɪk/, sixth /sɪksθ/, myth /mɪθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: squash /skwɔʃ/, transition /tɹænˈzɪʃ.ən/, punishment /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, shelter /ˈʃɛltə/
- Long words — get the stress right: mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, whatsoever /ˌ(h)wʌtsoʊˈɛvɚ/, stationary /ˈsteɪʃəˌnɛɹi/, testosterone /tɛˈstɑ.stəˌɹoʊn/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like squash, soccer, classroom.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.