An old school photograph

came up in my search for something completely unrelated. It was one of those odd coincidences that can come about doing an internet search.

This photograph was of the Senior Cat and "grades four to seven" in the two teacher school he and my mother taught at in a remote rural area of this state. Mum had "grades one to three", the Black Cat (who was only three when we first went there) and a very slow learning boy with muscular dystrophy. It was the sort of thing that was considered quite normal in rural areas at the time. 

Our school was actually considered "big". There was a school in one direction which had just sixteen students and one teacher and another in yet another direction which had just eight students and one teacher. There were none of the resources that the really big city schools had. We had a "library" of books on a shelf and a box which held "the reading scheme". The library books came in a box from the children's lending service in the city. The Senior Cat had organised that before we even left the city. He did it knowing my brother and I would need books to read. He had also organised our individual membership to be transferred to the service for country children. 

The Senior Cat had talked to the school committee about raising the money to buy the reading scheme materials. (It was considered the latest thing at the time, indeed had been around for only a few years. There were cards in various colours to represent the level you had achieved. It consisted of reading comprehension and other exercises which you could mark yourself. One advantage was that older children could work on it alone. You can still buy the (updated) sets.) Apart from that I remember just the very basic things like a map of the state, another of the country and one of the world. If you wanted teaching aids you made them yourself.

There were almost no art and craft materials. Looking back I suspect my parents bought what limited materials we had from their own pay packets. The people in the surrounding area were generally poor. 

I looked at the photograph which had come up though. Someone had named everyone in the picture. The names came back to me. I would have recognised some of them if they had appeared in front of me still at that age. Would I recognise them now? It is unlikely. More than one of them is deceased. I doubt many of those who are still alive are actually to be found on the social pages of the internet.

They were a large part my life as a child but for the most part they were isolated on farms outside school hours.  By the time they were old enough to legally drive on the roads we had long gone. (We will ignore the fact that driving without a licence on rural roads was sometimes seen as a necessity.)

So yes, like the person who had put the photograph there, I wonder where those who are still alive are to be found now. What did they do with their lives?