Foreclosure Creek Public School

White jonquils! I remove the florist’s paper, bury my nose in the curled petals, and inhale. In a flash it all comes back to me—the neat rows of fragrant, tightly petalled white flowers, just visible on their green stalks in the scrubby paddocks of Foreclosure Creek.

After a few days the blooms are shrivelling. I crush some petals in my hand. A sour note of decay is spoiling the sweetness, but the Proustian vault into the past is stronger than ever. I am in a sepia documentary. Vignettes of the deep past, the days when Foreclosure Creek Public School and its small, timber teacher’s cottage stood on a lonely paddock on the north-west plains, flick along like an old newsreel. The narration comes with an old-style ABC voice, James Dibble perhaps.

1898

Foreclosure Creek Public School is one of thousands of one-room schools built in rural Australia at the end of the nineteenth century. A wooden hotbox with one door, it has a blackboard, rows of attached timber desks, a dais for the teacher, a portrait of Queen Victoria and a map showing the British colonies in red. Boys use the northern half of the outdoor dunny, girls the shaded southern one. A few ponies graze in the paddock. The teacher, who boards with a farmer down the road, teaches here on Mondays on Tuesdays. On Wednesdays he rides twenty-four miles to Yarrie Glen, where he teaches on Thursdays and Fridays.

1910

The district’s population has increased and Foreclosure Creek now has a full-time teacher. Russell Harris is a tall young man with wavy fair hair and a smile that charms everyone except the unmarried men of the area. When Russell takes the elder sister of a pupil to a local dance, he is set upon by one of the girl’s local admirers. He shows up at school on the following Monday bruised but smiling. His popularity rises. His rival writes to the Education Department to complain that the teacher has no morals, and besides, throws his fists around. Although the Department declines to act on the complaint, Russell asks for a transfer to the city. He will die at Fromelles in 1917.

1913

Gavin McWhirton, forty-seven, thought a one-teacher school would be less stressful than the crowded inner-city school where he spent his lunch-hours breaking up playground fights. However, truancy is a problem and parents side with their children when Mr McWhirton explains the rules. Milking and harvesting trump schoolwork at Foreclosure Creek. Mr McWhirton raises his voice, canes the worst offenders and develops a persistent sore throat. One day his voice vanishes completely. After prescribing various ineffective potions, the doctor sends him to Sydney for psychiatric assessment. Gavin McWhirton will see out his days as a patient at Callan Park. His brother writes to the Department, asking for his pension to be paid in full on compassionate grounds.

1922

Things are looking up at Foreclosure Creek. A married couple has been appointed to the school and, following pressure from the local member of parliament, a cottage is to be built next to the school. The truck carrying building materials gets bogged at the creek crossing, but two farmers rig harnesses to their tractors and tow it out. The house is ready for the 1922 school year and the Simpson family moves in. Nappies and school tunics dry on the rope clothesline beside the cottage. A small fox terrier is kept on a chain so it can’t harass the pupils’ horses. The Simpsons are well-liked in the district, but they leave after one year because they want their children to attend senior high.

1929/1930

Teachers come and go at Foreclosure Creek. Some are young and hopeful while others are seeking shelter. Geoffrey Woodbine, a recent graduate, is in the hopeful category. He takes up the appointment in September and plans to spend the long summer holidays with his parents on the Queensland coast. His parents have other ideas. Geoffrey can go and surf in Queensland, but over the Christmas break they will spruce up the teacher’s cottage, clean the greasy stove where their son grills his chops, and establish a proper garden.

Parents and son swap dwellings. The elder Woodbines attend the carol service at the Methodist church and are invited to meals by neighbouring families. Temperatures soar in summer at Foreclosure Creek, but the Woodbines are busy painting, planting, and ordering in supplies.

At the end of January the Woodbine parents head for home, planning to meet their son halfway at a Goondiwindi hotel. Geoffrey arrives on time, but there is no sign of his parents. He eats a steak sandwich at the bar, walks round the block, and sits reading in the hotel lobby, growing increasingly anxious. At midnight his father telephones from the Moree Hospital. Moira Woodbine was killed outright when a fuel truck crossed onto their side of the highway. His own injuries are minor.

School starts three days late that year. Six-year-olds join their older brothers and sisters and keep the teacher busy.

In the freshly painted cottage Geoffrey takes no pleasure in the new curtains and bedspreads. The grease-free stove gives off a whiff of maternal disapproval. Bursts of fury and guilt overwhelm him. What did his mother and father think they were doing, driving those distances? It’s not as if he asked for help.

In mid-March the postman delivers a large cardboard box containing dozens of small round objects. They look like brown onions, but the docket from Yates Seeds identifies them as jonquil bulbs.

Geoffrey announces that on Friday afternoon everyone will take part in a gardening bee. The pupils of Foreclosure Creek Public School spend two hot hours measuring, marking, watering, digging and planting.

Easter passes, rain falls and the days grow shorter. Geoffrey coaches a football team and writes long letters to his girlfriend in Queensland.

One morning in early winter he is woken by a strange howl. A fox? He goes outside to investigate, jumping from foot to foot on the cold dew. There is no fox to be seen, but a strange white line draws him forward in the dawn light. He walks closer. Flowers, dozens and dozens of flowers. Mum’s bloody jonquils. When he picks a handful, sticky sap runs down his hands. In the kitchen he looks around for something to use as a vase. The flowers are wet with dew, his hands are damp with green sap, and even his eyes are moist. The tears flow at last.

1943

The Denisons are unhappy and isolated at Foreclosure Creek. Petrol is rationed and Amy Denison can only get to her CWA meeting once in a while. David Denison applies for a promotion. No response. Applies for a transfer. No response. Applies again. One afternoon the most fearsome school inspector in the state of New South Wales bursts into the tiny schoolroom. He seems to be conducting a high-volume quiz show. What’s the capital of Canada? What’s the floral emblem of South Australia? How do you spell “pneumonia”? What’s twelve times eleven? If Johnny buys six apples at a penny halfpenny, how much change does he …?

The inspector turns on David Denison. What are you teaching these unfortunates then? Where’s their algebra books? What made you think you were entitled to a transfer? Didn’t anyone tell you there’s a war on?

That night David composes a letter to the Department. “I could smell whisky on his breath, but I can’t just write drunken bully,” he says to his wife.

“If it’s the truth?”

“No, I can’t.” In the end he writes: The inspector appeared to be inebriated. There was a distinct smell of spirits. The children were frightened into silence by his shouting.

The months pass, but in wartime no one wants to rein in a school inspector or grant a faraway teacher a transfer. At long last December arrives and the Denisons plan a city holiday.

On an unspecified date in December 1943, Foreclosure Creek Public School burns to the ground. The nearby cottage is unharmed. There are no witnesses to the fire.

1947

A large truck carts the abandoned teacher’s cottage to a school near Gunnedah. The land where the school once stood is sold to a local farmer.

1977

The farmer subdivides his land, selling thirty hectares to a dentist from town who builds a comfortable house up the hill. He is barely aware that a school once stood on the creek paddock. Ponies no longer crop the grass. Rabbits burrow next to a few iron struts that once held school desks together.

1990

The property has changed hands a couple of times. One day, after striking my boot on one of the iron struts, I start asking questions about the history of the school. Quite a few people who once sat at those desks still live in the area. They always give me the same answer when I ask how the school burnt down. None of us did it. Stands to reason it must have been the teacher.

You know what happens next. One day in early June, out walking with the dog, I come upon three neat rows of white jonquils, their tight petals just visible on green stalks in the scrubby paddocks of Foreclosure Creek.

Penelope Nelson is a Sydney writer of poetry, fiction and memoirs.