Toni wanted to hear more about my life at boarding school so here goes………

As I said, I arrived at my school after dark. We got off the train at Moss Vale station, there were 2 taxis waiting. There were other girls going to school too, but it seemed to me they were returning after the summer holiday, it was January 1971, the beginning of the school year. The taxis took us out of town through the dark down a side road, then through a gate with the school crest and down a very long driveway that went up a hill towards some buildings. At the top the taxi stopped, some one met us, it was established where i should drag my cases, and , voila, here was my dormitory…my new home away from home

There were 2 buildings in a L shape that were dormitories for students up to 4^th form. Years 7 -10 in todays speak…was high school 1^st to 4^th form then. I was in 3^rd form. The buildings were 2 stories high and were divided length ways down the middle. On one side of the divide were cubicles with cupboards and drawers to keep all our clothes. Each girl had a hanging cupboard and a set of drawers. On the other side of the divide was the dormitory, a long room with beds and bunks along the walls. Bunk beds along the inner wall and single beds along the window side. Each building had a ‘House Mistress’ the building i was in had Miss Brooke…..I swear she was 80 on the shade….she was small and thin and bent over with a big hook nose. Miss Brooke was old and witch like, she wore little tweed suites and sensible shoes…that seemed to turn up at the toes. Every Sunday evening we had to line up and pass inspection and hand in our weekly letter home before we could get out of the dorm to go to dinner.

The school was situated on quite a large property. It also had a working farm. There were the 2 dormitory blocks, a school hall, a smaller function hall, a chapel, the original main building which had the dining room, kitchen, staff room and offices on the ground floor and the senior (5th & 6th form) dormitories up stairs, a classroom block, science labs, art room, library, sick bay and headmasters residence. There was also 2 farm residences, a milking shed, barn and various farm out houses. We had Frisian dairy cows (the black and white ones) and Suffolk sheep ( the ones with black faces).

It was actually a lovely setting for a country school, but we often didn’t appreciate that. Moss Vale in the New South Wales Southern Highlands is not what would be considered typical Australia. It is cold and damp for starters. The weather is milder in summer than elsewhere and colder and wetter in winter. The schools heating was not effective, my first year I suffered chill blanes on my knees!! and I had just come from England!

Life was very routine. The first year I was there I could tell what day it was by the meals, which were not all that inspiring…I put on a huge amount of weight in the first term and my period stopped for about 6 months. We had to attend an hour and a half of ‘Prep’ (study time) each evening from 7 – 8.30pm and ‘lights out’ was at 9.00pm. After school each day we were not allowed into the dormitory until 5.00pm, so between 3.00pm and 5 we were expected to go to sport or do other extra curricular activities. I did jazz ballet for awhile and went to horse riding school and had classical guitar lessons. I think I gave up horse riding as it often resulted in me getting migraine and being sick

All that structure didn’t actually sit well with me, and I did get up to a bit of mischief…ha ha… along with friends I made……something about being institutionalised that makes people do silly things lol

We also had to go to chapel every morning before school started, as well as after breakfast on Saturday and on Sunday evening. On Sunday morning after breakfast we had to line up in pairs and walk to Church at Bong Bong, which was about a kilometer away down the drive and along the road, an old church on the opposite hill. The chaplain who conducted our services was from England and you could not get a more stereotypical preacher! He had a northern England accent, a pink shiny face and balding head and as he conducted our services he would rock from heal to toe, back and forth in his long white gown as he preached hell and damnation.

Some of the silly things we got up to…….. a couple of girls and myself nearly burnt the common room down, we were smoking and when nearly caught put the cigarette out on the back of the couch, which then started smoldering but was thankfully found before it did major damage.

In 4^th form we decided to have a midnight feast, stole the keys to the box room (the basement where all the suitcases were stored) snuck in some drinks and food, but because there were some fairy elephants amongst us the noise woke the house mistress and of course we were all caught. We were marched off to the hall where the principal gave us a serve and when we were asked who was the organiser of this folly, we all stood up….I can’t actually remember what our punishment was….the principal was pretty exasperated lol

Some one asked me to pierce their ears so I did, with a needle which we sterilised by putting it over a flame and dowsing it in alcohol (eau de cologne), but someone told on us and we were marched off to the principal and then I was sent to the schools doctor for a lecture.

Part of our uniform was a cape for winter weather it was blue, had a hood and was lined in red. One night another girl and I had Micky mouse masks, so we put our capes on and our masks and went to the ground floor dormitories and went up to the windows to look in and scare the kids in there…..it was very funny at the time…we were caught… the mistress at the time just said ��� hmmm I might have known it was you two…��� and then I think we were gated (grounded) for a couple of weeks.

In my last year I was a weekly boarder. My parents were back in Australia and I went home most weekends. Before that actually came about, I was gated for a month because I had left the school without permission. A girl who had left the school came to visit one Saturday, she had a car and some of us jumped in and we went off to a pub nearby. No one would have noticed except that one of the others had a phone call while we were out and no one could find her, so we were all found out.

Of course we did all sorts of other silly things like, steal ice cream from the kitchen, smoke in the bathroom after lights out, sneak out at night (just to go for a walk about). When I look back, I think I remember more about the holidays than the actual school days. Through those years I wrote a diary, much like writing blogs I suppose and I wrote lots of little poems and things, kept me sane, I also read a lot and day dreamed… each holiday had an adventure and a holiday romance…lol. I have my diaries somewhere still.