WHEN primary school teacher Megan Baker received news a position as a rural relief teacher was available at Balranald in Far West NSW, she took the job then and there, without realising she would be moving 1400 kilometres.
Given she was casual teaching at her home town of Ballina on the Far North Coast, Balranald was just about as far from home as she could be posted.
After accepting the job over the phone she jumped on the internet to find how far away her new home would be – 16 hours in fact.
She had a week to pack up and make the trip in time for the school term to start.
While her base school was Balranald Central School, her job was as a roving relief teacher.
She also worked a day a week at Moulamein Public School, Euston Public School, Clare Public School and Tooleybuc Central School.
When she told Balranald stock and station agent, Tony Conway, who also looks after teacher housing, she had to travel out to Clare Public School he had to set Megan straight on her geography.
Clare was actually 155 kilometres from Balranald – she’d been told Clare was just 15km from town.
Covering her round each week Megan would often clock up about 1000km.
On her ?rst trip to Clare she took a dirt road by mistake and eventually arrived at school at 9.30am – the principal at the time was concerned she had been lost.
After18 months as a rural relief teacher, Megan Baker took on a classroom position at Balranald Central School teaching literacy and numeracy support across the primary classes for 2012.
She also took on the role as year adviser to the Year 12 students and started a homework club for the primary and secondary students.
In term four of 2012 she took on the relieving role as principal at Clare Public School and successfully gained the permanent role as principal of the school for 2013.
Megan said the transition to teaching and living at Clare had been straight forward as she was already familiar with the students and their parents.
She lives in a four bedroom teacher house next to the school, with a teacher’s ?at also available for the relief teacher who comes out two days a week.
There was no time to be lonely at Clare with the students’ mothers calling by twice a day to deliver and pick up their children.
And if any locals are driving past they call in for a chat.
Megan also has a teacher’s ?at in Balranald she returns to at weekends as she plays netball there on Saturday’s and also has other commitments such as the Balranald Race Club committee, of which she is the secretary.
She had found the Balranald and surrounding community extremely friendly and in typical country style, people often tried to marry off the new school teacher in town.
“People do ask me if I have met so and so, but I haven’t met a farmer yet,” Megan joked.
She has immersed herself in the local life and only returns to Ballina for her Christmas holiday and at one other break during the year.
“If you hang back or stick to yourself you probably won’t survive in these country towns,” she said.
“You have to immerse yourself in life out here. I love it.”
Due to Clare being one of the most remote and isolated schools in the State, it operates on a nine-day fortnight which gives students the chance to attend appointments in town.
“Just to go to town for a haircut is a full day trip for the students,” Megan said.
To make up for the day-off the students have extra teaching time each day.
The school has an extra week’s holiday during the Christmas break – heat week – with students getting seven weeks holiday.
“While the classroom is air conditioned it does get pretty hot out here – in 2012 it got up to 48 degrees Celsius one day and was still 45C at 6pm that night.” she said.
“But the kids have grown up with the heat and they will still play outside in the shade.”
In 2013, Megan had nine students – ?ve boys and four girls – from four families who all live on local sheep stations.
She said student numbers would remain steady for the next few years with a boy starting Kindergarten this year and two students would join the school the following year.
All students are driven to school by parents as there is no bus service. Some students travel a 100km round trip every day.
Megan said the obvious contrast from Clare to the school she worked at on the coast was the smaller class size.
“At Clare the school has a more personal feel. I see most of my parents every day, and I work a lot closer with the community – Barb from Clare Station next door will often call over,” she said.
Megan said her students enjoyed visitors calling at the school as they liked to know what was going on in the district.
“They will usually ask them how many sheep they shore or how many sheep they drafted, they like to talk about what’s happening on other properties,” she said.
Being from the coast Megan didn’t know a great deal about farming, but the students have given her an education in agriculture.
“When they’d say they were crutching or shearing and how many sheep they did in a run – I just asked them about it and learnt that way,” she said.
Megan Baker has been to most of her students’ farms, usually during shearing.
“We go for a look because the students like to tell you what is going on around their farm,” she said.
Megan said the students often travelled to Balranald for
inter-school events – all played netball and Australian Rules football in town on the weekends and knew many of the students at the Balranald Central School and St Joseph’s Primary School.
Clare’s students were quite sporty, with Year 6 student Logan Fitzgerald last year (2013) playing in the State primary school AFL team.
While they may be remote in location they were in no way behind on any mod-cons, with iPads in the classroom and
satellite internet, which is relatively speedy due to a recent server upgrade.
They hope to start teleconferencing with students at nearby remote schools such as Booligal in the near future.
Being the only full-time principal/teacher at the school she often had to do jobs outside the usual job description of a teacher.
This included checking the pumps and making sure there was enough water.
While there is no canteen at the school, Megan and other staff will heat up student lunches in winter – because for nine children it doesn’t take much time.
When the students go into school at Balranald they all order their lunch from canteen because it’s such a novelty.
They also have a cake at lunchtime on each student’s birthday and take photos.
Clare Public School had an active parents and citizens’ association, with the parents proud to claim 100 per cent attendance at meetings.
The parents also take on duties at the school – one mother is the cleaner and two mothers are teacher’s aids.
The school’s general assistant, Geoff Scott, does the garden and other duties on the grounds one day a week and his wife Kaylene is the school’s administration manager two and a half days a week.
The Scotts live at Claremont Station.
Geoff has worked at the school since it opened and their children also attended the school.
All the parents at the school are members of the Isolated Children’s Parents Association (ICPA).
Megan said while it was often a big drive to take students to events, it was worth it,
otherwise the students would miss out.
As an end of year trip they saw Peter and the Wolf play at Mildura, 300km from Clare – and it took two mothers and the school’s car to get the students to the play.
Each year the school goes on an annual excursion which all the mothers attend and some fathers, depending what is happening at their property.
Last year (2013) the students travelled to Sydney where they toured the Opera House, Harbour Bridge, aquarium, made an appearance on Channel 7’s Sunrise program, and had a surf lesson at Palm Beach where Home and Away is filmed.
After completing Year 6 most of the students attend boarding school at Melbourne or Adelaide.