Time Traveller

I got the revolving door treatment as a youngster, straight from school to uni then back into the system as a teacher. I can't complain really, the teaching scholarship was the only way I was ever going to get a University education and my twenty five years in the job taught me a lot about people. The first year was a bit of a shocker though. I landed, still wet behind the ears, in a local high school were new teacher support was a bit thin on the ground. There was a five foot four inch admin master out to make a name for himself, a strict Baptist head science teacher whose approach to struggling staff was to transfer them out & a pompous old principal who ate first year outers for breakfast. I reckoned that I was on the skids from day one.

Matters didn't improve after my first science prac with a year 7 group. The brief was for the twelve year olds to heat an empty pyrex flask bottom then invert the neck into coloured water. The cooling glass created a drop in internal pressure so that water was forced up through the narrow opening "in a spectacular geyser" the teacher's manual said. Alas some of the boys in the glass got a bit over enthusiastic with the Bunsen burners. Even now, thirty years after the event, I can still see the dramatic results as the first group up ended their flask. The water roared up the neck like a jet out of a fire hose. Once it cleared the constriction it sprayed on to the still glowing base which promptly exploded in a devastating shower of hot shards. The whole process was not only visually spectacular, it came with stunning sound effects. Girls were screaming, the syphoning liquid made an enthusiastic screeching sound like the last of the bath water going down the plug hole and the flasks exploded with all the satisfying percussion of light bulbs thrown against concrete.

I remember staying back that afternoon after school to assemble a bit of apparatus & not being able to concentrate because the days events kept playing over and over in my head like someone had surgically transplanted a loop projector into my brain. I was fiddling with a wing nut when a friendly face appeared over my left shoulder. The countenance belonged to another science teacher, a guy with some years experience under his belt. He queried what I was up to. "Yon wing ed nut won't screw", I lamented, " I think I cross threaded her" This sad attempt at humour from someone so obviously down for the count with the school admin seemed to impress my colleague, "If she won't screw, better give her the flick" came the reply.

Graham & I did okay after that. He showed me a few pointers on classroom management and I, for my part, was a keen & attentive apprentice to his technique. I survived the first year. Then the second. When I did eventually leave the place after five years it was on my terms and nor someone else's & I've always remembered my erstwhile colleague for giving me the clues that ultimately led to my survival.

Graham had other qualities. He was porking one of the year twelve girls, & he had digs on the far north coast. I spent a vacation up there with them one year, it was my first winter out of Sydney and it was great. Eventually they moved north permanently and that was the last I saw of them.

Last year I found myself flying inland just south of the Queensland border & I looked down absent mindedly on a picturesque little township below me. I checked the map for a name with half hearted curiosity. 'Coraki' it said. Memories of that warm, long ago winter holiday washed over me. I orbited to get my bearings. I found the little brick church first, from there the corner public 'phone box then Graham's old weatherboard house from that landmark. It was still there. For maybe a minute I was a quarter century back in time, sunny carefree days, no money & few responsibilities. Time traveller.