To the best of my memory......Munglinup

I wrote this essay for the 50th Anniversary of the Munglinup Primary School in 2010.

It was very late at night as our family arrived at Spencer St Station in Melbourne to catch the Overland train and begin our journey to Munglinup. The Overland would take us to Adelaide and then another day service would get us to Port Pirie where we met up with the Trans Australia train to begin the Nullarbor crossing to Kalgoorlie.

My father, Geoff Jamieson was an early pioneer of Munglinup having purchased a conditional purchase block of land in 1959. He had come on ahead of his family in 1960 to begin work on the property that was covered in Blue and Black Mallee and backed onto the Oldfield River. Compared to the 300 acres he had owned at Munro in East Gippsland Victoria, the 2098 acres at Lot 735 must have seemed enormous.

In May 1965 he had decided it was time for his wife Gwen, daughter Dianne and 5 sons Daryl, Ken, Ian, Colin and Bruce to join him as the Primary School had been built to accommodate more children. We were about to add 4 to the existing student numbers. We arrived at Munglinup on the 13 May 1965 and were very fortunate to be accommodated in the shearer’s quarters at Newleigh owned by Jack and Helen Compagnoni, the two people I respect most to this day. Incidentally, I was just 10 days short of my 10^th birthday, a date shared with Jack Compagnoni. The quarters were pretty basic but we had a wood stove, a wood water heater and a kero fridge, which I’m told still works today. Our major chores were the collection of kindling and mallee roots to keep the stove and heater going and helping to feed the chooks and collecting eggs. We amused ourselves by exploring the farm with Tom and Tim the two sons’ of Helen and Jack Compagnoni.

The day arrived for Dianne, myself, Ken and Ian to attend the first day of term 2 at Munglinup Primary School.

We walked across the paddock to the main road to be picked up by George Murison who was one of two school bus drivers at the time. The other was Phil Giles. George’s run went as far as Lauriana to the East and he picked up at Stuart Downs and Newleigh then stopped at Fuss Road on the way to the Munglinup School.

The School consisted of a single classroom and a small storeroom with an open verandah along its length.

I think it was the Grade 1, 2 and 3 students taught by Margaret Fong who were housed in the storeroom, while the upper Grades were taught by Doug Fong in the main class room. Doug and Margaret were like us, new to the school for second term having replaced John Parker. On this first day I recall Doug not being overly impressed when told a number of times by students that his method of teaching was different to Mr Parker.

Being new to the school and knowing no-one except Tim and Tom Compagnoni, we were all somewhat apprehensive but it didn’t take long for us to begin to make new friends. Many of the kids were quite inquisitive as to where we had come from and what we planned to do. I know we all have friends from Munglinup Primary School to this day.

After 3 months in Comp’s shearer’s quarters, we moved to Dad’s farm which was located on the South Western corner of the intersection of the main highway and Coxall Road. Dad’s brother Peter had the block to the west and Kevin and June Jenkins were next.

This move was interesting in that Ken, Ian and I had the original Munglinup School house as our bedroom. Dad had purchased it from the Education Department and had moved it from the Munglinup townsite to his block for us to sleep in. I reckon it wasn’t much more than 3m x3m. The old school house is still there to this day.

Now to get to school we had to catch the Phil Giles’ bus which went everywhere at it’s top speed of 60mph. The 10 mile trip was actually more like 20 as the route included deviations up Mills Road and down Doyle Road. I remember passing the time and battling bus sickness by counting beer bottles on the side of the road. Phil drove the bus like it was on rails but always without incident.

Later Dad had to sell his farm when his mother, who was his guarantor, died. We moved to his brother Peter’s farm and rain hail or shine we had to walk the 2 miles down the highway to Coxall Road to catch the school bus. Occasionally when Dad didn’t need the ute, I drove us all down the road and stashed the ute in the bush until we returned from school.

When the Gibson children started school the bus actually came up the road to the Jenkin’s farm, “Dunromin”.

In 1966 an additional classroom was added to give Margaret Fong’s students somewhat more space than the tiny storeroom she had originally had to use. I’m pretty certain that George Allison was involved in the construction. It is amazing how these two wonderful teachers were able to cope with the conditions and also provide us with such quality schooling across multiple classes without complaint and always with a smile on their face. They were magnificent.

The main play area was the bitumen netball court and the sandy gravel area behind the toilets which was used to play marbles. Over the years marbles changed hands on a regular basis and were also traded. I recall the prized possession at the time was the “tiger”, which of course had yellow and black stripes. There was also an area near the school masters house that had monkey bars and swings. These provided much entertainment as would be gymnasts came crashing to the ground after mistiming their release from the swing bar or missing the fourth bar on the monkey bars.

There were very few disputes or fights and of course there was the odd bully, but mainly we all got along. Most major arguments amongst the boys related to the relative merits of various tractors and their drawbar horsepower. Naturally depending on the tractor your father owned you provided stout defence although in my case I secretly envied those kids whose Dad’s had the Chamberlain 9G capable of speeds up to 50 KPH. We also discussed in forensic detail Chamberlain ploughs, Pederick root rakes, New Holland seed drills and Case Harvesters all trying to impress the others with our knowledge. I’ll always remember Kempley Brooks for his rejoinder to anyone’s statement or assertion……”I dunno so much” which virtually disabled any argument you were making.

Many of us had little in the way of footwear so barefeet was common. The soles of our feet were like leather so bitumen, gravel, kicking the football etc presented no discomfort.

One exciting moment during my 3 years from grade 5 to 7 included the building of an underground water tank which used the bitumen netball court as its catchment. A very large Caterpillar Dozer was brought in to dig the hole. The older students were then rostered to hand pump water from the underground tank to one in a tank stand to provide some pressure. This pump moved only around 250 ml per cycle so we all ended up with well developed biceps.

I was fortunate that whenever there was a bushfire Dad would come and get me from school to go and help fight the fire. This largely involved driving the ute with a water tank on it or tractor with plough attached cutting firebreaks in front of the fire to allow for burning back. I didn’t think much about it at the time but like many of us in that era, we were relied on as 11 or 12 year olds to do an important job and at the same time being placed in danger.

As the school was near the highway the Roads department had signs erected as a warning to drivers. Unfortunately, the best they could come up with was “SLOW SCHOOL” which we felt didn’t really accurately reflect our intellectual qualities or academic achievements.

I remember Munglinup as a great community during the sixties and seventies with many not having much but making do. I recall the construction of the tennis courts, the Church, the Hall, the Football/Cricket oval and change rooms and the Golf Course, all through the efforts of people like my Dad, Jack and Helen Compagnoni, Reg Brooks, George Murison, and many others. My Dad’s love for golf meant I got to walk through the bush all day as the survey marker for the course designer Murray Dawson as he mapped out the 18 hole course.

The Football, Cricket, Golf and Tennis Clubs were well supported by many and it is a shame to see their modern day demise and very sad to see the disrepair of the original change rooms that volunteers had put so much time and effort into building.

All my siblings completed primary school at Munglinup, then went on to high school in Esperance, boarding at the Anglican High School Hostel. In my case I completed Leaving Certificate in 1972 and went on to University returning during breaks to work on surrounding farms or in summer as a grain carter for local farmers.

My Dad had to leave farming in 1967 when his brother decided it was not for him. He built a house at 28 Manjart St Munglinup and started from scratch a BP Fuel, Kleenheat Gas and Westfarmers Agency on a block and shed in Hall St. He worked hard and made a success of the venture until he and the remaining boys left for Yanchep in the 1980s.

I have nothing but admiration for the pioneering families of Munglinup who came from all over the country and overseas and had to deal with virgin land, poor roads, no power, no readily available water, little or no means of communication and all that isolation entails. These people were made of stern stuff and did their best to make a go of it and make a community that they and their descendants should be very proud of.

Given we are celebrating 50 years of the Munglinup Primary School I feel I should mention what my late Dad told me, that the work of Helen Compagnoni should never be forgotten in getting a school for Munglinup. It was through her efforts and negotiations with the Ministry for Education that we had a school and teachers and thus didn’t have to do correspondence schooling in those early days.

Footnote

The Munglinup P&C in 2010 Published the excellent book "From small beginnings - big things grow : a History of Munglinup Primary School" Dewey Number 372.99412