DISTANCE LEARNING IN THE 1940s

The fortnightly arrival of a pack of papers was Jan Williamson’s (Strickland, ‘56) experience of distance learning in the mid-1940s. Jan grew up near Gellibrand, in the Otway Ranges, where her parents ran a farm and country guest house called ‘Wonga Wonga’. With the local school just a bit too far away, Jan was enrolled in Correspondence School for the early years of her education, before becoming a boarder at Ruyton at nine-years-old in 1948. Making the five mile drive to town every second week is a key memory of Jan’s early life. There, among other tasks, the family would visit the post office to collect Jan’s envelope from the Correspondence School, and send off her most recently completed work. Meeting the teachers, who were in faraway Melbourne, was out of the question; so, Jan’s only communication with them was via notes attached to her worksheets. ‘Even a phone call was a big deal’ remembers Jan, ‘so it was my mother who helped me if I needed it.’ Jan’s mother, Annette Strickland, also had to ration her daughter’s schoolwork to prevent Jan racing through it all. ‘I was in a hurry to get outside to the animals,’ laughs Jan. Perhaps attracted by the idyllic promise of the advertisements for the Strickland’s guesthouse was repeat visitor Miss Hilda Daniell, Ruyton’s Principal. Miss Daniell stayed at ‘Wonga Wonga’ during several school holiday periods in the 1940s, no doubt enjoying the ‘farm homestead with modern conveniences, fishing, riding, [and] beautiful scenery’ as was regularly advertised in The Argus newspaper.1 Noting young Jan, who had one much younger brother and no other children to mix with, Miss Daniell suggested the family consider boarding school for their daughter. Jan was subsequently enrolled at Ruyton from 1948 to 1952, only leaving when her father’s early death prompted the remaining family to move interstate.

For Jan, swapping Correspondence School for Boarding School was a positive change that initially felt surreal. She quickly conquered any homesickness and was a willing student. Ruyton’s large grounds offered her a little of the space and freedom she’d loved at home, with piano practice in a small, one bedroom building close to the School’s northern boundary a chance to enjoy some time on her own when she needed it. Jan didn’t flinch at sleeping out in the boarder’s dormitory on the north balcony – scampering possums and all – as she was accustomed to sleepout arrangements at home. However, that Henty House was a very cold building is a memory that stays with her – its chilly halls often prompting her to try and sit too close to the fire in the boarder’s sitting room, thereby risking the staff’s displeasure.

Other key memories include the regular kindnesses of the Shiels family, whose daughter Ann was a weekly boarder.2 Dr and Mrs Shiels would often take Ann and small, rotating groups of other boarders for weekend outings within Melbourne and its surrounds, providing an occasional change of scenery from Kew. The School term otherwise proceeded in its own gentle rhythm. Boarders enjoyed many freedoms within the local area, from spending pocket money at the corner shops to visiting the Kew Baths ‘without supervision,’ recalls Jan. Echoing the fortnightly arrival of her correspondence schoolwork, her life at Ruyton was instead punctuated by the pleasure of the weekly walk through Kew’s Alexandra Gardens up to Holy Trinity Anglican Church, where she and many other boarders attended the Sunday service. The end of Term would always bring a trip back to Gellibrand for the holidays, sometimes accompanied by other boarders whose parents were too far away for them to return to their own families during the shorter holiday breaks. The journey home would usually begin with the pre-dawn arrival of a taxi at Ruyton, in which the girls, alongside a staff member, would be ferried to Spencer Street Station. Goodbyes would be said and each girl would be settled on to her respective train. The destination for Jan was Colac, where her father was always waiting to drive her through the rolling countryside of forests and farms, to ‘Wonga’, and home. Cathy Dodson School Archivist

footnotes 1 Advertisement, The Argus, 11 Sep 1943, p15. 2 Mrs Ann Robb (Shiels, ‘58). A weekly boarder lived at Ruyton during the week and went home for weekends. A Melbourne street photographer captured Jan on a visit to her great-aunt’s millinery salon one summery day c.1950. (Photo courtesy JanWilliamson)

Some of Jan’s fellow boarders in the north balcony dormitory, 1952. (Craig Series, Ruyton Heritage Collection)