LEONIE'S STORY
I am the last and smallest, born on 8th October, 1946 to Jessie and Pat Rooke. I inherited Jessie's blonde hair and curls. We lived at South Queenstown, which I do not recall, but moved to Lake Margaret the year I turned two. Memories of there are few but I do recall Warren, three years my senior, making me help to lock up the chooks each night. I still have an aversion to chooks! Perhaps this is why my little yellow gum-boots were, on several occasions, tossed onto the chook-house roof, from where my older siblings were required to rescue them.
My first year at school was remembered mainly for the wire hairbrush. The decision was made to have my sausage curls lopped off after repeated mornings of battles royal with said hair-bush. We travelled on the motorised rail-car each day except Wednesdays when all the women went to town to shop, necessitating a larger carriage behind a small engine. Yum – shop-bought pies instead of jam sandwiches! We shifted back to Queenstown after four years. Because of the drowning of brother Allan in the Queen River before my birth, I grew up with an instilled fear of even going near the edge. My eleventh birthday saw the delivery of a beautiful new net-ball which was bounced to and from school and against walls day after day. Of course, the ball went in the river. Thank goodness for heroic big brother!
Beautiful, serene, placid Jessie was ill most of my primary-school life and always seemed to be on enforced bed-rest because of worsening high blood pressure. Her sudden death in my last year of primary school left me devastated and lonely. Other people's mothers played a large part in my life for the next several years and I carry warm memories of many such surrogate mums.
I enjoyed happy high-school years at R. M. Murray High. During this time Marion and baby Gray came home and stayed for a while. This, no doubt, nurtured some maternal instincts. I always had some neighbour's baby out for a walk.
The family teaching genes must have come to the fore, as I always wanted to become a teacher. I spent a year as a junior teacher at the local Central School before completing the two-year teacher-training course at Launceston Teachers' College. I lived in the College hostel with about fifty other girls, sharing a dormitory with five girls at first, then a two-bed room for my senior year.
After graduating in 1965 I was posted to Pyengana, a single teacher school in N. E. Tasmania not far from St. Helens. The school consisted of four classes and numbered 22 children. I often received mail addressed to The Principal, Pyengana High School! A trip home to Queenstown took two days and five changes of bus, so I stayed there most of the time. It was wonderful! Country people are a breed on their own.
I took the children up the road and on to a farm whose owners possessed a piano. We had music! They loved it. We held an Easter carnival to raise funds for the school, with wood-chopping and competitions. I won the gum-boot toss. (Early childhood training paid off.) Towards the end of the year I arranged a fancy-dress ball in the local hall – starlings in the rafters and all. Twenty-two children swelled to about forty, plus parents (in costume) as well. It was hilarious. We even managed a Grand March. Because of the distance from home and lack of a car I transferred to Burnie on the N. W. coast and spent a year and a half there, before deciding on a change of career and heading off to Melbourne. There I worked for the "Filthy Rich" in South Yarra for 3-4 months before returning hastily to teaching at Auburn Primary School and then out to the country again.
My father's health was deteriorating rapidly, so I returned to Tasmania late 1969 to live with big sister Marion in Hobart. In 1971 Emma Natalie, the joy of my life, was born, and with lots of help from Marion and cousin Mary we lived happily together for the next seven years, during which time I was involved with the Theatre Royal Light Opera Company for three of their productions. I began to learn to sew and have continued enjoying sewing and craftwork throughout my life since.
I met and married my husband Rob in 1978 after a whirlwind courtship and returned to Queenstown to live. He was an ex-Strahan boy, who was employed by Mt. Lyell as a fitter and turner. He has retained his connection with Strahan through a steel motor launch which he built and moors there close by his old family home. Emma became a Brown and David James was born in 1979. He lives and works in Queenstown too but Emma left for employment in Hobart and remains there. When the children were young we enjoyed many family holidays on the boat on Macquarie Harbour.
I taught at all schools in Queenstown, concluding with fourteen years at the local Catholic Parish School which I thoroughly enjoyed. I retired in 1994 from full-time teaching, but continued relief teaching for 4 to 5 years. I have been, and continue to be, involved in community work including Meals-on-wheels, Hospital Auxiliary activities, driving the Community Bus for the benefit of the aged and infirm, plus casual caring for various elderly people.
This year Rob and I plan to begin long-awaited travels on the mainland to have a look at the rest of Australia in a happy retirement.
March, 2005