Oct 11 A Quieter Day
Tuesday 11th October
When I woke up this morning Mum was out and about on another solo walk - we must teach her about leaving us her intended route and return time! I think she has enjoyed the times spent out walking, retracing steps and memories. After breakfast, the first thing on our list was to visit Ned’s Beach to feed the fish. Special fish food pellets are available there from a very technological “dispenser” - signage suggests that the dispenser may have changed somewhat over time. The official hours of the shop are 9ish-4ish, and the ‘shop’ is a big honesty box system. Wetsuits, snorkels/mask/fins, deck chairs, umbrellas etc are all available for hire and you just pop the money in the box. Ned’s beach is on the opposite side of the island from the lagoon, and was a wee bit rough for standing in the water distributing fish pellets. You could see schools of fish floating up in the blue water at the tops of the waves before crashing down and being lost in the swirling sand. Peter flung handfuls of pellets into clear water and Mum and I watched from safety a bit further back. I’m not sure if any fish will be visible in the many pictures I took, but it was quite cool to see. There were quite a few surfers enjoying the rough water down the beach a way. Mum walked down to the end of the beach for a look, and when I went to catch up with her I passed quite a number of washed up blue bottles, (as in the jellyfish not actual bottles). Wasn’t able to look up on Google exactly how dangerous they are but I decided to watch a bit more carefully where I was walking after that. I forgot my togs for a swim, but the beach drops away quite steeply and the water is definitely not swimming temperature by my scale! It’s a tough scale, to be fair.
We then dropped the boys to the museum for food and internet while Mum and I went to check out the cemeteries. Mum was able to ‘say hi’ to Uncle Norm and Aunty Marg, plus a few others she’d known back in the day.
Our plan for the afternoon was to go on a glass-bottom boat tour in the lagoon for a couple of hours, but it was quite windy and there were rains squalls just beginning to arrive so the operator cancelled the trip. In fact it really worked out for the best, because it was raining quite consistently by the time we got back to the cottage. It was a pity not to be able to go out on the lagoon but it would not have been pleasant out there today. Good thing we were able to get some walking done yesterday when the weather was more friendly.
We checked out the various clothing and craft shops in the ‘town’ for a look rather than a purchase, and grabbed a couple of groceries at Joy’s on the way back.
The early afternoon was spent enjoying some weather-enforced rest - including naps for some.
We had made an appointment to visit Lord Howe Island School for 3.30pm since we weren’t allowed to visit during school time. Mum was able to see her old classroom, which still had a verandah etc as she remembered it, but has now been split up into three separate office and admin spaces - MASSES of office space for such a small school. In fact the whole school is very well-equipped: a covered court area, covered lunch seating area, covered sandpit/playground area and lots of interesting looking things in the classrooms. There are two classes, K-2 and 3-6, two main teaching staff employed by the Department of Education and two island-based support staff who work 4 days a week (paid by unknown). The principal doesn’t have a class herself but does some admin and runs the library plus some learning support groups etc. The principal and teachers are on a compulsory rotation employment system, teachers can stay 2-4 years, and principal 3-5 years. She explained that it’s very competitive to get to teach here, and they want to make sure they always have new, good people coming in (and possibly a way to move people on if they are not so good). If as a teacher you are doing well after 2 years, you may be asked if you want to stay another year, ditto after 3 years, and after that you’re headed back to the mainland. They do commit to repositioning you in a role in the same area that you left from, so the availability of such a role can affect how long you stay also. It’s an interesting idea, which feels a bit unstable to me, but I guess the teachers know what they are getting into. My initial thought was that it could be unsettling for the children to have so much change, but then in most schools students have a new teacher every year so it’s probably not much different.
Beyond Mum’s old classroom, everything else was pretty much new (as in, less than 60 years old) - new classrooms, new toilet block, new playgrounds etc.
In front of the school is a newly-built preschool. The community has been working towards getting a preschool for about 8 years, and one was finally built two years ago - however it is not yet being used because they can't staff it. The school teacher positions come with teacher accommodation, however the preschool doesn’t, and therefore presumably the teacher in the preschool needs to already be living on the island, and there just isn’t one. In Australia, all children starting school do sotogether at the start of the year. if your birthday is before July 1, you are allowed to start school when you are still 4, but you don’t have to start until the following year. Lynne, the school principal, said she’d had 14 students start school this year in Kindergarten (NZ Year 0) - a bunch who were older but had held off starting school because they thought the preschool would be opening, the ones who were ready to start, plus a few who would have preferred preschool, but, since it didn’t open, went to school instead. She didn’t seem particularly optimistic about the prospect of the preschool opening next year either. Nice building though! Mum was very impressed with the fancy flush toilets at school - back in her day they’d had ‘earth toilets’ (translation long drop). There was a paved area where they had sold bricks to raise funds for some project or other, and Mum searched through to find some names she recognised. After the school visit, we went back to the cottage for a cuppa. Mum had her eye on another walk (Class 2 this time, good choice) and we’d been thinking we might have been able to squeeze it in tomorrow morning before heading to the airport. She and I decided to do the walk before dinner and simplify the morning, so we whipped around the “Steven’s Reserve” loop track and were back home in good time. For dinner this evening we went to the Golf Club restaurant called Sunset Beach. It was a highly efficient operation in the clubhouse, and we enjoyed fish and chips / chicken and chips, plus sticky date pudding afterwards. It’s much cooler this evening and everyone has put long pants on, plus we have even put the heater on for the first time.
Sorry the photos are backwards pretty much.
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