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Authors: Caroline Overington
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PASSAGE
Caroline Overington
It is funny how life turns out, isn’t it?
I remember very clearly being a teenage boy, doing my HSC at the local State school, in what’s now my electorate, Lalor.
I remember being called up, around August 1976, to see Mrs Hatcher, who was our careers teacher.
I remember what she wanted to discuss: my future.
I wasn’t the only one she had concerns about – there were half a dozen of us boys, in grey shorts and V-neck vests, seated in the school chairs outside Mrs Hatcher’s office.
Someone had lined the chairs up under the bag pegs. I remember having to sit with my neck bent forward, so the bags wouldn’t hit me on the head. Some of the other boys were trying to balance on one chair leg. Probably we were popping gum.
Mrs Hatcher came out. ‘Okay … Paul Bannerman? It’s your turn.’
We went into her office, where Mrs Hatcher began, ‘So, Paul. What are you thinking of doing with the rest of your life?’
It was a bigger question than I was able to handle at that time. ‘I don’t know,’
I said.
‘Well, I’ve got two sets of forms here, Paul,’ Mrs Hatcher said. ‘One set of dole forms, so you can get the dole after you’ve done your HSC, or else the VTAC forms, if you want to apply for a place at university. You’d have no problem getting a place at university, if that’s what you want to do.’
I remember feeling surprised by that, mainly because nobody in my family had been to university, but rather than explore the option, or even say anything sensible, I shrugged and said, ‘I dunno.’
To her credit, Mrs Hatcher tried to help. ‘Do you mean you don’t know whether you want to go to university, or you don’t know what you want to study? Because they’ve got courses – Arts courses – for kids still making up their minds. Do you know what Arts is?’
‘Is it painting?’ I said. I wasn’t being smart – I really was that clueless.
‘Arts is not painting, no. Arts – it’s literature. It’s literature, philosophy, history, languages – does any of that interest you?’
It didn’t.
‘All right, Paul,’ Mrs Hatcher said. ‘I’m going to put down Arts. If you get in, and you decide to go, and you don’t like it, you can always change it later.’
I watched her write my name and other details into white squares on the VTAC form. When she was done, Mrs Hatcher turned the forms towards me and said, ‘You’ve got to sign at the bottom.’
I signed.
‘I’ll post this off for you,’ Mrs Hatcher said. ‘If anyone asks, you’ve put Arts as your first preference.’
Nobody asked.
I sat my final exams for the HSC in November that year in a building here, in the city that I’d never seen before. I can’t recall exactly where it was, but the floorboards seemed to run forever, all in one direction, and there was a round-faced clock on the wall. There must have been 1000 desks, each with a perfect white rectangle of exam paper positioned precisely in the middle. I sat and scribbledanswers for an hour, and then, because you weren’t allowed to get up and leave, I sat and listened to the exam supervisors squeaking across the otherwise silent room in rubber-soled shoes.
Summer went by – from memory, and this won’t surprise parents of teenagers, I spent it in my room, picking zits – and then, in January, a letter came, saying I’d got a place in an Arts course at the University of Melbourne. I went along on the first day, and saw straightaway that things wouldn’t work out. Hundreds of students were surging down the corridors, radiating a sense of purpose I didn’t feel, and couldn’t seem to muster.
I thought about dropping out, but university was free back then and it was just as easy to stay enrolled and skip lectures. So that’s what I was doing – skiving, smoking cigarettes in a loading bay behind the Arts building – when I first saw Brother Ruhamah.
Now, like everyone, I’ve been reading the newspapers, and I’m
Caroline Overington
It is funny how life turns out, isn’t it?
I remember very clearly being a teenage boy, doing my HSC at the local State school, in what’s now my electorate, Lalor.
I remember being called up, around August 1976, to see Mrs Hatcher, who was our careers teacher.
I remember what she wanted to discuss: my future.
I wasn’t the only one she had concerns about – there were half a dozen of us boys, in grey shorts and V-neck vests, seated in the school chairs outside Mrs Hatcher’s office.
Someone had lined the chairs up under the bag pegs. I remember having to sit with my neck bent forward, so the bags wouldn’t hit me on the head. Some of the other boys were trying to balance on one chair leg. Probably we were popping gum.
Mrs Hatcher came out. ‘Okay … Paul Bannerman? It’s your turn.’
We went into her office, where Mrs Hatcher began, ‘So, Paul. What are you thinking of doing with the rest of your life?’
It was a bigger question than I was able to handle at that time. ‘I don’t know,’
I said.
‘Well, I’ve got two sets of forms here, Paul,’ Mrs Hatcher said. ‘One set of dole forms, so you can get the dole after you’ve done your HSC, or else the VTAC forms, if you want to apply for a place at university. You’d have no problem getting a place at university, if that’s what you want to do.’
I remember feeling surprised by that, mainly because nobody in my family had been to university, but rather than explore the option, or even say anything sensible, I shrugged and said, ‘I dunno.’
To her credit, Mrs Hatcher tried to help. ‘Do you mean you don’t know whether you want to go to university, or you don’t know what you want to study? Because they’ve got courses – Arts courses – for kids still making up their minds. Do you know what Arts is?’
‘Is it painting?’ I said. I wasn’t being smart – I really was that clueless.
‘Arts is not painting, no. Arts – it’s literature. It’s literature, philosophy, history, languages – does any of that interest you?’
It didn’t.
‘All right, Paul,’ Mrs Hatcher said. ‘I’m going to put down Arts. If you get in, and you decide to go, and you don’t like it, you can always change it later.’
I watched her write my name and other details into white squares on the VTAC form. When she was done, Mrs Hatcher turned the forms towards me and said, ‘You’ve got to sign at the bottom.’
I signed.
‘I’ll post this off for you,’ Mrs Hatcher said. ‘If anyone asks, you’ve put Arts as your first preference.’
Nobody asked.
I sat my final exams for the HSC in November that year in a building here, in the city that I’d never seen before. I can’t recall exactly where it was, but the floorboards seemed to run forever, all in one direction, and there was a round-faced clock on the wall. There must have been 1000 desks, each with a perfect white rectangle of exam paper positioned precisely in the middle. I sat and scribbledanswers for an hour, and then, because you weren’t allowed to get up and leave, I sat and listened to the exam supervisors squeaking across the otherwise silent room in rubber-soled shoes.
Summer went by – from memory, and this won’t surprise parents of teenagers, I spent it in my room, picking zits – and then, in January, a letter came, saying I’d got a place in an Arts course at the University of Melbourne. I went along on the first day, and saw straightaway that things wouldn’t work out. Hundreds of students were surging down the corridors, radiating a sense of purpose I didn’t feel, and couldn’t seem to muster.
I thought about dropping out, but university was free back then and it was just as easy to stay enrolled and skip lectures. So that’s what I was doing – skiving, smoking cigarettes in a loading bay behind the Arts building – when I first saw Brother Ruhamah.
Now, like everyone, I’ve been reading the newspapers, and I’m
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