How Scary can a Kindergarten teacher be?

Population 26-ish

Ollie’s teacher and the principal from the School of the Air came for their yearly assessment visit this week-end.  It’s not an easy task to get to the island.  You either have to charter a plane or a boat or catch a lift on a supply run.  The teachers ended up chartering a small plane.  In an area of the world that is labeled “remote”, we are beyond “outback”.  The teachers consider us the most far flung of their students in an otherwise extremely “far flung” part of the world.

The airstrip is scratched out of clay around 6km from the homestead.  Sometimes the pilot will call before he takes off.  It takes only 15 minutes to fly from the mainland and it takes us about 15 minutes to drive to the airstrip.  Or we wait until we hear the sound of the plane and then go for a mad dash so the poor devils on the flight don’t think they have been abandoned in the middle of nowhere.

The boys and I waited anxiously in the little sunshade that the dune buggy provided us.  How scary can a kindergarten teacher be?  At times the school seems to operate in a vacuum.  The boys both have on-air lessons with their teachers for half an hour a day.  After each two-week set of work, I send the completed work back to the teachers for marking and assessment.  It takes about six weeks to get the marked work back by which point we can scarcely remember what the set was about.  So the boys and I operate with very little feedback on their progress and I operate with no real validation on whether  I’m going my job properly and whether they are accomplishing what is required.

So I was trepidatous too.  I had visions of the mean teacher and the principal tearing our efforts apart, telling me I couldn‘t teach my way out of a paper bag, and putting the boys into remedial classes.  It was a long wait for the plane to circle and touch down.

The flight touched down and taxied to the “terminal” (aka where the car track hits the runway).  The boys went to hide.  The teachers wanted to take photos.  I think the teachers were having fun on their big adventure too.  The airstrip is full of holes and we always wait for the pilot to get the plane back into the air before we leave.  If they were to loose a wheel or crash, we want to make sure there is someone to get help.

The ride back from the airstrip is bumpy and sandy and lots of bugs fly into your face, so it’s a good idea to wear sunglasses.  It meanders through the low scrubby bushes that survive in the sandy soil and then the vista opens up to the sea when you drive over the final hill to the homestead.  It’s very rugged and hot and dusty.  The homestead is a revelation in the hostile environment.   The homestead is it’s own little cluster of buildings and it’s own little community and it appears out of nowhere on this very large desert island.

The old shearers quarters has 8 guestrooms facing the sea with a long covered veranda dotted with deck chairs.  There are 24 large solar panels and a shed filled with batteries that give us constant electricity.  The 100 year old shearing shed is next to the house and fun to explore (if you keep an eye out for snakes).  The family house with the classroom is behind the shearers quarters and very modest. 

The teachers spent two days assessing the boys.  I was extremely relieved that they didn’t have any major criticism of they way I was running the schoolroom.  They seemed downright complimentary.  Most school of the air students are taught by their mothers who really don’t have the time to dedicate to the kids’ education.   Both boys came out ahead of the curve in their assessment.  It felt like I received a good report card too.

Survivor vs Iron Chef

For a while it felt like I had landed in a bizarre cross-over episode of  Survivor and Iron Chef.  “Who will be voted off the island next?  Whose cuisine will reign supreme?” 

There had been a several new staff members and backpackers who had come to the island and freaked out with the isolation.  A new housekeeper spent the first three days she was here very very drunk and then ended up wandering the shark infested beach at midnight in a stupor.  She didn’t have the money to get back to Perth.  She was very quickly voted off the island as soon as she had earned bus fare.

Another married couple were hired as a general handyman and a housekeeper.  She was a 30 year old German girl, the husband was pushing 60 years old and an Australian.  Was it a visa marriage?  They spent two days looking glum and unhappy and then demanded off the island.  There wasn’t a boat going off the island for nearly a week so they refused to work and just walked around looking miserable.  It was like a cloud lifted when they left.

I was started to feel like the final four in Survivor.  It was nice that I got to be on the jury.  The staff would usually come to talk to me before they went to the boss.  I give the boss a heads-up if I know people are getting island fever so they will have time to find a replacement.

It was also nice to be on the jury when the competing chefs were visiting.  They took it all so seriously and I was happy to partake in their gourmet offerings.

UFO landing (aka “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie”)

Population 24-ish

I’m settling down into the routine of having guests on the island.  Every night there is a big dinner on the front veranda overlooking the bay.  The guests seem to be all super rich wine makers and foodies.  It isn’t cheap to stay here.   So far there has been some insane competition on who can impress the rest of us with their cooking skills and access insanely expensive or homemade ingredients.  Some bring their own wine from their vineyards or beef from their farms.  There are fishing expeditions nearly every day.  They dragged clams from the bay in front of the homestead one day for a clam and chilli pasta.  Ten huge lobsters ended up turned into a green thai curry.  Huge fish are rolling up onto the table expertly cooked by foodies on a spree.

Last night was the super moon.  It was the closest the moon was going to come to the earth in the next thirty years and was supposed to be the brightest and biggest it’s been for decades.  The light falling off the rising moon and glistening on the water made it look like a UFO landing on the horizon.  Fresh caught Salt and Pepper Squid appeared and then a slow roasted goat.  The 80 year old Italian family patriarch was holding court on the lawn with his sons and nephews smoking and watching the moon rise.  He had given me a lot of strange and sometimes incomprehensible advice on life and love over the last couple of weeks.  He jokes that I’m his new girlfriend.  It seems that he owns half of Perth.  Will and Ollie and I used the Ipad SkyWatch app to map some of the stars.  We found the saucepan (otherwise known as Orion’s Belt).

Then we all sat around drinking homemade wine and eating goat under the super moon.

We've been invaded!

Population: 26

We’ve been invaded!!!  All of a sudden the guests started arriving.  The population of the island more than doubled overnight.

A family group of Italian fisherman are amongst the guest that arrived this week-end.  They are rugged, outdoors types with deep tans and a love of coffee and food.  The father is from “the old country” but the middle aged sons are Aussie to the core.  They brought their own espresso machine just in case they couldn’t get proper coffee on the island.  The brothers made dinner last night by barbecuing the fish they caught and made pasta with a ragu made out of emu meat.  Bush tucker at it's finest!  We all sat on the front veranda overlooking the bay and swapped island stories of sharks and emergency rescues and improvised medical procedures. 

There are wild muscles on the beach and the Italian brothers are going to attempt to de-sand them sufficiently to eat.

There was another snake sighting in the children’s playroom last week, except this time the mother had to rush to the schoolroom to hand me the one year old daughter before she could grab the shovel and behead it.  In the meantime, the snake disappeared.  It’s likely hiding somewhere in the homestead.  BUT the good thing is that the mother then went on a mission to rid the playroom of anything that snakes could hide behind and I scored the bookshelf for my bedroom!!!  Woooo hoooo!!  I guess now the snake can hide behind it at the foot of my bed.

Indoctrinating members into my Cargo Cult

Will and Ollie come out to the front veranda in their pajamas last night with a pair of binoculars watching the horizon for their father to return with a boat full of supplies.  They ran up and down on the beach, tussled for control of the ‘noculars, made bets on who would see the boat first, discussed in detail which direction he would first appear.  I thought “these are the type of sturdy, impressionable young fellows I need in my Cargo Cult.”

Of course, the most anxious devotees of my cargo cult are smokers.  They stand on the beach, fidget, pace back and forth, mutter a couple of oaths and say a prayer that their precious cigarettes have not been forgotten.   I haven’t seen any attempt to construct mobile phones out of coconut shells, but that might just be a matter of time.

But I shouldn’t make fun.  My chocolate supplies are running low.  It’s not that I need chocolate every day, I just like to know it’s there just in case.  The first three weeks on the island I had no chocolate.  I can’t let that happen again.

The Wwoofer experience

Population 11

Imagine you are 20 years old and away from your family for the first time on a trip overseas from Europe.  You answer an ad on an internet site asking for volunteers on a remote island.  It sounds like a fun, adventurous idea.  So you drive to literally the ends of the earth where a man you have never seen before in your life and with whom you have only exchanged a couple of e-mails, beckons you to get on his boat.  You have recently watched the movie “Wolfe Creek - Based on a True Story” of the backpacker murders.  You look to the departing volunteers for assurance that this guy in the boat isn’t a psycho.  Their only advice (after a hearty laugh) is “look out for sharks”.

So it is that three new German volunteers arrived a couple of days ago.  They are very young and very timid, but I guess just getting this far proves they are either foolhardy, naïve, or have major intestinal fortitude.

The truth is, once you reach the island, the family is terrific, the beach is lovely, everyone is very welcoming (including the resident Governess).  But I understand it takes a major leap of faith to get on that boat.