Marie Ganter (nee Gray)
Attended Ubobo State School 1929 - 1935
I started school when I was 4 years old. Miss Gough was a bit
desperate for numbers, and my mother was probably a bit desperate for a little
peace at home. Since I have a December birthday, I guess I was just four when I
started. My father, CA Gray, had the Post Office Store, which of course, is
still a busy hub. Although the interior has had alterations made, the outside
is still basically as it was when I was a child.
I walked to and from school, and always went home for lunch.
Lunch was mostly a thick sandwich of bread and jam, or peanut paste, or a
corn-beef sandwich, eaten as we ran back to play. On wet and cold days, my
mother sometimes had soup or meat or banana fritters waiting for us. On special
day, puftaloons with syrup were a real treat – and I still wish I had my
mother’s recipe for them. I always envied those children who had big home-made
ginger nuts for little lunch. My mother wasn’t too keen on baking so we had
Webster’s or Arnott’s biscuits straight off the shop shelf. We had homework to
do – lessons to learn, exercises to write and sums to do.
I was blessed with wonderful teachers – Hannah Gough, my
first one, died during surgery during the Christmas vacation. This was the
first time death touch me and I was very sad that she would not be returning.
But then along came Mr Irish and I just loved him. I look back and know he was
jus the best teacher I every knew. I remember him asking me, ‘Who invented the
steam engine, Marie?’ My brain was sleeping. He continued asking the question,
the cupped his hand around his ear, saying, ‘What Marie?’ The penny finally
dropped and I recalled that James watt invented the steam engine, and never
have I forgotten it. I remember too, when we were learning about Scotland, he
taught us ‘Loch Ness, Loch Oich, Lock Locky are the lakes that form Glen More’.
Seventy years I’ve remembered that, which must say something for his teaching
methods. After Mr Irish, came Barney Mullins, a really nice man too. I passed
scholarship while he was there and left Ubobo for my secondary schooling.