Firstly thank you for all the lovely comments on my previous post on Easter this year.
1971 was the first graduating class ever, where long white dresses weren’t mandatory for the female students...so I made a frock in apricot fabric with a gold braid trim...
After the graduation ceremony, there was the graduation ball at Cloudland...a big night!
( I was posted to my local primary school where I had been a student 7 years before and Linda was posted to an Ipswich school where her dad was headmaster.)
I spent the weekend cutting out garments and sewing them up...it was so therapeutic. That, plus the fact that mum kept up a supply of toasted hot cross buns and chocolate eggs, my mood lightened. I no longer wanted to walk out on my job and indeed went back with a metaphorical spring in my step.
I only kept it for 3 years. Its tension problems got to annoy me, so in 1974, Ellie the Elna became my new machine. Still have her and use her despite having a much newer Janome.
For some reason this year, my thoughts went back to an Easter long passed. But first a bit of background so I will digress from Easter for a while.
It was 1971 and in the previous December I had graduated as a teacher.
I even have a few photos from that graduation night...in my little bedroom getting ready. My long hair has been teased and combed and pinned into curls at the back of my head by the hairdresser in the shop on the main road in our suburb.
Note the cretonne curtains and the vase of daisies on the dressing table...we always had vases of homegrown flowers in my childhood home.
1971 was the first graduating class ever, where long white dresses weren’t mandatory for the female students...so I made a frock in apricot fabric with a gold braid trim...
This photo shows my mum and I all dressed ready to head off to the Festival Hall...and the cretonne curtains in our lounge room. 😉
After the graduation ceremony, there was the graduation ball at Cloudland...a big night!
Next day all students gathered in the old Assembly Hall at our Teachers’ College.
I took this photo before the ceremony started. I’d been looking for this photo for years as the present day university on the site of the old teachers college is always asking for old photos. Amazingly I came across the photo just the other day!
The occasion was when we were to be given our postings. In those ‘Olden Days’ all of us students were on teaching scholarships and we were guaranteed a job at the end of our course. How lucky were we?
The next photo is of my friend Linda and I, waiting for the ceremony to begin where we would learn of our first posting.
( I was posted to my local primary school where I had been a student 7 years before and Linda was posted to an Ipswich school where her dad was headmaster.)
So late in January 1971 I started work as a teacher on probation with a Grade 5 class.
After a few weeks I decided I didn’t really like the job. By today’s standards, the children were angels but there were 38 of them in my class. If the other Grade 5 teacher was away, ( and this older woman seemed to have a lot of ill health 🤨), I would be expected to open the door between classes and teach both classes, so just under 80 students...unheard of later in my career!
There were 3 of us graduates appointed to the school that year and as well as our daily program, the headmaster instructed us to write full notes of all lessons in the 5 hours of teaching time.
So I soon got a bit disillusioned ( and tired) so to keep myself going, I promised myself that if I still hated the job by Easter I would leave even though breaking the bond (2 years service) meant all the scholarship money had to be repaid. Each day as I marked the class roll, I’d count the number of days left before Easter.
Finally Easter arrived and I was looking forward to that 4 day break. I had bought an Empisal brand sewing machine with one of my first pays as a teacher.
Here’s an image of that model that I found on the Net.
I spent the weekend cutting out garments and sewing them up...it was so therapeutic. That, plus the fact that mum kept up a supply of toasted hot cross buns and chocolate eggs, my mood lightened. I no longer wanted to walk out on my job and indeed went back with a metaphorical spring in my step.
And for some reason my thoughts this year turned to that Easter from long ago.
I didn’t think there were any photos showing that first sewing machine, but when sorting through old photos of their dad for my daughters, I found this one...
There on the right just a glimpse in its plastic case...
I only kept it for 3 years. Its tension problems got to annoy me, so in 1974, Ellie the Elna became my new machine. Still have her and use her despite having a much newer Janome.
