I turned six in November so after the Christmas holidays off I went with my three elder sisters. There was much scrubbing of faces and shining of boots to begin with.

The girls had button-up boots which were then the mode, with a row of buttons down the front, each one fastening into a separate loop. Using a hook like a large crochet hook they just had to slip this through the loop, catch the button and twitch it through the loop.

Meanwhile I was laboriously threading the leather laces through the eyelets of a new pair of 'beetle crushers'. I had been wearing them about on the farm because Dad said I had to get them 'broken in' before I did the long trek to school and back.

We each had a schoolbag which in those days was a leather satchel with the flap fastened down by two brass buckles and a leather strap that went over the shoulder. It was large enough to hold our cut lunch, a couple of books and a pencil case but would be derided by today's school children whose duffle bags of books and gear make them look like packhorses. But then, they don't have so far to walk.

Off we went at a brisk walk. There was nothing else but grassy paddocks and the little weatherboard school with its cream-painted walls and bullnose galvanised iron roof. Around the fence were a few pine trees and between the fence and the school the three little dunnies. One for the teacher, one for the girls and one for the boys.

Further down the road there was a very small roadside orchard and bungalow where the Walkhams kept the Bannister post office. And away over the other side, set back in its expanse of grazing land was the homestead and shearing sheds of Bannister sheep station, where lived a family with the appropriate name of Shepherd.

Monday morning, my first day at school and I was almost too shy to say hello to the other new kids, although I knew who they were and had at some time or other met them before. One of the big boys rang the school bell which was a cowbell hanging from a chain on a post.

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It was only a little more than two years since the Armistice ending the Great War as it was called then. The heroics and tragedies of the Anzacs at Gallipoli, the Light Horse at Beersheba and the Diggers in France were subjects we learned of with pride at home and at school. There were few families who had not been touched in some way by those events.

I regarded with childish awe and pride my Uncle Eric who had a leg blown off in the battle of Villers-Brettoneux and Uncle Os who was partly deaf from the guns of Flanders. Cynical allusions to anything that hinted at national pride as 'jingoism' were not part of our intelligence.

To us it was a simple equation. We had not started the war, The Kaiser and the German army had started it and we of the Allies had managed to stop them. It was too horrible to think what would have happened to us if the Germans had won. So we were very glad that Australia was a healthy part of the red expanse on the world map which then represented what was the British Empire.

While we sang 'Rule Britannia' with gusto and revered her heroes like Drake, Raleigh et al we had little respect for the individual English that we knew as migrant 'Pommies'. Those who found their way into the rugged life of places like Gullen were regarded mostly with a certain amount of derision. Completely strange to them was our way of life where a man or woman was thrown onto their own resources to cope with a harsh way of life and very few amenities as such.

So none the worse for saluting the flag, we trooped into school and took our places, the young ones in front and the older ones at the back.

There were six long desks or forms, with a long stool behind each where we sat facing the teacher and blackboard - a class to each form. First class in front and sixth class at the back.

Those old desks and stools were all made of lovely red cedar which had taken a dark warm glow with age and rubbing of sweaty young legs and arms. That old cedar furniture no doubt has long been scrapped but today it would bring a collector's ransom. With the demise of those little country schools no doubt the furniture also went to the scrap heap.

There were four shiny young faces in first class - Eileen Gorman, Lewis Gay, Willie Keating and myself; all eager to learn or to show what we already knew. But I was unfortunate to fluff the first question. Sitting on the end of the stool I was first to be asked by the teacher:

"Now, what is your name?" A question that took me by surprise. Surely everyone knew who I was! Didn't we all know each other in this family orientated community?

"Reggie Ernie Mahoney," I blurted out with a certain degree of embarrassment to myself but much more so to my elder sisters who later reviled me for not answering 'Reginald Ernest Mahoney'. It seemed that I had been briefed about everything to expect at school except how to answer my name.

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