Reformed

I have two different memories of Tom Black. 

In early high school some days it seemed to rain like the apocalypse was upon us.  And in the grey skied aftermath we'd have to scuttle past gaping puddles in the pavement, clutching our folders with eager fingers.  On just such a day a friend and I were making for the canteen.  A group of older boys were loitering by a brick wall the way some boys do, with a gentle bantering "toughness".  One of them I faintly recognised, I thought, to be Tom Black. 

His reputation preceded him; his younger sister, a quasi-friend of mine from primary school, had tattled about his brawls, bad attitude and tertiary suspensions. 

In a moment that hung in my memory on puppeteers strings, three of the boys leapt.  They hung there, halfway to us, a little boisterous and a little menacing.  And then they fell.   Water sprayed in dirty cold arcs, up my legs and across cardboard shield of the folder that I hugged.  I was not certain what I'd expected from the boys. 

I can't recall whether my first reaction was accusation or embarrassment.  I'd like to think I glared in a holier-than-thou accusatory fashion and cowed the trouble makers into submission.  But I have to admit it was more likely that I merely ducked my head and felt needlessly embarrassed.    If I didn't do the latter immediately I certainly did after they started chortling at our expense. 

It was a number of months before I remember seeing the notorious Tom Black again.  Like many of his buddies he'd dropped out of school, tried to join the army I'm told.  He came skulking back to the school again with a crew cut and a pile of textbooks under his arm.  He had a pair of reading glasses and frowned as he deciphered exam papers.  In the library I sat with him for all manner of tests, carefully reading aloud the material and the questions and then watching him so seriously move his pen across the paper in response.  He was one of the ones who tried. 

I read aloud test papers or wrote down dictated answers for countless students in my junior years.   Some were despondent and spent most of the allotted time drawing pictures or staring defiantly out the windows.  I remember one such girl telling me curtly that Celtic was  pronounced with a hard "c" not a soft one.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.  My dictionary (which happens to be six inches thick not that that makes any difference) tells me both  are correct but people do have their foibles.  One boy I read for was the happiest I've ever seen though even at fourteen I was literally double his height.   He truly was a marvel with all the things he could do with just one stunted arm.  We chatted most of our time away but so long as he was okay with that.  The hardest I think were the students for whom English was far from a first language.  It didn't matter that I was a clear and careful speaker, the questions still skirted their understanding. 

But Tom, I don't know what the doctors and optometrists called it, probably that ambiguous title "dyslexia".  He read slowly because his brain had trouble rearranging the words on the page.  The glasses helped later but I think at first he just was frustrated with himself.  Teachers and the other kids might have looked at him and called him slow.  So why wouldn't he build up vicious defence mechanisms?  Get sent out of class so he didn't have to read aloud?

Gasping for Breath; for Top Marks

Breathing metaphorically, I feel as though my mind palace is shoved full of things, half squished and cramped up to fit, so that each individual idea is bent beyond recognition. Like so much useless chatter I feel word after word get stuck between my ears in an opaque mess of thought. Question marks, black and red, are scrawled in front of me, hanging from every neuron, so that when I sit at a desk I cannot even see the board in front of me though I push my glasses higher.

Where before I struggled to find something I couldn't ace; these past weeks I just don't know. I can't recall what I know, I’ve forgotten what I’m supposed to know and I have no idea what I don't know. Knowledge flees from me as from a burning building. I stare agape as the numbers peel from the page and jig before me in a parody of my dreams.

No sooner have I half figured out a concept, barely had the breath to ask why!?- than the next giant theory is upon me, with half grasped rules. Finish this, finish that, you've got homework to do if you don't. They pile up so that my future is booked to the moon with the things I should have done yesterday. I can barely unstick my mind from its present hurried task to contemplate finding real understanding by revision and study.

If only I had a pet dragon to yell out, "I don't understand!" in order to slow the runaway train that is our maths lessons.

The class' understanding is reminiscent already of the train wreck that our exams will surely be. Our blood will run like sweat as we hunch nervous over the paper and strings of invisible algebra will drift over the hall like motes of dust in the sunlight, called pi, Greek, xylophone and Euler. Stares will blankly examine the log that is now a table before the clocks flies to 2. Mark my numbers this is a torturous blind fold of confusion soaked in chloroform.

Save me before I drown.

On the way to the Queen's Land

After feeling so sick the previous day I woke at 4am for some reason to travel to Queensland to wander aimlessly around Universities.  I still don't understand how I managed but at about 8am (NSW time) I wrote this:

To be honest I'm just glad to be travelling.  The bus is surprisingly quiet (mostly everyone's asleep) and it is sorta relaxing.  I have almost slept, that being I pretended to be asleep but couldn't be sure if it actually caught up with me, until Woodburn(two hours north). I'm awaiting the famed (well in my head it is) corner down to the Byron valley (so pretty!)

And this, wondering about the 1 hour time difference between the two states for 6 months of the year:

Who says we haven't invented time machines yet? They're all over the world and their called time zones.  It feels like there should be a shimmering barrier between New  South Wales and Queensland. Perhaps we'll see it when we reach Tweed Heads. 

Perhaps I only survived because of my favourite hill:

The Border Ranges, faint like they're painted upon the sky.  Mount Warning a crooked, watchful figure.  The hills below the darker green of a scrub far, far away .  Like some idyllic pastoral scene the hills roll in green to a single field that pools below the curving highway.  The polka dots upon the mountain's skirts reveal themselves as hamlets, trees and homesteads. 

The colour, the mist, the view!

The land is expansive and enormous and yet it clusters close in this glimpse. The hills gather in a feeling of rising; the meaning of contour is clear.  From the top of the hill, cut into pieces by tree trunks the valleys are sleeping, stretched out beneath you and then in the curve of a parabola the ground floats higher to the edge of the world. 

To the east the sea is a foam mat of blurry turquoise and as the bus glides around the corner the rolling hills reveal another perspective.  Like a carpet it rolls out in front of me, thickening as it draws away. 

It is that corner and the glimpse of field and valley, hill and spur, mountain and ocean that enchants each time I pass it.  Such a snapshot of beauty that every time a new aspect comes to light.  Is it the ancient growl of the mountains in their volcano crater, the sparkling of the bay sides or perhaps just the height and depth of the curve as it pulls you in?

Rainy Volleyball

Beach Volleyball   

So you'd be thinking of a sunny summer day, skies painted bright. Perhaps you'd even picture bikinis in every rainbow colour against the sand. Well you can forget about bikinis first of all because this is CHS(Country High Schools) beach volleyball. In our case we had collared (what?) singlets with vertical stripes of gold(yellow), white and green(bottle).

Waking before 5 thirty in the morning, when any respectful teen should be asleep, we headed north for Byron Bay. After a dramatic thunderstorm stomped through yesterday there were still drizzles and clouds hanging about during our three hour drive. The ranting within the car kept me faintly amused.

Of course entering Byron its pouring, though all the tiny shops still looked cheerful and closed. At first optimism serves the four of us from Orara and we all huddle under umbrellas and picnic shelters. Maybe its on, maybe its off, maybe we'll go and play indoor. We're not real happy either way.

Our teacher comes to tell us the day is going ahead, "You're on."

So of course one of my team mates replies, "And you're off." in exasperation. It truly is appalling weather for sunny beach volleyball.

Running out onto the beach in bare feet, singlets and shorts we shivered. The wind gusted off the sea, brutal and laced with icy drops. The sea melded with the sky at the horizon, bleak and unwelcoming. We immediately ran back up to the park to shelter under the trees. Eventually I gave up hiding from the very sky and started hitting the balls around. I thought, that's it weather- I don't even care.

Then they called it off, we were heading to Evan's Head to play indoors. Wait that is anyone who actually had to travel; Alstonville and Ballina (with the shortest drives), decided to just head home. Well kitted out for BEACH volleyball, Emma and Ruby, needed some shoes so we cruised around Byron looking for some. In woolies we find out that (of course) people from Byron Bay don't wear shoes so we head for the next closest- Ballina.  

By the time we got to the indoor courts (12 o'clock) it was as sunny as the sunshine sugar logo. We played two and a half muck around games against Wauchope then Evans Head and then the Wauchope junior boys. Ruby and I got in a few awesome blocks against the boys who looked sheepish whenever we won a point. All of us exploded into uncontrollable laughter for half a set and twice I got lucky, chucking my arms in the air at impossible shots and won the point. Crazy Fun.

Leaving at 2 I called the trip not an entire bust but what I would like to know is this: Out of the entire North Coast Region (about Wauchope to Queensland) why was this tournament held at Byron Bay? Almost the northern-most point. It meant that Wauchope had to travel six hours in a bus for a rain drenched fail. I know its lucky that we live in the middle of the region, but out in the regional areas why make students and teachers travel even more ridiculous distances than they already have to?

More opportunities, less travel.

Around Australia 2007: Days 4 & 5

Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th March 24-25/3/07

BUNYA MT

This campsite in the Bunya Mountains is pretty good (except for the fact that there are no showers.)  We went on this really quite interesting walk.  It came out into a beautiful lookout.  We walked past plenty of grassland that quickly turned into a lush rainforest. 

Evan Harry + I rode our scooters down the slope over and over again.  It was fun.  We also caught up on some school work. 

On the next day we drove to Paradise Parking and walked all the way to Dandaba.  Evan, Mum + I were going to go to a lookout when we saw some feathers from a dead bird and two metres further along the track there was a bog fat snake, so we didn't go to the lookout.  At Dandabar we had lunch at a cafe and resturant and we also fed the King Parrots.  Then we walked back with bribes from Mum to get us there. 

An note at the bottom says:

We fed the King Parrots and they made claw marks where they had sat to eat the bird seed. 

To the side, Mum, who has her own version of events posted on her blog, has written a note aswell:

great diary writing, Sarah.  It is very descriptive and interesting to read.  Remember the fun you had riding your scooters at Bunya Mtn + the yummy Bunya nuts that we ate.