my english teacher

I chose a state high school. My parents offered Girls Grammar - my brother, like my father, had gone to Boys Grammar but the idea terrified me. Their black stockings, white blouse and dark blue pleated shirts, the blue and black horizontally-striped ties, the stone buildings and the vast gloomy and pungent Fig trees which surrounded them reminded me of either St Trinians or English boarding schools (minus the giant Moreton Bay Figs of course) and something about that intimidated and horrified me. My friend was going to the state school and I felt comforted by that, though we didn't even end up in the same class after the first year. My academic side might have been better served at Grammar, probably, but 'you can't put old heads on young shoulders' as my father used to lament, grotesquely.  
Physically, Cav Road High was an aesthetic wasteland. A sprawling site of wood and concrete, graceless buildings surrounded by lots of bare soil and eroding escarpments. Two huge gaping ovals for - shudder - sports. Tin buildings called 'Temporary Block', and the just-asking-for-an-epithet, 'F' block. Ugly bottle-green tunic style school uniforms for the girls with camel-coloured tights. So far so familiar. Comfortingly low expectations.

Miss Cornish did her very best with our study of Macbeth. I loved looking at the Albrecht Dürer engraving in the notes and the arresting 'nave to the chaps' graphic-ness of the text and Porter's earthy ramblings.  We had to memorise the 'unsex me here' speech, an incongruity to recite it in front of Miss Cornish's permanent wave coiff.
In grade 10 a man walked into the classroom. Young, but wearing the old-style Australian male uniform of shirt, walkshorts and to-the-knee socks. David Sutton had us read a book a week. And we had to write a paragraph a day and an essay a week. It was creative writing but no one called it that.
Wordsworth. Coleridge. I wrote poems and Mr Sutton looked at them and encouraged me. He once to my shock read out my essay to the class saying - here's something I want you all to listen to, it's very good. 

One day he brought in a brochure for me. August residential courses (there's a week or two-week holiday in August, our winter). He was pointing out the writing course to me but again, the black and white pictures terrified me. People sitting talking, a hand on the page writing. Perhaps my father's fury at my inability do do things when I was very small had paid off. Maybe my parents' mockery of my brother's future career as a dustman had had some kind of impact. Perhaps Mr Weeks (incidentally, a lecher and quite probably an alcoholic) in primary school telling the whole class that we were stupid on a daily basis had something to to with it. Or perhaps at some level I believed them when they told us that although the girls were always smartest in our class, once we got to high-school that would all change and we wouldn't have a chance against the boys. Who knows what was so scary about sitting and writing in a room with a bunch of others and then having to speak about it?
I took the brochure home and turned the pages...there was another course on offer, a drama course. I don't even remember what the pictures showed and I don't know why it inspired me - perhaps it looked relaxed and fun.

So it's the eve of my 17th birthday. I am installed in a freezing (by Queensland terms) student room at the Queensland Uni. Only one thin blanket on the bed. The next morning, I survive brushing my teeth in the large communal bathroom with shower cubicles. Another girl asks me a question and unaccustomed to being spoken to in this activity, I swallow my toothpaste in order to answer her. I am afraid of seeming odd. Meanwhile she has a plastic bowl of muesli and is adding water from the tap to it, chatty and relaxed.

Actually, to back track a bit, Mr Sutton also took us to the theatre a lot. We saw shows at the Queensland Theatre Company. The thrill of dressing up to go into the centre of town. And a revue at the St Lucia University Theatre. (Uni seemed a very glamorous place). The now world-famous actor Geoffrey Rush was in the show which may have been called 'I Hear What You Say' and it had been organised for us to go back stage and speak to the actors. I spoke to Geoff Rush and said something inane. He was very kind in his response. Possibly Geoff had already been to Le Coq (I was not even to hear about Le Coq for another 10 years). They did a sketch about a football match that they froze, rewound and replayed in slow motion. Incredible and to me unimagined expertise in pursuit of something stupid. I was impressed. (The piece was no doubt making a satirical point that escaped me).