Dorothy Schooldays

JillAnsell
Jun 6
2 min read

Updated: 7 days ago

Dorothy - Mum

I started a portrait of my rather excellent mother late last year. Mum is a great subject, but I found it hard to decide how to paint her. There were so many aspects: mother, teacher, gardener, wife, writer, scrabble champion, seamstress, matriarch, great grandmother…what to focus on?

A continuous thread in Mum's life is teaching and writing so I placed her at her desk. This way I could show her as a teacher, correspondent and writer. I had squirrelled away a vintage school case and an ancient primary school reader that seemed to be awaiting their moment in the sun, so her portrait is created in this case to provide context and frame. For the assemblage I found items that relate to Mum, such as the photo of the Morbinning school bus, a scrap of her writing, and a few domestic items and worked them into the composition.

Mum started school as a 5-year-old doing correspondence with her mother out on the farm near Morbinning. This proved difficult with three younger siblings fighting for their share of attention, so Mum was sent into Beverley to live with her grandmother, so she could attend school until her home was put on the school bus route.

A bright student, she got a scholarship to Northam High school and then went to Perth to train as a teacher as many smart women did in that era. Her first job was at Mandurah Primary School teaching 50 grade one students in the one class. No doubt this refined her considerable kid wrangling skills. She was paid ¾ of the pay rate of the male teachers and when she married, she was sacked (marriage being a career ending move for women of that era).

She continue to teach as a relief teacher in between building a family. She went back to full time teaching in the 1970s – a job she loved and excelled at. Mum has positively influenced hundreds of children over the years.

A diligent correspondent, Mum wrote letters back to her family every Sunday night and letters to Dad until they married. When retired, she turned her hand to writing her own story, and family histories and self-published these books.

Women like my mother should be acknowledged as State Treasures. They have touched countless lives and all for the better.

PS: she is still writing, knitting blankets, winning at scrabble, waging war on the chilli thrips and fundraising for charity.

PPS: She also taught Sunday school for 60 years.... What a gem of a woman!