From a Window

                 Bambara Primary School

All over Australia, schools are winding down for the summer holidays.  I took the morning to visit two with which I have been associated.  Memories came pouring back as I peered through the windows into the classrooms, the libraries and the staffrooms.  Children were working quietly, with their teachers supervising them in the same familiar activities.  I had time to have a quick word with some of my old colleagues.  They work so intensely from moment to moment-truly, they are unsung heros. 

One school is about thirty years old, the other is just completing the first exciting year.  Interactive whiteboards and laptops are being installed.  The teachers seem to absorb the new technology whilst delivering the curriculum to their charges.  Fleetingly, I glimpsed the fresh young faces of so many of our next generation.  To me, the system seems to be working-the children are confidently moving forward with the aid of their teachers, and parents, and developing into citizens who will carry forward the knowledge and the culture of our land.

It was a lovely way to pass the morning. 

Tapping Primary School (R)

The sea breeze is in.  Whitecaps.  You can see the beaches on Rotto.  Our neighbours have a huge crane taking out their old swimming pool and replacing it with a high tech one with motor built in.  Colourful chutes of paragliders rise and fall behind the sand-dunes.  The rescue helicopter hovers above the dunes, skimming the beaches.  A huge jet lays a white vapour trail across the vault of the wide blue sky.  It is one of the new Airbus jets sending a salute as it flies over Perth-too large to land.  Because Perth is so isolated, it is a rare sight to see a jet travelling over our air space.  Operation Submarine is under way in the Indian Ocean.

 We are too late to rescue a baby magpie from the pool. 

On the lawn, another baby magpie lays his beak horizontally on the surface, in a vain attempt to work out how to collect his own food.  He looks at his mother in confusion and hurries after her, plaintively crying for sustenance.

With my heart in my mouth, I watch from the kitchen window as he mounts the bicycle, wobbles down the road and disappears around the bend.

Much later, he returns, pushing the disgraced machine-the chain has come off, and it is too slippery to manipulate.  Especially in his condition.

However, to me, it is a triumph.  He is back on his bike after a full knee replacement fifteen weeks ago.

As the morning sun beams down on the rush hour traffic, she looks through the plate glass windows to her right.

At QVl building, in the foyer, they have the most amazing Christmas tree that revolves. . . beautiful. 

She texts the description to me.  As I struggle awake from my guilty sleep, it is the tool to invigorate.

• The duck waddles beneath the bench in the late afternoon sunshine.  The bench is special.  It featured in the movie Notting Hill, and has found its way to the park in the antipodes.  In its early colonial life the park was the site of a lime mine and kiln.
  The park is now a formal English garden, Queens Gardens, complete with pools, lawns, pathways and gazebos enclosed by a perimeter of trees, now in their full greenery.
• Beyond the fence enclosing the park, a low single storey building sits under brick coloured tiles.
  Inside one of the windows, my mother, an aged widow, dozes, occasionally turning her eyes through the window to the blue sky, green trees and assuredly, the memories.
• In the same Hostel, she had a pal.  They used to meet in the small lounge and chat.  This pal celebrated her centenary, and slowly sank into a world of her own.  She took long naps in the lounge chair.  She began to view life through the window of her dreams.  For several days, she would awake and look around with a smile.  Slowly, the smile would fade.  When questioned, she explained that when her eyes were closed she could see all the photos of her loved ones, but when she opened them, they were gone.

Pine trees, lawns, magpies, sand dunes and a walking path lead my eye outside on a glorious early Summer’s day.

fir tree and sky

We went, today, to see Into The Wild.  Tonight, I have read innumerable reviews and comments on the story.  From a window of his old bus, that young man’s last view was of the trees and the sky. 

Beautiful view. 

It was ironic that I found it impossible to weave my car through the Saturday lunch time traffic of the busy thoroughfare to buy a takeaway meal, immediately following this harrowing tale of deprivation.  The urban jungle is alive and well.