so long and thanks for all the fish…
amber shadows creep white paneled walls as I lay this evening, far from my love in this cocoon of loneliness – a remnant from times past, when the difference hardly seems significant.
surroundings aren’t greyed buildings or narrowed streets, there is no bustle or squash of crowds. resides, this suburbia, consumed by the jaws of the valley and one may discover it without deviation from Canterbury; it is an awe-inspiring transit. well, it used to be, anyway. each sunday i pack my kit (always forgetting something in the process), dreading the arduous distance, adding to sleep deprivation, feelings of loneliness and loss.
I say this as an outsider, a city slicker whose status remains in limbo, for I do not work the daily grind like most, nor have the comfort of close proximity to home, where previous years dictated. literally cut-off from my family and seemingly living this double-life: i miss the simplicity of my wifes smile, amoungst other things. each pay-slip received reveals my true income after expenses and i look at it in astonishment, how i’ve reverted back fifteen years by pay-scale comparison. how can this be my life now, i ponder. all this training; the endless hours spent learning new technology. yet, in a moment of complete confusion, it unravels: this knowledge – i doubt and question what i truly know as opposed to what remains. have i been kidding myself? i have yet to understand, for i may not know as much as i think. my knowledge seems insignificant.
i think back to the last holiday: christmas – i took one week off, though with the meandering public holidays interspersed, that time increased two-fold. apart from our Tasmanian holiday earlier this year, I feel like I haven’t had enough of a break in between the terms and i’m truly feeling it.
now it feels different, i’m on the cusp. all images associated with this position seem to be fading like the desaturation of a photo. when i broke the news to the prin, i was confident of what to say; it was easy, it came from the heart. i told him the reason why i am leaving:
In perfect circumstances I could stay at this school for life, I love the staff and the kids kind of grow on you over time. But it has never been a perfect situation, it has been extremely difficult and i guess in many ways nothing lasts forever (Josa Amnesia’s song ‘eternal – sunrise mix’ encompasses this finality quite perfectly). I have always been a strong believer in honesty and the truth, even though sometimes i slip up.
When I gave the letter to the prin, who’d come to see me about the pressures of last week, I reiterated that it was important he knew why I was leaving. It was not because of the pressure or anything like that, I told him it was because when I am up here, I am not there with my wife and have no communication and the distance while being vast, was doubled when I couldn’t simply speak to her face-to-face. He seemed to understand this and noted that he was surprised I’d lasted as long as I had.
When I told my ICT Manager, she was visibly upset and I declared that I’d most likely be the same. I related the very point that without this opportunity, I’d still be building robotic machinery, or collinear aerials, or driving forks for heavy industry or mixing chemicals or any number of other directionless dead-ends I’d found myself in previously. That this position, granted me the freedom to expand my knowledge, build experience and feel good about something I knew I was always able to do, yet may not have had the confidence to undertake. I have found my place in this world and have the school to thank for that. This school has become the model that I will follow and other schools will know henceforth that what I implement will have come from Alexandra.
“Where’s that?” one teacher at the new school said.
You know the Blue Mountains?
“Jesus, all the way up there?”
No, nowhere near it actually. It’s one hundred and eighty kilometres from Melbourne.
“You drive that every week?”
Yes.
“Geez. Why don’t you work at a school closer to home?”
Many reasons.
It feels very strange now, this loss. It hurts. I feel the same way Banjo Paterson felt when his romantic vision of life in his earlier years faded with age, oh how he longed for it:
And, of course, there’s no denying that the bushman’s life is rough,
But a man can easy stand it if he’s built of sterling stuff;
Though it’s seldom that the drover gets a bed of eiderdown,
Yet the man who’s born a bushman, he gets mighty sick of town,
For he’s jotting down the figures, and he’s adding up the bills
While his heart is simply aching for a sight of Southern hills.
~
Then his face was somewhat browner, and his frame was firmer set –
And he feels his flabby muscles with a feeling of regret.
But the wool-team slowly passes, and his eyes go slowly back
To the dusty little table and the papers in the rack,
And his thoughts go to the terrace where his sickly children squall,
And he thinks there’s something healthy in the bush-life after all.
My friend will move back to Broadford and I back to Mount Waverley, permanently. But for a window in time, we were both here in Alexandra trying to make the school a better place in terms of technology and temperament. It’s not a great feat by any measure compared to the work done by teachers and townsfolk alike in their pursuit to raise families semi-isolated, but the town bandies together as one vast community. I haven’t been here as a son of the town, and I’ve felt as awkward as pair of cords, but I’ll be tributing it whenever I can.
What does the future hold for me now? I will be continuing in the role of ICT Technician at South Oakleigh Secondary College, but by the end of the year moving into an ICT Manager role, training Technicians. After this I may continue building into the TSSP/Specialist Technician field or get my Diploma of Education and teach IT, it all seems possible now.
The learning never ends, you must keep up to date or get left behind, but never give up, because if you do it just becomes a job. That’s the difference here. When you work in a factory, you want no reminder of your surroundings because the reality is: it’s depressing. You have no recollection of time, you never see the environment, only notice more white hairs over time – have I been here that long? How do I escape? Is it too late? Working from early morning to night, you never see the sun, just gray buildings, pollution and equally down staff who seem to find their soul in nitpicking tiny things because there is nothing else to look forward to.
I feel the music flowing now when I think of this fact and how far I’ve come and know that nothing is impossible.
