Kylie & Jack 1: Humble Beginnings

1. Lead Up to Chrissy

Dec. 18th, 4:47 PM

Outside, the sun was still high in the sky, its white hot rays scorching everything in sight. The grass was yellow and stuck up like a thicket of straws; the sky was a crystal clear shade of pale blue and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Janelle's thermometer on the back veranda wall told her it was 37 degrees Celsius. No wonder she was feeling especially sticky. Her garden was a patchwork of green and gold grass, trees and plants – mostly gold. A rotating sprinkler doused the hard ground with water around the Hills Hoist clothes line, her husband, John's fire gear was pegged on the line, copping a fine spray from the jerking sprinkler every few minutes.

Strung throughout the trees, bushes and around the veranda, were thousands of multicoloured solar lights – a tribute to her youngest daughter's love of Christmas, to stop her joking that Janelle had turned into a grinch. Although Janelle secretly loved the lights. She felt a rush of joy coursing through her when people would walk by on their late evening walks and comment on the light show. Tonight would be the highlight for comments though, as the local primary school held its Presentation Night in the town hall next door. Already, a dozen cars and utes were pulled up haphazardly on both sides of the road and the front and side doors of the hall were wide open. Janelle had to smile, as the sound of John Williamson floated through the open hall doors.

The town hall was an old brick building, with dusty wooden floorboards, built in the late 1950s; it had a massive stage up front, with a small kitchenette and backstage area flanking either side of the stage. A ticket booth, that was no longer used, was wedged in beside the men's bathroom on the left hand side and a women's bathroom on the right of the large double, white painted wooden front doors. Out the front of the hall was a tribute to the town's military history: four black metal silhouettes, positioned around a small garden bed, with a large plaque on a rock in the middle, a flagpole right behind it. It was referred to as the 'corroboree' somewhat mockingly by locals because the silhouettes were actually designed to be placed up against a wall, not to be freestanding, which made it look like an actual corroboree (a ritual gathering in Aboriginal culture). "Well, I suppose it gives it some character," some would say, shrugging their shoulders. The woman who had installed it was known for her eccentricity, rather than her sense.

Today, the Australian flag lagged in the non–existent breeze at full mast. Janelle's youngest daughter, Kylie, had come down from the school to raise the flag prior to catching her flight to Sydney earlier in the week. She had been teaching for almost ten years now, but this was her second year teaching at her local school. Janelle had to be careful, she reminded herself with a wry smile, whenever she went to the school for the P&C meeting, or any other reason, to call her daughter 'Miss Foley' and not Kylie, especially in front of the students. Kylie, however, would frequently joke that it didn't matter what she got called here, because being a local herself, had known all her students since they were babies, having worked with the travelling day care service before becoming a teacher and the kids had originally known her only as 'Kylie'.

"As long as the kids call me Miss Foley at school, I don't really care what anyone calls me." She would often say. For most of the second semester however, she had to refrain from saying that, as she was forced to step up as relieving principal, when Mrs Lynne Turner took extended sick leave, leaving Kylie with only one other teacher, Mr Jack Brookes and sixteen students. It was a massive opportunity for her, especially having been teaching for such a short period of time and Kylie revelled in it, the accreditation process from Accomplished to Lead alone was fascinating. She was, however, beginning to find it a bit much, that on top of reports, class time and her executive duties, she also had the Presentation Night to organise.

For the last week, Kylie had been in Sydney for a principals conference and had left Mr Brookes with a string of the only casual teachers who had agreed to travel outside of the nearby big town, Wangarra. Mr Brookes had graduated two years after Kylie and had only ever worked in the larger Catholic schools, so getting the classroom teacher post in a rural public school with only sixteen students was a massive learning curve for him, especially when he had a combined Kindergarten, Years 1 and 2 class, leaving Kylie with Years 4 and 6 – they had no students in Years 3 and 5. Kylie, on the other hand, had far more experience with small schools and combined classes and had to essentially teach him the ropes, as if he were a prac student. All she could say was that Jack was a very fast learner.