Better the Devil you Know Than the Devil you Don’t, Eh?

1930 – 1932

 

Kath Wundersitz (née Martin)

 

It is 1930 – a decision has to be made. I have passed our Qualifying Certificate and must decide whether to stay on at the Unley Super Primary (Unley Girls Central School) or venture further south to the Unley High School. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, eh?

I stayed where I was and had to learn shorthand, typing and some bookkeeping. The only drawback was that girls who took this business course had to learn dressmaking, millinery, art, and domestic science as well. Various girls complained about the unfairness of it all but didn’t do anything about it. No one went out on strike or vandalised the classrooms. Nary a building was torched to my knowledge.

When September began to get closer, we had to prepare exhibits to enter in the Wayville Show. The cookery teacher told me I had to enter a plate of shortbread biscuits, assorted varieties, so every week I had to spend extra time with ‘Ironsides Gallasch’ practising biscuit-making, this with the aid of a wood stove. At least I did get a certificate for ‘Very Highly Recommended.’ Not only but also, I had to knit a garment decorated with fancy cross-stitch and chose, because I hated knitting, a scarf. Being a novice I didn’t realise it should not be knitted in stocking stitch – the sides curled up and even steaming didn’t make it lie flat as any well-brought-up scarf should.

Besides my memory of cookery I remember that, in English, we studied The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice. I seem to recall Rudyard Kipling’s If and the name Silas Marner. Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard was another poem. One composition I remember was ‘Fire is a good servant but a bad master.’ I can still recite Dorothea Mackellar’s poem Colour which began with these verses:

 

The lovely things that I have watched unthinking,

Unknowing, day by day,

That their soft dyes had steeped my soul in colour

That will not pass away.

 

Great saffron sunset clouds, and larkspur mountains,

And fenceless miles of plain,

And hillsides golden green in that unearthly

Clear shining after rain

 

And nights of blue and pearl and long smooth beaches

Yellow as sunburnt wheat

Edged with a line of foam that creams and hisses

Enticing weary feet.

 

We were taught how to pronounce Cholmondley (Chumley), Berkley (Barclay) and Marjoribanks (Marshbanks). I never knew why we had to know this. We learned Gray’s Elegy in a country Church Yard as well as I love a sunburnt country.

Every morning all students saluted the flag and gave the pledge of allegiance. Once a week Miss Jeffries conducted hygiene lessons. The history we studied was mainly English.

I stayed, at what was known as the Super Primary for three years, until Grade 10 then, one day, Brenda Cook and I were sent for by the headmistress. Apparently Mr Claude Humble, Managing Director of Cash and Carry, 86 Rundle Street – next to ‘Johnnies’ or close by – wanted a junior to begin learning a cashier’s job with their Unley Road branch.

At that time there were approximately 22 branches all over the state of this very popular variety store. I was chosen and was taught to give change by sitting up in a box overlooking the various departments and when a sale was made, the money and docket were placed in a wooden canister, a handle pulled down and the whole contraption sailed up to me on a wire. Thereupon I quickly worked out the difference between the money tendered and the price on the docket, wrapped the change, pulled the handle and the container shot off down to the correct department. A few months elapsed and I was then promoted to the head office where I worked until 1939 and the outbreak of World War II.

© Erica Jolly and individual authors