The tea monitors are the ones I’d like to be — then you can get away from geography before lunch and afternoon assembly when we had to stand there in the sun and a girl even fainted. I got all sunburned and Nan had to rub in Calamine — it was all we’d got, even if it’s really for hives. And the tea monitors can fill the urn and put out the cups and go down to Keogh’s for the biscuits and not pay and put their fingers in the hot water when it’s cold and talk to Miss Roebuck who is very pretty and has ankle-straps and dirndl skirts. I wouldn’t mind being an ink monitor though, but you dirty your hands, but you can boss and there’s the ink bottle with the spout like a cocky’s beak and you give out nibs as well. Collect the inkwells like top hats on Friday and wash them out and the troughs all go blue and they clink. You get your hands dirty, but I like the smell — as good as Velvet soap or Lion coffee essence. The blackboard one has a felt duster and gets rid of the awful arithmetic and puts up the date with flowers at the side 3.8.51 today — nearly my birthday (next month). And flower monitors (and I was one with Miss White — she was lovely — I wrote her a letter and was her pet but she’s fatter now) get all the best flowers from the bin — come in with wet leaves on their arms — they get carnations and snapdragons and sweet peas Patty Briggs always brings. Maybe better than even doing the tea. And book monitors get the homework and library ones do the books and Lorna Jones says they’re always put back too tight (she is bossy) and window monitor keeps out the sun and fire monitor does the kindling and Mallee roots and Leigh Creek coal and can sit in front and go out with the tongs. She keeps warm in winter. It’s cold right up the back.

Miss Monk taught with a little stick in a cream and grey and treacle-coloured room with carved desks and Landseer prints and wilting pickle-jar posies. The room was scented with chalk dust and pencil shavings and mucus.