Had dinner with four ex-pupils, last Tuesday.
It was 42 years ago that I said my last "Good afternoon, boys and girls." to them.
Ex-pupil Ian, who caused this to happen, mentioned this song, as the one he most remembered singing, in class, to the accompaniment of my (red) piano-accordion.
While I was still a student at Maroubra Bay High School, I believe and living in the old house, in Flint Street, Matraville, seeing the t.v., cartoon character, Bam Bam play his stone-age drum, while Pebbles accompanied their singing on her stone-age guitar, on our black and white t.v., for some reason had an impact on me.
My so-called _half-sister_ ( along with her parents and my parents we migrated to Australia together and shared this house - so, for quite some time it was like _being_ brother and sister) and I might be called _latch-key kids_.
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All four parents worked in factories. Left early in the morning. Came home in the early evening.
And so we watched t.v..
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Luckily she had chicken-pox, soon after we moved into the house and the adults decided we needed a t.v..
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I started teaching in Riverstone, outer suburb of Sydney, in 1964 and, from the beginning, bravely defied instructions and taught singing to my classes using the accordion, rather than the ABC radio broadcasts, over which we had no control and which came into the rooms via rather tinny-sounding P.A. Systems. (Think of the principal speaking, in The Simpsons.)
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Morning-town ride. This Land is Your Land. Waltzing Matilda. Botany Bay, etc., were the first songs I used.
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Apparently Let the Sun Shine in I must have used a lot, in 1967 in Bourke. I *was* a very sunny place (except that quite often the red dust blocked out a lot of it.)
