Through My Eyes: A Life Well-Lived

By Raymond Dart

The subject of this book concerns the author's reflection on his life of over eighty years. From a humble beginning, mainly in a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, the author weaves an interesting story of a life guided by principles gleaned from both of his parents and his faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
Growing from childhood to adulthood, the author outlines his experiences as he moves from school, to life as a teacher, to his tertiary education, to his married life and children and spends some time telling some snippets of his travels around the world. He credits his progress through life and its vicissitudes to his love for his Lord, and his faith in a living Saviour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Aug 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781504318945

Book preview

PREFACE

Raymond was the middle child of his family, which consisted of seven children. He was educated at Willoughby Public School in Sydney and then at North Sydney Boys’ High School, a selective high school in NSW from which he graduated in 1953. After training as a teacher at Balmain Teachers’ College in 1954-1955, Raymond commenced teaching at a small school called Perricoota located twenty-five kilometres west of Moama, NSW on the Murray River.

Later he pursued further education by correspondence as an external student of the University of New England in Armidale, NSW. He graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1963 and followed this up with a Diploma in Education in 1965. In 1983 he graduated with a Master of Educational Administration and completed his education after his retirement from full-time work with the obtaining of a Doctorate of Education in 2006 at the age of seventy years.

Commencing teaching as a primary teacher in a small one-teacher school in rural NSW, Raymond worked his way up the promotion ladder by inspection through four lists, and Raymond finished his career as Principal of a secondary school, Peel High, for fourteen and a half years, in the north-west of NSW, in a rural city called Tamworth.

Always community-minded, Raymond involved himself in local government, co-operative housing societies, state hospitals, long day care centres, and credit unions. He served as NSW President of the Australian College of Educators and also served a term on the National Council of that body. He had a thirty-eight year association with Rotary International serving as secretary, treasurer, president and district committee chairman over the years. He also served as president of the Tamworth Prostate Cancer Support Group for six years and as chairman of Janelle Street Long Day Care Centre for seven years.

His achievements were recognised with Life Membership of the Australian college of Educators, Life membership of the Secondary Principals Association of NSW, a Paul Harris Fellowship from Rotary and the award of the Peel Medal at his last school.

It is the author’s wish that any reader will be able to draw inspiration for their own life from what is written here and come to understand that nothing can be achieved without hard work and perseverance and that failures along the way are the means of learning.

As a Christian from an early age, Raymond has relied on God’s overwhelming love and guidance throughout his life and gives God the glory for what he has been able to achieve.

THE BEGINNINGS

CHAPTER ONE

The word PEACE in huge letters jumped out at me from the Sydney Sun newspaper. The year was 1945 and I was nine years old. The ‘war to end all wars’, so it was said, was over, yet conflict continues to the present time. Protagonists of ‘peace’ abound but conflict, fear, hatred, and schism are increasing in intensity. The final battle is yet to be fought.

I guess that the end of World War II impressed my youthful mind at that time because my life until then had been lived with war or the threat of war a daily concern to my family and friends. But I must return to my beginnings.

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A ‘bananalander’ by birth, my first hours were spent in hospital in New Sandgate Road, Clayfield, Brisbane, where I was delivered by Doctor John Leslie Dart, my father’s brother, with a Sister Thompson in attendance. My parents were Harold Whitmore Dart, aged 35 years, born in Blenheim in the Lockyer district of Queensland, and Elsie Janet Dart (nee England), aged 33 years, who had been born in Uddingston, County of Bothwell, Fallside, Scotland. At the time they were living in Findlay Street, Ashgrove, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland.

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In the year of my birth I was the fourth arrival into my family with Marguerite, Donald, and Daphne having been born already. By 1942 the number of children reached seven as Philip, Bruce and Sylvia came into the world, making me the middle child of the family. When I was one year old, my family moved from Brisbane, Queensland to Sydney, New South Wales, to live - first in 12 Balfour Street, Wollstonecraft for twelve months and then at 7 Hercules Street, Chatswood. I remember nothing of my time in Brisbane or Wollstonecraft, so 7 Hercules Street, came to be ‘my home’, for it was from this residence that I eventually left for employment and to carve my own niche in the world. I remember my mother as one who was selfless in her devotion to her children and husband, and yet, because of her background, one who had to learn the task of household management ‘on the job’. Mum found washing a chore and ironing a frustrating, difficult job carried out after tea on many occasions before she retired for the night. Mum was an excellent Bible student and was the one who taught us many Biblical truths during our nightly prayers at bedtime.

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My father, I had learned was a Baptist minister, and as such, he was never able to command a large salary. Money was difficult to come by, and did not stretch far with nine mouths to feed and bodies to clothe from 1942, when my youngest sister’s birth made the family complete.

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In spite of the demands of so many on an inadequate budget, I remember my early life as being a very happy one. The family was close-knit and the children were able to make their own fun. Before I commenced school (pre-schools were not readily available at that time), I was often commended by Mum or Dad on my ability to understand what the older children were saying, and to anticipate what my parents needed and react to them. I was often first to respond to their call for an item from some other part of the house or yard. I guess that I have always liked order and neatness and often spent hours ‘tidying up’ after others. My father, too, was a meticulously tidy person, and this trait, no doubt, I inherited from him.

I remember filling my days playing in the sandpit, chasing moths and butterflies, banging saucepans, and watching the birds playing in the bird-bath, playing forcing back, riding trikes and bikes, building and riding billy carts and cubby houses, and climbing trees. Birthdays were always exciting, and though we rarely had parties, there were always a birthday cake and presents. As I approached school age, I looked on the prospect of school as exciting. I was so anxious to start school that I persuaded Mum to let me go on the very day I turned five years old. This was permitted at this time, and as there was no waiting list, I commenced formal schooling on March 27, 1941.

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My father was raised on a farm in Blenheim, Queensland Called Medeba meaning Quiet Waters and indicated in his writings that my parents often spoke of their time at Medeba" as the most happy period of their married life, as here they enjoyed the growth and developing lives of their children when all the family were together – one girl and eight boys. (Dart, 1972, p. 3) Dad, however, decided to enter the Baptist ministry, training in the Victorian Baptist College. However he later went to Toronto, Canada to complete his Bachelor of Arts at Macmaster University in that city, and obtained his Doctorate in Divinity by correspondence while there. It was here he met and later married my mother, who was raised in Coonoor, South India by British parents, and became a pupil teacher in Bangalore before following her older sisters to Toronto to study for her own Bachelor of Arts degree.

To put my year of birth, 1937, in perspective, it is important to have knowledge of other events that occurred that year.

In January, King George V was laid to rest at Windsor and Rudyard Kipling, the Poet Laureate also died. In February, Hitler opened the Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Reginald Ansett founded Ansett Airlines in Victoria, and Jawaharlal Nehru was elected President of the Indian National Congress. In March, Benito Mussolini indicated he would nationalise key industries, and German troops under Hitler’s instruction re-occupied the Rhineland only one hundred and sixty kilometres from the French border.

In April, Farouk was crowned King of Egypt at 16 years of age, and Mussolini’s troops crushed resistance in Abyssinia, and looked to take over Addis Ababa. In May, Emperor Haile Selassie fled overseas as Mussolini annexed Abyssinia. In June, Heinrich Himmler was appointed head of the German Reich’s police force and in July in Spain, civil war erupted. In August, Monopoly was released as a new board game while in England, the BBC launched its first ever talking pictures on television, and in the Berlin Olympic Games Jesse Owens, a black American won four gold medals.

September brought forward an economic study that said the average family needed six pounds a week to be above the poverty line and in October the first train/ferry service was launched between Dover and Calais. Finally, in November, Lord Gowrie opened the Hume Weir in Albury, and in December King Edward V111 abdicated and Queen Elizabeth’s father became King George V1.

I, of course, knew nothing of these momentous events at that time.

SCHOOL DAYS

CHAPTER TWO

Infants and Primary

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My days of schooling began at Willoughby Public School (built in 1863) that still stands today much as it was then. These were the days of mixed Infants classes and segregated Primary classes, followed by single sex High School schooling. I remember being sent off to Infants School carrying a little dark-brown cardboard-felt playlunch box, being told where to sit and where to eat during Recess and Lunch. We had to sit down under teacher supervision for the first half-hour of the lunch hour so that lunch would be suitably digested prior to play. Mother would also ensure that I had a balanced ‘Oslo’ lunch and would wrap any sandwiches in greaseproof paper before putting them in a brown paper bag - plastic at that time being unheard of. Fruit was a ‘must’.

Infants School I recollect as being a time of much singing of songs and nursery rhymes, stories, dancing, block-building, and learning to write letters and small words. As few pre-schools were in existence, most children were being exposed to organized learning for the first time in their lives at five or six years of age. I was always quite shy, very obedient, and quite ‘put out’ when teachers scolded me, especially as I felt I was being unjustly treated. I did not complain, as I had always been taught by my parents to respect the teachers. By Second Class, we were all looking forward to going up to the ‘big school’.

The ‘big school’, meaning the Primary Section, was within the same property, but separated by a wood and chain-wire fence from the Girls’ Primary, which was in its turn, separated by a similar fence, from the Boys’ Primary. However, as we later discovered, many interesting events could occur along the boundary fence at Recess and Lunch. These mainly related to the interactions with the girls on the other side of the fence, and as we got older, the same group of girls would meet our group of boys at the same spot