1.4.1 Ian: Youth in Jennerberring
(1910-1922)
Ian learned to read and write at home, and subsequently attended school for two years
starting at age eleven. By this time the family had moved from Meckering to the new farm
at Jennerberring. From there Ian rode six miles each way to school on horseback.
For excellence in his studies he received bound collections of the English
"Boys’ Own Paper Annual" and of the American "Saint Nicholas
Annual", both inscribed in the teacher’s30 copperplate
hand: Best Pupil, Mooranning Rural School.31 He was best
pupil out of only a small number, perhaps eight or ten.
Ian learned the most important lesson of his schooldays—the foundation for another
attitude that stayed with him the rest of his life—one day when the teacher happened
to be out of the schoolroom. Despite her admonition that the children were to
continue quietly with their lessons, some of them, Ian among them, started talking and
laughing—until they were startled to hear the teacher speaking through the window at
the back of the room: "Hmm, so this is how you carry on when you think I’m not
watching!" Ian realized then that he did not wish to require watching.
Ian left school at fourteen to take on the job of tending a team of working horses on
the farm. Since working horses usually lay down to sleep, they had to be provided
every evening with a clean stable and fresh straw for bedding.
In his two years of schooling, Ian learned as much as many children do in six or more.
He understood such things as the orbits of the moon and planets, the origin of the
seasons and tides and prevailing winds, and the use of the apostrophe to denote
possession. He formed a habit of asking himself questions and puzzling out the
answers. For instance: Why do corrugations form on gravel roads?32 What is the
advantage of putting big wheels rather than small ones on horse-drawn carts? Why
does water flow uphill in a siphon?
Arithmetic was Ian’s forte. By the time he left school he could do practical
farm calculations (for example, the total cost of seed oats at so much per bag to plant
forty acres at so many pounds an acre) without pencil and paper. In later life he
sometimes startled store clerks by tallying a long order to finish first despite reading
the docket upside-down. In pub dart games such as 101-up, having unhesitatingly
tossed the darts to the exact number, he liked to stand aside, smirking, while onlookers
struggled to catch up to the score.
Unlike his father, Ian never developed an interest in literature or in large
philosophical issues. While in later life he regularly read newspapers and the
weekly Western Mail,33
he hardly ever opened a book. His political views were the same as
Alexander’s and most country people: he loathed socialism and every other form of
government intrusion into business and private life. His notion of a good life was
to work or roam free, outdoors with horse and dog.
Ian’s sense
of humor was of the sort that finds expression in mimicry and practical jokes. One of his
exercises in buffoonery is remembered as succeeding in deflating an oversized ego, and in
having a spectacular unintended result as well. The setting was an evening party at
the McDonald farm at Yoting, east of Quairading. The victim was a would-be suitor of
the McDonalds’ daughter Alice, later the wife of Ian’s brother Dave.34 Unimpressed
by the young man’s potential as a son-in-law, the host assigned him to the bridge
table rather than to the woolshed dance with Alice and the other young people.
Furious, the thwarted suitor stormed from the house in the darkness to where he had
left his buggy with the horse dozing between the shafts. He untied the horse’s
halter, leapt onto his vehicle and brought the whip down with a crack on the sleeping
horse’s back. At that point, Ian’s preparations had their intended effect.
Ian had quietly uncoupled the horse from the buggy, so that the startled animal
galloped off, leaving its owner stranded in an embarrassing situation. The
unintended effect was discovered the next morning. The bolting horse fell off one of
the low cliffs, or breakaways, that are common in the area, and broke its neck.
Continue reading: 1.4.2 Ian in
Tambellup (1924-1927)
Previous Topics
1. Ian McRae (1904-1975)
Background and Youth (-1929)
1.4 Quairading to Tambellup
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1.4.1 Ian: Youth in Jennerberring
(1910-1922)
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1.4.2 Ian in Tambellup (1924-1927)
Footnotes:
(click footnote number to go between footnote and text)
30. The teacher
was [probably] Miss Janet Wilson.
31. There is a
marker on the school site, at the dam 16 miles northeast of Quairading and 6 miles north
of the site of the McRae house at Jennerberring.
32. Upon
encountering a bump in the road, a power wheel rises off the surface, loses traction and
turns faster. When it falls back to the surface, it throws up gravel to increase the
height of the bump.
33. Later
renamed The Countryman.
34. Ian never
admitted responsibility, but just before he died in 1979 Alice’s brother Jack
McDonald insisted that the idea was Ian’s and he and his brother William McDonald
helped him carry it out. Sources: Dave and Alice’s son John McRae and daughter
Mary Strickland.