It is very gratifying when schools come year after year to experience the primary school version of Louisa’s Walk. Sheffield District High School have visited us before when they brought their Grade 6’s down on their end of term school camp and this year they repeated the experience with this year’s Grade 6’s. What lovely students! Their bus driver “Darling John” gave me the tip just before we started that they were a lovely bunch of kids and he was not wrong. The weather was a bit ordinary but at least it didn’t rain and, once Darling John had opened up the luggage boot and those few optimistic students, clad only in school polo shirts, had grabbed something a bit warmer, we were off.
Students enthusiastically pulled on ropes and set sail. They blew the good ship The Rajah along and they worked industriously at their patchwork as we made the voyage to Van Diemens Land (they are told to bring along their imaginations!). The anchor party really put their backs into it and we arrived in Hobart Town. You could hear a pin drop when Louisa’s quilt was taken from her in Yard One of the Cascades Female Factory – it’s the moment when everyone realises that life in the prison was not a barrel of laughs.
Question time after the performance finishes in the Nursery Yard is always a telling time. Have they absorbed the story, do they have a handle on how harsh the conditions were for those brave women of long ago? Well if the questions that the students from Sheffield District High were anything to go by – yes they had: “When we were at Port Arthur we were told that if a male convict looked at a woman, he was punished. Was it the same with the female convicts here?” Hmm …… not only had they absorbed the Port Arthur story but they were transcribing it to the female situation.
See “question time” below.
Thank you for coming Sheffield, we look forward to meeting next year’s Grade Six’s.
Question Time for Sheffield District High School
