Memories of Barraba Creek School

BARRABA CREEK SCHOOL

The school, classified as a “Subsidised School”, was located at “Fairview” along the Longarm road and operated from sometime in the early 1930s to the late 1940s.  Barraba Creek was the original name of the McNeill property.

In the 1930s the school was set up in the wool room of the woolshed, where the bales were stored at shearing time.  Nell Best (nee McNeill) in her later writings described one wall as being a tarpaulin covered with pictures cut from the Sydney Mail.  At that time there were three families attending; the Irwin children who walked three miles from their farm, the McNeills (Nell, Maurie and Johnny) who walked one mile and the Faulkners (Edna, Norman, Pat and Gordon) who rode four miles on Paddy, a big, broad backed, quiet old horse who was quite capable of transporting the family every day.

Background: Barraba Creek School.
Back: Noelene Driscoll, Nell McNeill (teacher), Wendy Bucknell
Front: Joe Faulkner, Ted Irwin, Geoff Irwin, Bob Driscoll, Noel Faulkner

Nell recounted the time that her brother, Maurie, attempted to hitch a ride with the Faulkners, all going well until another child jumped out from behind a tree, startling Paddy, with predictable results.  All five riders were thrown, leaving Maurie with a broken arm.

The teacher at this time was Joyce Johnson, who later married Alf Teong.

As they became older, the McNeill children left their small school to travel by horseback to Barraba Public School, “seven miles through seven gates”, as Nell continually reminded people.  Nell’s attainment of the Intermediate Certificate in 1938 provided her with the qualifications to take over from Joyce as the teacher at Barraba Creek in September 1940 at the age of sixteen.

Somewhere around this date the school moved from the woolshed to a small, single room building closer to the McNeill homestead.  Roger McNeill had organised the transportation of the building on a dray from Barraba. 

Memories of McNeill’s School (Barraba Creek).

Ted Irwin

The school was held in a special school building approx. 12 ft x 18 ft.   It was located about ¼ mile off the road at McNeill’s run.  There were 14 or 15 students.  Two used to ride horses, six used to ride bikes and the rest used to walk.  Ted rode a bike.  The only teacher was a lady, and she held all classes.   Her name was Nellie McNeill and she was firm but not strict.  She maybe raised her voice a few times but never saw her use the cane.  My best memory of those years was when I was about 7 years old.  A magpie dived at me while I was riding my bike to school.  He took the button off the top of my cap, and I headed for home. I soon got off the bike and took cover behind a tree.   At this point I was 2½ miles from home and about ½ mile from the magpie.  I was usually with about 5 others but this time I was on my own.
The school closed when Ted was about 8 or 9 and then he did correspondence at home.

Memories of Barraba Creek School.

Nancy Baldwin

I grew up on the property “Long Arm”.  My early memories were of playing with my doll, riding stick horses and making mud pies in our cubby house.  I started school when I was 6 years old.  My sisters and I had to walk three miles, to the McNeill’s property “Fairview”.  Our school was called Barraba Creek and our teacher was Miss Nell McNeill.  Our classroom was one room with an open fireplace.  In the winter time we had a fire.  We had long desks and long stools with a cupboard in the corner for the books.  Nell had all classes from 1st class to 6th class.  Besides my three sisters and myself, there was our cousin, Ted Irwin, Gordon Harper, Noelene and Bob Driscoll, Noel and Joe Faulkner and Wendy and Bill Bucknell.  We played rounders at lunchtimes and played on Mr McNeill’s big wagon.  In the winter, going to school with the fog around and the frost, we would pretend it was fairy land with all the cobwebs like lace on the fences and tree branches.  At Christmas time we would go down to the creek for a picnic.  Mr McNeill grew melons and pumpkins in a paddock, and he would give us a watermelon for our picnic.  Our mother and her older sister, Aunt Edie, Mrs Bucknell, Mrs Driscoll, Mrs Carter and Miss Amy McNeill would come to the picnic as well.