“How do you see yourself in 10 years of time?”
That’s one of the questions the interviewers asked me some 4 years ago when I attended an interview session for AusAid scholarship; a typical question frequently raised to dig out a candidate’s vision and future plan.
The same question was offered to the students of Coomberdale Primary School, somewhere around 250 kms to the North of Perth, in 1989.
Coomberdale, a very small village in the wheat belt-rural area that is surrounded by large wheat fields and cattle paddocks, owned its first primary school in 1909 and received the honor of the Minister of Education of the era who then placed the foundation stone. In this primary school 40 years ago, 1969 – 1970 was Kees Vermey, UMY’s dearest friend designated to be its only teacher and school principal with 30 students to take care of. And in his early days of assignment, Kees managed to collect all the memorable properties of the school community – pictures, photos, bus map, students’ handwriting, school’s sport costume and many others-in a lead capsule (now PVC tube is preferable) and buried the ‘time capsule’ in the school yard.
Attended by the ex-students, parents and teachers, the capsule was excavated 20 years later and all those lovely things of the past time were displayed for the community in a reunion function before they are gathered again, some of the new notes were added, and the same capsule was buried again for the following 20 years.
Yesterday, 25 October 2009, me and Bulan joined Kees’ and Wendy who were invited by his old fellow students and friends to celebrate the second ‘excavation day’. The school was gone – closed at the end of 1980. A small café named ‘The Magpie’ stands right on the spot where the house in which Kees, his wife and kids lived 40 years ago. The big tree that gave a shade to the front yard of the school was cut down. The only shed remains until today is the garage.
I was not sure what Kees felt to see all those stuff, but the night before he has attempted to write down the names of the students he could remember. It must be pretty hard, yet he could manage to write 20 out of 30. A middle aged lady approached us when we had our lunch and she, affectionately recalling her parents, said “Kees, is it you? My parents kept talking about you...”
It was a really wonderful day. The only thing that we really hate was the flies!! Yeah, millions and millions of yaakss-so-annoying-summertime-flies swarmed over our faces. The attack a bit subsided if we stayed under the shade. What happened was that everybody kept on swishing hands to get the flies away. Wendy said “It is Australian salute!”
