hopetoun

I pick up the hire car in Franklin Street late on Sunday arvo and we, the Victorian MM state project officers, meet in Coburg and depart at six. Viv pilots us out of town on the Western Ring and the Western Highway. We bypass Ballarat, although hungry. The only open eatery at Ararat is the dreaded Golden Arches.

Viv has a muffin and coffee and Sasha some sort of mac with fries, and an orange juice. Rather than starve I reluctantly order a fillet-o-fish burger with fries and an orange juice. The juice is fine, the chips salty, and the burger utterly revolting. How this food has captured the world is a monument to collective insanity.

On the way to Ararat Viv and Sasha, riding shotgun, talk, while I loll in the back seat, my arse buffeted by the rear axle. From Ararat I ride shotgun to Sasha, but I’m silent while Viv in the back and Sasha have an extended conversation about positive psychology.

We arrive at our Horsham accommodation at ten, agreeing to meet at seven for breakfast and be on the road at half past. In the morning I drive a straight line from Horsham to Hopetoun through wheat, barley and oat stubbled prairie. Monstrous concrete cylinders sprout in railway sidings along the road at Brim, Beulah and Galaquil.

We arrive at Hopetoun Secondary College at five to nine.

The school is a P12 with 90 secondary students and 40 primary students housed in a 1950s LTF (light timber frame). It’s the first day of term but student-free for staff to attend the MM professional development we’re here to present. A crisis is on: a new maths teacher has pulled the pin with no notice. The principal is desperately seeking Susan.

We gather in a classroom. Viv does her stuff with eighteen staff. Sasha and I suck it all in and wonder how we’ll present this PD when our apprenticeships are over.

After the gig I drive from Hopetoun to Dunolly. Darkness falls and Sasha takes the wheel. We’re back in Coburg at ten, after 12 hours together in the car. We make no pact, but the pact is sealed. For now we are solid.

Tomorrow Sasha and I will be inducted by Cathy from Adelaide, and on Wednesday the three of us will make a strategic plan when Jill, our national manager, comes down from Sydney. We will do these things in the new office in Collingwood.

Hopetoun is in the last pocket of Victoria I have not been to before, leaving only Jeparit and Rainbow, further west toward the South Australian border, for me to venture to one day.

Rock on.