For me, exposure to high school was a terrible period of ordeal. I floundered and was right out of my depth. I went from being a reasonably confident and self-assured child, into a scared and uncertain teenager.

I lived on a farm for the first eight years of my schooling and spent those at a small rural school named Coomberdale.

It was two teacher school with around 60 or 65 students. I completed my primary school years and my first in high school by correspondence at Coomberdale.

For year nine I was sent away from home. I was boarding with a family I did not know and every day had to go by school bus jampacked with children to Governor Stirling Senior High School, which had 1300 students. I was as miserable as sin and just could not cope. The school was so big and impersonal.

So it was, but my first year at high school brought to bear upon me everything was horrible and negative.

It did get better for me in a boarding school for the last three years of my secondary education. But my first experiences at high school were as described, and it was awful!