For lack of a school anywhere near the farm at Meckering, Ian had to learn to read and write at home. In the two years after the family moved to Jennerberring, however, he attended a one-room school located in Mooranning, about six miles from the new farm--an easy ride on horseback. (There is a marker on the school site, at the dam 16 miles northeast of Quairading and 6 miles north of the site of the McRae house at Jennerberring.)
Ian did well at school. In later life his two years of schooling were mong his happiest recollections, and he remembered the teacher, Miss Janet Wilson, with particular affection.
In his two years of schooling, Ian formed the habit of asking himself questions and puzzling out the answers. For instance: Why do corrugations form on gravel roads? What is the advantage of putting big wheels rather than small ones on horse-drawn carts? Why does water flow uphill in a siphon? (Ian's answer to the corrugations question: Upon encountering a bump in the gravel road, a power wheel rises off the surface, loses traction and turns faster. When it falls back to the surface it throws up gravel to increase the height of the bump.)
Ian excelled in arithmetic. By the time he left school he could do practical farm calculations--for example, the total cost of seed oats at so much per bag to plant forty acres at so much per acre--quickly and without pencil and paper and without making any mistakes. In later life he sometimes startled and probably annoyed store clerks by tallying a long order to finish first despite reading the docket upside-down.
For excellence in his studies Ian received bound collections of the English "Boys’ Own Paper Annual" and of the American "Saint Nicholas Annual," both inscribed, in Miss Wilson's copperplate hand, Best Pupil, Mooranning Rural School. He was best pupil out of only a small number, perhaps eight or ten.
But as he later came to understand, the most important lesson of his schooldays—the foundation for an attitude that stayed with him the rest of his life—was one he learned one day when the teacher happened to be out of the schoolroom. Despite her admonition that the children were to continue quietly with their lessons, some of them, Ian among them, started talking and laughing—until they were startled to hear the teacher speaking through the window at the back of the room: "Hmm, so this is how you carry on when you think I’m not watching!" Ian realized then that he did not wish to require watching.
Ian left school at fourteen to take on the job of tending a team of working horses on the farm. Since working horses usually lay down to sleep, they had to be provided every evening with a clean stable and fresh straw for bedding.
Unlike his father, Ian never developed an interest in literature or in large philosophical issues. While in later life he regularly read newspapers and the weekly Western Mail (later called The Countryman) he hardly ever opened a book. His political views were the same as Alexander’s and most farm people: he loathed socialism and every other form of government intrusion into business and private life. His notion of a good life was to work or roam free, outdoors with horse and dog, much as he had done in his youth.
Ian’s sense of humor was of the sort that finds expression in mimicry and practical jokes. One of his exercises in buffoonery is remembered as succeeding in deflating an over-sized ego, and in having a spectacular unintended result as well. The setting was an evening party at the McDonald farm at Yoting, east of Quairading. The victim was a would-besuitor of the McDonalds’ daughter Alice, later the wife of Ian’s brother Dave. Unimpressed by the young man’s potential as a son-in-law, the host assigned him to the bridge table rather than to the woolshed dance with Alice and the other young people. Furious, the thwarted suitor stormed from the house in the darkness to where he had left his buggy with the horse dozing between the shafts. He untied the horse’s halter, leapt onto his vehicle and brought the whip down with a crack on the sleeping horse’s back. At that point, Ian’s preparations had their intended effect. Ian had quietly uncoupled the horse from the buggy, so that the startled animal galloped off, leaving its owner stranded in an embarrassing situation. The unintended effect was discovered the next morning. The bolting horse had fallen off one of the low cliffs, or breakaways, that are common in the area, breaking its neck.
Ian never admitted responsibility for the prank, but just before he died in 1979 Alice’s brother Jack McDonald insisted that the idea was Ian’s and that he and his brother William McDonald helped him carry it out. (Sources: Dave and Alice’s son John McRae and daughter Mary Strickland.)
Continue reading: 1.4.2 Ian in Tambellup (1924-1927)
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1. Ian McRae (1904-1975) Background and Youth (-1929)
1.4 Quairading to Tambellup
This Topic1.4.1 Ian: Youth in Jennerberring (1910-1922)
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