Australia Day For Beginners Part 2

At the Kindergarten time passed by. The kids grew up a little and now the kindergarten was a primary school. Other kids had come to the primary school from lots of other sandpits so now there were kids from everywhere and yet the original sandpit kids were still largely isolated. They sat down the back of the class at a pod of desks by themselves. Lots of things happened around the school but they were rarely invited or involved. The sandpit was being dug up and the sand sold for pocket money. Nobody asked the original kids if this was ok.

All the old supervisors were gone or forgotten. This was because the kids found out that a lot of what those supervisors said, either good or bad, never happened.

In some of the other primary schools in the suburb the original and travelling sandpit kids had become friends and mixed together. It did not always work but enough people thought that it was good so they kept trying. Some schools even made their original sandpit kids prefects and class captains.  In other schools it was the travelling kids who were made to stand outside till they learnt how to behave.

Time kept passing by. Some of the newer kids in the school had come from sandpits were they had been chased away by bad kids. They were strange at first but the kids begun to learn that there was not much that difference between them. Soon some of the kids realising that maybe they had done the same thing to the original sandpit kids thought they should do something about it.

First of all they decided the original sandpit kids could have some areas of the playground for themselves. Not the good bits where the bubblers were or were you could easily do your homework and not at once but only a bit at a time. Also they decided it might be a good idea if the original sandpit kids were actually asked about stuff to do with them. Because for a long time when the school was talking about what had happened to the sandpit, the original kids often put their hand up but they were never asked. So that started to happen but it was a funny thing that whenever the original sandpit kids were eventually asked a question and they answered nobody seemed to listen too much anyway. Instead the school just gave them lots of play dough.

A bit more time went by and the school kids thought some more and realized that the original sandpit kids were still grieving and so now they thought that just like the kid who keeps getting pushed in front of in the tuck shop, an apology and a hand shake might be in order. So the kids said sorry and this was good. For saying sorry if you have done the wrong thing is good.

But saying sorry doesn’t change anything and an apology should be a start not an end.

Time passed by again and nothing seemed to start but it is a big school and here and there some kids started to think some more. So they went to the school captain and said that it might be a good idea if we talked to the original sandpit kids and did the same thing that was happening in other sandpits.

Things like making some of them school captains and prefects too and not just talking to them on sports days when the kids needed someone to run fast. Maybe asking them about what food they might like in the tuckshop, what show and tell they would like and what games they might like to play in lunchtime. The original sandpit kids were delighted that after so much time, suddenly the other kids could see their raised hands. They felt this was a great project and they worked on it together and proudly presented it to the class.

A funny thing happened. Only the prefects and the class captains saw the presentation, the prefects took it and put it in a drawer in the headmaster’s desk and said they would maybe mark it next semester. 

Pretty soon the rest of the class forgot about it because there was a couple of fights after school down behind the toilet block between two of the prefects to see who would captain the footy team. The original sandpit kids, furious and ignored once again went back to the pod at the back of the classroom.

Meanwhile the school had been having a special gold coin day on the anniversary of the day when the travelling kids first came to the sandpit. Most kids paid the coin, dressed in green and gold and then spent the day watching or playing sport, eating and drinking red foods from the tuckshop and listening to 100 songs from different school bands.