Milton State School
In one way, the name of the school does not matter. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, primary school students across Queensland who had finished their work filled in the time before the next activity by reading something.
Since I probably didn't have a library book at school, the reading material was usually the Social Studies book. While I tolerated the content in the old Queensland Readers, I didn't find very much of it enjoyable.
The Social Studies book's mixture of geography and history—interesting locations and, in some cases, exciting events involving people who were (occasionally) interesting in their own right—was a much better option. By the end of the school year, I usually knew the contents of that year's Social Studies very well: not quite off by heart, but well enough to ace the questions at the end-of-year exam.
The history content fell into the minimalist version of the conventional wisdom, carefully purged of anything that might spark too much interest or excite passion. Interesting things tended to happen somewhere else, almost invariably a long way away.
However, when I turned my attention to the places my family left behind in August 1963, I found my school's environs were much more interesting than one might have expected.
