Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows 105-year-old Olive Riley returning to her school in Broken Hill in western New South Wales, to talk to the students. Olive recalls details of her schooldays during the early 1900s, as contemporary footage and black-and-white archival stills are shown. Olive meets the current students and regales them with anecdotes about her student days. They are particularly intrigued by her description of being caned. Through a re-enactment, Olive tells a colourful story about how she dealt with a girl who taunted her about her red hair and the consequences of the incident.

Educational value points

• The filmmaker, Mike Rubbo, met Olive Riley while researching a subject that fascinates him, 'the centenarian phenomenon’, which relates to people over 100 years of age who are mentally robust and still living their lives to the full. The clip shows Olive to be lively, sharp-witted and spirited as she fully engages her young audience and challenges the stereotype of elderly people as frail, absent minded and uninteresting. Rubbo’s research suggests that centenarians are the fastest growing age group in the world.

• Historically, corporal punishment in Australian schools was permitted as 'lawful correction’ and the clip presents firsthand a student’s experience of receiving corporal punishment in the early 1900s. Currently in Australia, corporal punishment is still practised in some jurisdictions. Although most Australian states and territories have legislation, regulations or policies in place to ban the practice, these are not binding on non-government schools.

• Interesting questions about the nature of bullying and appropriate ways to deal with it are raised. Olive’s story of being bullied highlights the potentially serious consequences of her actions in knocking the bully out cold. She is threatened with the possibility of being sent to a reformatory, which would have meant being separated from her family.

• The clip uses dramatic re-enactment to effectively depict an incident from the past and in one instance the re-enactment is filmed from Olive’s contemporary point of view, creating an interesting juxtaposition of a centenarian in the present watching herself in the past.

• All About Olive is an example of a style of documentary in which the filmmaker is highly interventionist. Rubbo’s strong off-screen presence, as he verbally interacts with Olive, and his use of re-enactments are quite unlike a traditional 'cinéma vérité,’ fly-on-the-wall approach, in which the filmmaker aspires to be an unobtrusive observer. Olive herself intervenes during the filming of a re-enactment, taking a director’s role and indeed, for her efforts in this documentary, she has been nominated for a Guinness World Record as the oldest co-director in the world.

• Australian filmmaker and painter Mike Rubbo worked as a documentary film director for the National Film Board of Canada between 1970 and 1990 where he made Song of Yellow Skin, Waiting for Fidel, Daisy, and Solzhenitsyn’s Children.

This clip starts approximately 23 minutes into the documentary.

Olive Riley is being pushed in a wheelchair into her school.
Olive Now the other side of that, that was the entrance. That round there. That was me school. That was it.

We see pictures of the school as gentle piano music begins to play.
Man Really?
Olive Yeah, that was it, yeah.

Olive greets the current students.
Children in chorus Hi Olive!
Olive Morning, children! I used to come to this school. When I was a little girl. When I was about 4 years old, I used to come here.
Man And you stayed there how long?
Olive And I stayed there till I was 14. At the school, but not the same class!
Children giggle
Olive Yes, I started here when I was about 4, going on 5. That’s where I learnt me ABC and how to turn, how to tell the time and all that sort of thing.
Student How did they get punished?
Olive Punished? We didn’t get punished unless we were very naughty. Then we got the cane.
Student 2 Did it hurt?
Olive My word, it hurt! Holdin’ out your hand like that and getting’ three whacks? I should say it hurt, yeah. Yeah. That often happened to me. Because, you see, my name was Dangerfield. An er, there was a couple of kids there, one in particular, and they used to sing out –

Re-enactment showing two girls walking down a dirt road with Olive’s voice-over in the background.
Olive 'Here comes Dangerfield. Danger on the field!’ And my hair was red.

Re-enactment continues filming. Olive watches from the car
Student actress Red means danger! Red means danger! Danger in the field!
Young Olive actress Just go away! Please!
Student actress Red means danger! Danger in the field!
Young Olive actress I will show you danger.
Olive She didn’t sprawl though.
Man Oh, no, we do that later.
Olive You’ll have to have something for her to sprawl onto.
Man No, we won’t really make her fall over.
Olive Oh.
Student actress Red means danger – red – oh!
Olive That was better. More active. More action.
Student actress Danger. Red means danger.
Young Olive actress I’ll show you danger!

Olive’s commentary continues from her hospital bed.
Olive Bang! I give her a beautiful punch right in the jaw and she staggered back and she – she fell and she hit her head on the train line.
Man Ohh.
Olive Oh, Jesus. She fell and she never rose up. I knocked her out! So the kids flew this way, the kids flew that way, and I’m just standing looking at – I thought a corpse. And I’m saying, 'Well, you looked for it, you got it. So serve you right. Now I’m going home.’ And I turned around and I went home. They went and got the bloody police. The police went down to Mum. Course Mum was never in my sight. Never. So he went down to Mum’s place. He said, 'And if it happens again, I’m afraid she’ll have to go into Reform’.