Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This silent clip shows the Boys’ and Girls’ Travelling Library visiting Arcadia and Berrilee public schools, about 40 km from Sydney, New South Wales. Children at Arcadia School and, later in the clip, Berrilee School enter the library van to select a book and then line up to have their chosen book marked off by volunteers. A girl at Arcadia School points out a rainfall chart on the school building that indicates a lack of rainfall and then checks the rain gauge, before the clip cuts to a group of boys pumping water from an underground tank. The clip includes intertitles.

Educational value points

• Unlike Australian public schools today, which all have a library, a lack of education funding in the 1940s meant that schools of the time, particularly in rural areas, had only a small and limited selection of books, with access to a wider selection available through a mobile library. In many rural communities where there were no local public libraries, such as Arcadia and Berrilee, the eagerly awaited library van provided the only access to books for most children.

• Launched in 1942, the Travelling Library was an initiative of the Children’s Library and Craft Movement, later the Children’s Creative Leisure Movement, set up in 1934 by Mary and Elsie Rivett, who felt it was important for children’s development that they be engaged imaginatively, and reading was a way of doing this. The sisters were inspired by the David Copperfield Library for Children in London, which made books freely available to children from poor backgrounds.

• The need for services such as the Travelling Library indicates the lack of public libraries in Australia at the time. Public libraries did not become widespread until the 1960s and prior to that most lending libraries were subscription based, charging borrowers an annual fee. In a belated response to the Munn–Pitt report (1934), which was highly critical of the lack of free library services in Australia, particularly for children, the states progressively introduced public libraries.

• In the period many rural schools, such as the school at Arcadia, depended on rainwater and hence it was important to keep a record of rainfall. Rainwater was stored in tanks, and the boys shown in this clip may be pumping water from an underground tank using a lift pump. Movement of a piston in a cylinder with a one-way valve creates a partial vacuum in the cylinder, which the water rises to fill.

• In the 1940s, as this clip reveals, rural schools were typically weatherboard buildings and often consisted of a single classroom. Many of these buildings, such as the wooden school at Arcadia built in 1897, were constructed in the decades following the introduction of the Public Instruction Act 1880, which saw the NSW Government take on a greater role in delivering and funding public education. Most of the schools built in the 1890s were still in use in the 1940s.

This clip shows children from a school in Arcadia, about 40km north-west of Sydney gathering around the back of the red and white boys’ and girls’ travelling library truck, with the name ‘Boys’ & Girls’ Travelling Library’ painted on the side.

Some of the children climb into the open back of the truck, coming out with books in their hands. The teachers mark off from a list which books the children have chosen. A young girl reads her chosen book.

A hand-painted intertitle appears on screen: ‘If it hasn’t rained lately …’

A girl points to a sign on the front of the main school building which indicates the lack of rainfall in the area. She stands at a water gauge.

Intertitle: ‘… there’s always the pump.’

A group of boys stand around the school’s water pump, filling a bucket with water.

Intertitle: ‘Birrilee brings a touch of old-world courtesy.’

The mobile library is then shown at nearby Berrilee, where boys and girls walk over to the travelling library truck and step up into the back. The teachers record the books chosen by the children.