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DOROTHY HEWETT talks to Lynne Hunt Internationally famous novelist, poet and playwright, Dorothy Coade Hewett, was born on 27 May 7923, the daughter of Doris Irene (nee Coade) and Arthur Thomas Hewett. With her sister, Lesley, she lived for twelve years on the family farm near Wickepin, Western Australia, before moving to Perth. She has been writer-in-residence at eight Australian universities and was awarded eight fellowships by the Literature Board of the Australia Council and now has a lifetime Emeritus Fellowship. She had an Honorary Doctor of Letters conferred by the University of Western Australia and is a Member in the Order of Australia. She was expelled from Claremont Teachers' College. I had correspondence classes until ! was about twelve years of age and then we moved to South Perth. I went to the South Perth Primary School until the end of that year. Correspondence classes suited the sort of child I was. There was a high emphasis on the art side of ed ucation, on things like creative writing and illustrating your own writing and nature study, going into the field and drawing the birds and trees and animals. This was also probably reflected in my mother who wasn't any good at maths (my father was), so she probably leant more towards teaching us in that direction. So, when I finally went to school, my grounding in anything to do with mathematics was absolutely hopeless. I did have two brief periods in country schools - a few days or weeks. Once, in Albany, I went to the Infant school, because we used to go there for ho lidays; and then I went to live in Corrigin for three months when I was about eleven and I went to the Corrigin Primary School. I was terrified because I was ahead in all things like Engli sh and history and geography but hopelessly behind in arithmetic. I was put down a class, because of that, and it was a terrible slur. It was one of those country schools where you had all of the classes in one room, and because I'd been so used to being in the quiet, just working on my own virtually, on a farm verandah or just in a room, I found it impossible to concentrate. Also, I didn't understand any of the games, because I'd never had much contact with kids, certainly not in any formal way. I used to run the wrong way and score goals for the opposing team, and get myself into shocking trouble. I could run quite well because I was quite strong and healthy, having been brought up on a farm, but I didn't know any of the rules. We had this teacher who must have had a rather hard time teaching all these kids in different classes. He had a war wound. I think it used to drive him mad. Anyway, he was very lame. We used to call him 'Old Happy-Go-Kick'. He used to line all the kids up on the verandah when they made spelling or arithmetic mistakes, and we all had to file past, and then he would hit us for every mistake as we went past. He usually used to hit the girls - I suppose the boys too- on their bare legs, so that there were all these weals on their legs all the time. My mother was horrified by this so she went up to the school and said I wasn't allowed to be hit. That was worse, because I used to have to file past, and I was this sort of sacrosanct figure who was never touched, so all the kids hated me, of course! At South Perth Primary School there was a scholarship class. I wasn't in it because I wasn't good at arithmetic. I went into a class with a teacher called Mr Lewis, and I used to have this weird sort of life, academically anyway, because when I was writing or doing history, spelling, geography or English, I would go to the top of the class. When it got to maths I'd go down to the bottom- so I had this zigzag life. When there was a test in one thing I'd go up to the top and when there was a test in the other I'd go down to the bottom. I lived in the middle in a sort of limbo world. Mr Lewis, actually, was incredibly nice to me­ I'm not quite sure why- whether he liked little g'~rls or whether he liked what I did in the class. I think I was regarded a bit as a teacher's pet. When I went to high school at Perth College, we had all women teachers and, of course, it was an all-girls school. At first I hated it. I really hated going to school until I gotto sub-Leaving, when I would have been sixteen. And then it all changed because then we were allowed to drop maths. Maths just made my life a misery, there is no doubt about it. It did make my life a complete misery. I could never do it. I couldn't do algebra; I couldn't do geometry; I couldn't do any of it. I was hopeless at it. As soon as I was allowed to drop it I was very happy at school; and also by that time I had worked out a persona, which enabled me to cope with school. I was incredibly shy- absolutely, appallingly shy. When I first went to Perth College they used to call me 'Hermit Hewett' because I used to go around with a book of poetry, or a novel (it was usually poetry) and hide in this book at lunch time and recess time. It is true I liked reading these books, but I really did it because that was my protection. It wasn't until I was about sixteen -and I don't quite know how I came to know this- that I realised that I could make some sort of capital out of being a bit of an odd ball, and so I deliberately played on this. I was, sort of, the class eccentric, I guess. As soon as I worked out this role for myself I was perfectly happy at school and I made lots of friends, and in an odd sort of way, from this vantage point, I began to fit in. I failed French. I'd had very poor grounding in French, because by the time I got to Perth College all those girls there had been doing French since their junior school. I had done one year, and our French teacher in the middle of the year had become ill and left, so it really meant six months. I was miles behind. Then I was unlucky enough to get a very bad French teacher, at Perth College, who was absolutely hopeless. Not only was she hopeless at teaching French, but she was also hopeless at keeping order, and the girls in the class were very cruel. I am sure I joined in too, feeling somewhat ashamed. They used to harass this poor woman and send her out in floods of tears. So our French classes were mayhem, and my knowledge of French was pathetic. The situation at Perth College, then, was that you had lay teachers and you also had the Sisters of the Anglican Order. The Sisters of the Anglican Order didn't do much teaching. I think some of them did teach in the Infants' school, but not in the higher classes. They taught us divinity. Otherwise, we were taught entirely by lay mistresses. A teacher that really stands out in my mind is the headmistress of the school who, when I look back, was a most extraordinary woman. The story was !whether this was true or not, who knows? All sorts of stories went around the school). that she was an MA from Oxford, and she may well have been so. Her name was Mrs Russell-Smith. She was the most fantastic teacher. She taught me English, history and geology. I was never much good at geology but she was a very good teacher. She was a good teacher because she taught those subjects extremely well and was very involved in them and, therefore, she was able to make us feel enthusiastic about what she was teaching. Also, she attempted to give us some sort of wider view of the world because, don't forget, in those days Western Australia was tremendously cut off from the rest of the world. I know it still is, a bit, but in those days it was like another country, and what was happening in the rest of Australia, let alone in the rest of the world, was somewhat of a mystery to us.