Assuming you went on to High School (or the ‘High Top’ that operated in primary schools in centres that didn’t boast a separate High School) the next hurdle came at the end of Year Ten when you sat for the Junior exam.
Pass Junior and there were fairly clear options. Go on to Year Twelve and the Senior exam or head out into the workforce. A reasonable Junior pass might not suggest further study but could land you an apprenticeship, or a position in an accountant’s office, a bank or the State Public Service.
The first two of those didn’t necessarily mean you were going to be forced to move, but head into a bank or the public service and promotion almost certainly meant relocation.
The options at the end of Year Twelve were similar, but slightly more upmarket and aspirational. Further study involved University or Teachers’ College, and that almost invariably involved a move to Brisbane.
Admittedly, the University College of Townsville came into operation in 1961, but as an outpost of the University of Queensland it started with a meagre one hundred and five students and when I arrived on the doorstep eight years later was still acting as a feeder for UQ Faculties such as Law. The prospective legal eagle completed his or her first year studies in Townsville and headed south to complete the degree.
Teacher education didn’t reach the north until 1969, and until that happened the would-be teacher headed to Kedron or Kelvin Grove, did their one or two years and were usually sent home for their first year before being transferred to the back blocks. From there, assuming you were male, the promotion trail involved a gradual progression up through the ranks of one-, two- and three-teacher schools until you reached the lofty heights of a Class One principal in a school where there were more than six hundred students.
So, until 1961, ambitions that involved higher education certainly involved relocating to south, with the likelihood that any return would be temporary. As we moved into the seventies that certainly moved through probably to might, but there were two issues that flowed out of the intellectual diaspora.
First, with the academic and intellectual cream moved out of the community, you had the situation where the North was increasingly seen as a province of rednecks, the sort of place where Bob Katter’s remarks about the lack of gays in his electorate might be seen as understandable. Not that I’m endorsing those comments, but the wilds of Hughenden or Duchess wouldn’t be an overly gay-friendly environment.
Of course, any gays, intellectuals, would-be academics, chardonnay socialists or sippers of skinny lattes who’d been born there, or had the misfortune to be relocated into those areas would have moved away wouldn’t they? Not much room for anyone with those inclinations around here folks, and if they were in the area you’d suspect escape plans would be given a fairly high priority.
Second, among the diaspora, there is, I suspect, a sense of nostalgia, a feeling that, yes, I’d love to go back, but the place is so, um, backward.
Now, the reader might think, since we’re in the realm of hypothesis, impressions and vaguely recalled memories, that this concept of a northern diaspora is an exaggeration, but consider these items.
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