Matt's recollections of attending school

The mainstream education I enjoyed was, in many respects, an innovation where today it is an expectation. My participation in the community was borne of a natural instinct, rather than making me worthy of distinction.

My primary school education was at the local Catholic School, St Augustine's. My teachers of the 1970's did not have special training as to how to deal with children with disabilities. They simply met my special needs as they arose, head on. They hardly ever baulked at the challenges and I was able to enjoy everything my friends did. In other words, I was damned lucky.

It was because of my parents that I attended this school. It was their decision that I should have a typical coeducation. It did not occur to me until I was a young adult as to how different things could have been.

I can recall very clearly heading to the Coffs Harbour Council pool with my year two class one day when we came across the kids from Yallberlinga School. Yallberlinga was the special school, as it was then known. The students had a mixture of disabilities. Some had physical disabilities, others were intellectually challenged, or they had a combination of both. I guess the majority of the students were older then my classmates and I who were around six years of age.

I remember how we stared at them with our mouths gaped open, empty of malice but full of curiosity, as they filed past us with their teachers. My inability to identify with these other kids was something that stayed with me for many years. For a long time I would try and avoid contact with people with disabilities fearing the association would mark me as a fellow who faced limitations: The irony has not been lost on me. It was of course an immaturity that one expects in a kid, but which left a mark on me for a long time.

My transition from primary school to high school for years 7 to 10 was an easy one. John Paul College was opened the year I arrived and it was the first fully accessible school in the area. It was a Catholic High School and a majority of the peers with whom I had spent my earlier primary days went to the high school.

When I left that school to attend Coffs Harbour High for years eleven and twelve in 1987 there were some major difficulties as it was full of stairs and the department of education refused to fund any changes required for me to enroll there, despite my desire to do so. If it were not for the efforts of a couple of teachers and members of the local rugby club who gave up time to build the ramps themselves I would never have been able to attend it.

But of course away from these bricks and mortar issues, and indeed apart from the books themselves, the largest challenges I faced at school occurred as I got older and the young boy that was me grew into an adolescent. All those changes and challenges we face socially around that period became my own and I was among boys and girls who were growing into young men and women when they did.

It was the time of awkward truths.

The little known worries of the boy, despite the difficulties I had did not consciously disturb my hazy days. But when adolescence arrived the last vestiges of my pyjamad innocence was lost and replaced by a realisation that Life contained bigger things of consequence. I became aware, as we all do, of those things which stand outside us, and of that which breathes inside us, and of the forces at play that go to create what we will be.

I became aware that we are very much responsible for the direction it is we take in Life and what we will make of opportunities won and lost.

It was the time when I became aware of the way in which my disabilities separated me physically from my peers. Where before it had simply meant that I could not climb trees where the others could, or that my ability to play handball at lunchtime was not as skilled as the others, the real challenges ahead of me had been hidden up until that point in time.

My mates started to grow taller and stronger although I did not.

My Pals began to go for their "L" learner's permit, which for me was impossible. The independence of travel was obvious, even if it was in their parents' car. And although I was and remained a popular kid the dynamics of the social order was changing around me.

When we attended the Blue Light Discos the fundamentals as to what young people find and discover in the semi dark were not necessarily mine to find at that time. As the eyes of boys and girls began to focus on the differences between the sexes as something of interest I began to see how my situation was marked with a significantly different brush.

These are of course common themes shared and appreciated by all of us. It is the chemistry of life. The experience of adolescent longings were not unique to me. They are at the heart of the teen flick, the kid who wants to kiss, or better still to be kissed. But it was a solitary journey made all the more intense because of my physical disabilities.

I was, put simply, a young man who was beginning to find his way and his place in the world without any real plan or method by which to do it. And for all the love of family and friends I had it was a matter of figuring it out on my own. It was a matter of sizing up my challenges and dictating the terms by which I would deal with them. It came to a situation of having to judge my self worth.

My school life, therefore, was interesting and varied. I had plenty of friends, I involved myself in cultural events, I had my sporting association and I just lived a typical life of a kid growing up on the Far North Coast. I did not take to the waves on a board like some of my friends, but nor did I sit at home wondering why me. And the key to it was I had enjoyed a mainstream education. It was that which provided me with the opportunity to study hard and to feel as if I was always a part of society. It was that experience which confirmed and affirmed my rights as an individual. I had no limitations, as far as I could see, and I felt as if I could turn my hand at anything that took my fancy. I knew what was happening in social groups and what it was like to ask a girl out, and to go to the pub, and to lead the charge to a party and to win an argument and lose a fight. I had been chided and mocked by friends. I had made them proud and I had succeeded and lost and achieved and drifted and found a direction. I had been schooled scholastically and socially so that when I finished my Higher School Certificate at the end of 1988 I was like many other 18 year olds, bursting with energy and ready to go somewhere.

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