When Shannon Crocker’s eldest son went off to boarding school, one of the biggest changes was also one of the smallest. She put four plates out for dinner instead of five. There was less washing, his bedroom was empty, and she found herself checking the school’s Instagram Stories for a glimpse of him. If you’ve ever done a boarding school drop-off, I reckon you’ll know exactly what she means.
Shannon, who shares life on her family’s mixed farm near Muckadilla as @acountrymum, went to boarding school herself. So did her husband and both her parents. Even with all that family history, she and Phil started with what they wanted for their boys.
They valued the schooling their children had in Roma and wanted them to have a wider choice of subjects, sports and activities as they got older. As Shannon put it, “I feel like every kid deserves to have a range of things to find out what they’re good at.”
Then came something that reminded me of my own first trips to the bush as a Sydney teenager. He son’s school encourages day students to take boarders home for a sleepover. As a result her son made a good friend, spent time with his family, and that friend came out to Muckadilla for a week over the Christmas holidays. A school friendship had made room for both boys to get to know the other’s home.
When I wrote The Ultimate Collaboration, I was thinking about friendships like this. You can tell someone what life on the land looks like, or you can invite them to spend a week in the middle of it. I was once the city kid who took up that invitation. Years later, I was the mum welcoming my own children’s city mates through the door.
In this episode of Letters from Home, Shannon and I talk about the pride and the ache that can sit side by side when a child goes away, the friendships that make boarding feel a little more like home, and what country kids bring with them when they walk through the school gates.
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