Family walk: Going to school

Kristine took her parents to Oxford for the day, so I got to walk the girls to school.  I've only done this a couple of times, so I decided to take advantage of the chance to capture this part our of life in Melbourne.  Clare didn't go to nursery since it's Wednesday (she goes Monday mornings).  I went ahead and walked up to Puddleducks so I could get Kristine's entire route.

Here's the elevation profile.  We start at ~310 feet, descend to ~190 feet at Melbourne Junior School, and then climb back to ~310 feet at our house.  RunKeeper says this is 1530 feet of elevation change. This is part of why I don't buy the 82 feet elevation change for our Tissington walk.  

DISCLAIMER: I took very few photos at the schools.  I would not be happy if I knew someone else was taking pictures of me or my children and posting them without my permission.  So I justified my self-conscious unwillingness to pull out my camera by saying I'm respecting other people's privacy.

 Off we go, down to the end of Hope Street.  This gap between us is pretty common.  Elise often goes a good bit ahead, with Charis behind her, then the parent with Clare in the stroller (in this case that was me).  Clare is fully capable of walking, which the end of this post will show.  But she's not trustworthy as far as focusing on the task at hand - walking to school.

You can't tell from the photo, but Commerce Street is actually a bit narrower than Hope Street.  It's relatively free of parked cars this morning when we're walking to school.  Most of the time it's not that empty.  There are usually cars parked on each side, which leaves just over one car space between them to drive.  The sidewalks are also pretty narrow.  If the garbage bins are out for collection, which they are today because it's a Wednesday, then it's a bit of a squeeze between the bin and the parked car.  Since I've got the stroller, I go around into the street.  The large number of cars gives Charis a chance to practice identifying cars from the emblems on the hood or back.  Today she's pointing out a Citroen.  She started doing this on her own shortly after we got here.  We usually get a running identification of cars during our walks through Melbourne.  I think she takes after my dad.

Most of the houses on the right (north) side of Commerce Street are terraced, which means they're all built into the same building.  The whole block we're walking down here has only one or two buildings on it.  The left (south) side of the street has fewer buildings, and generally 2 - 4 houses per building.  You can see one of them in the photo above.

The landscaping and buildings change quite a bit when we get onto George Street.  The houses are detached or semi-detached (duplexes in the US), and they have yards in the front (yards are in the back for houses on Commerce and Hope Street).  The street is also quite a bit wider - both the street itself and the sidewalks.

This is the stretch where Charis gets to take a break from walking.  She rides on a buggy board that flips down off the back of Clare's stroller.  This is a replacement for the double stroller we brought from the US (see below for what happened to it on the flight over).  We decided that the damaged stroller was a really good thing for us because of what we got with the compensation funds from United.  We got a smaller, much more maneuverable stroller that (a) is much easier to navigate through Melbourne, and (b) actually fits into the back of our Golf.  The buggy board gives us the functionality of letting Charis ride when she needs to.  She's riding less and less, but we don't have the clunkiness of taking Clare everywhere in the double stroller.  So thanks, United.

Our largest elevation change is the 1/4 mile stretch that takes us from George St into Melbourne proper.  There are a couple different routes we take.  Elise picks this morning, and she says we're taking Dunnicliff Lane (which also happens to be the funniest name we've seen so far).

More detached houses with front yards as we walk down Dunnicliff.  Pretty much all the front yards are flat.  Considering how steep this street is, that's quite impressive.

One of the reasons we like this route is that it's not through for vehicles.

We cross the main street through Melbourne (interesting enough it's called Derby Road) and walk down another footpath.  Elise has moved quite a bit ahead of the rest of us by now.

Our house is just off Cockshut Lane, which is one of the main roads around Melbourne.  We exit the footpath on the other, which is Station Road.  This is the route that I take on my bike when I'm going to work.  I would head straight, and eventually get to the cycle path.  We're heading to school, so we turn left.

Packhorse Road, which is where the schools are, gets pretty busy in the morning and afternoon because of all the families dropping off or picking up children.  That busyness is even more complicated because the road is pretty narrow, and there are so many cars parked on the right (west) side.  Effectively both directions of traffic have to share one lane by taking turns driving through the empty spaces.  In this case, the white car got there first so the oncoming car will pull over, wait for it to pass, and then drive through the opposing lane since the two parked cars are in the space it would typically drive.

Our first stop is at Melbourne Infant School.  We've got a few minutes before the bell is supposed to ring at 8:45, so we join the other families who are gathering on the playground behind the school.  Charis finds a couple friends and takes off to play with them.  Clare gets out of stroller heads across the playground.  I gather from watching her beeline toddle and her lack of being intimidated by the older kids that she's done this lots of times before.  Elise stands with me for a few minutes, and then finds a classmate (one of the many students at the next door junior school who are here to drop off younger siblings).  They go play with Clare.

Sometime around 8:45 the bell rings.  The Infant School students line up to go into school, and the families start to disperse.  The older siblings make their way to Melbourne Junior School (MJS).  Elise and her friend don't bother waiting for their parents.  Off they go.

There is more mingling at MJS as families arrive from the Infant School or make their way here to start the day.  The students are accompanied by adults who wait with them until they line up.  The vast majority of the adults are women - mostly mothers, with a few grandmothers.  There are a handful of fathers and grandfathers.  Part of our appeal to get Charis into the Infant School was being unwilling to leave our girls unattended before school.  It is encouraging for me to be here before school and see that nobody else leaves their child unattended either.

A group of  girls from Elise's year 3 class have all gathered together.  One of them has a younger sister at the Infant School who just had an accident on the playground this morning.  I hear something about falling, cutting her head, and needing an ambulance.  Her sister (Elise's classmate) is in tears.  The girls are gathered around her with hands on her shoulders, offering their support.

After a few minutes, the MJS head teacher comes out, blows a whistle, and points each class to their place to line up.  This is done by class name, not by year.  Each class is named after a tree.  There are two classes per year.  So you go across the playground before you get to Redwood (Elise's year 3 class) and Lilac (the other year 3 class).  As I watch the relative chaos of the playground quickly turn into lines of students, I have two thoughts.  The first is a memory of visiting my sister Michelle when she was studying at Cambridge, and she told me her instructors had hammered home the point that "English people love to queue!"  The second is the portion of Kate Fox's ethnography, Watching the English, where she has her students jump queues and record the reactions.

The lines of students file into the building, and Clare and I take off for Puddleducks, which shares a building with the local Cub and Boy Scout troops..  Puddleducks has been an unexpected perk of living in Melbourne.  We weren't planning on putting Clare into nursery while we were here.  A friendly mom at church made a passing comment of "Thank God for government funded nursery at age 3," to which we responded "Really?"  We found out about Puddleducks from a Rolls-Royce colleague who also had to appeal to get his second child into the Infant School (did I mention this seems like a rite of passage).  It's just up the street from the Infant and Junior Schools, so we're there within a couple minutes.

Clare goes on Monday mornings right now, which gives Kristine a couple hours to study for her pharmacy board certification.  There are enough other families with children in primary school and nursery that Clare recognizes classmates on the playground.  She pointed several of them out to me while we were waiting for Elise and Charis to get let into school.

We leave Puddleducks and head home via Queensway Road.  Sometimes Kristine and the girls come to school this way and go home via Donnington.  It's about the same distance, and having two routes adds some variety to the day.  Most of the houses on Queensway are detached.  The two big differences from the other streets we've walked on so far are (a) many more houses have driveways, and (b) there is grass between the sidewalk and the street.

We cross Derby Road again.  Budgens is the local grocery store where we'll often do a mid-week shopping trip to top up on supplies we eat through quickly (milk, bananas, bread ...).

By the time we get to the back end of Budgens, Clare is squirming to get out of the stroller.  "Daddy, I have to walk so I can have chocolate when we get home!"  I stop, let her out of the stroller, and she's off running up the steps.

This is North Street.  It's a bit narrower than Dunnington (certainly doesn't have as interesting a name), and has considerably less green.  Almost all the houses are terraced, although there are a couple at the top that have a driveway and garage.  This is also where we do our steep elevation change to climb back to our house.  I wouldn't know it's steep from watching Clare though.  She's continuing to run like it's flat.

Here's another view of Commerce Street.  When I cycle home, this corner is the "almost there" view of encouragement to my tired legs.  Clare has slowed to a walk by now, but has no interest in the stroller.

One last turn and we're back onto Hope Street.  Clare, sensing chocolate is at hand, takes off running again.  The chocolate button from Aldi is well earned.