Bridget Johnston

Undoubtedly, there have been many exceptional teachers on the NSW South Coast. Bridget Johnston was one of them – the Sydney Morning Herald even deeming it appropriate to write a piece about her and include a picture of her in the Herald when she retired.
Bridget Ann Ryan was born at Duea River in 1859. She completed her formal education with a two-year teachers’ training course at Blackfriars Teachers’ College on Broadway in Sydney before receiving postings to Moruya Public School and then Cleveland Street Infants School in Sydney.

In August 1882, when she was 23, she was appointed teacher at a small one-teacher bush school in Eurobodalla Village (that village now long gone). In the 18 years before Bridget’s arrival, the school had six teachers. Bridget was to stay (the Herald suggesting ‘in charge’!) for 45 years.

In April 1907 (so 25 years after arriving in Eurobodalla) Miss Ryan married and became Mrs Johnston.

Under a 1902 Act, which was amended in 1932, no married woman could be employed as a teacher unless ’there are special circumstances which make her employment desirable in the public interest’. Miss Ryan/Mrs Johnston’s employment at Eurobodalla Public School must therefore have been considered ‘desirable in the public interest’ because she remained the village’s teacher.

Mrs Johnston’s teaching was described as ‘high quality, strict, dedicated and inspired’. And, of necessity, she was teaching all levels from infants’ classes to higher education entrance levels.

She let it be clearly understood that no pupil, however reluctant a student, would ever leave her school without being able, at the very least, to write, read and do arithmetic.
Her success as a teacher soon became widely-known. At various times, students from as far away as Tilba Tilba, Narooma and Eden were sent to board in Eurobodalla village so they could attend her school. And one father, from somewhere down the coast, even set up two tents near the school and installed his young son in one, and a woman to look after him in the other, so he could receive an education from Mrs Johnston.

The results her pupils achieved are testimony to her skill as a teacher. For example, four bursaries for the Leaving Certificate years were awarded each year to students in the Cooma Inspectorate (which included Eurobodalla Public School) and every year at least one student from Mrs Johnston’s little school would be awarded one. In one year, pupils from the school received all four!

This so amazed the Department of Education that it sent an Inspector to the school to re-examine the students. Leaving the four examinees and the Inspector in the schoolroom, Mrs. Johnston gathered the rest of her pupils together and adjourned classes to the outside. She conducted lessons under the trees in the school grounds until the Inspector emerged, thanked her for her co-operation and left. The school day then resumed its normal pattern. (Three of these four students subsequently were awarded medical degrees and one an arts degree.)

And at least 45 of her pupils received scholarships to teachers’ college, and several received university scholarships.

In 1924, when she reached the age of 65, the Education Department’s age for retirement in those days, Bridget Johnston was asked to continue teaching. She did so for another three years.

As well as teaching her students, Mrs Johnston was concerned for their welfare. She would often shuttle children to their homes in her own sulky and, if it rained, would provide coats for her students from her own wardrobe or her husband’s wardrobe or, having exhausted those, would provide sacks as makeshift protection from her own shed.

Bridget Johnston, as one would expect in a small village, also became a driving force in the community. She is credited with the construction of the town’s cricket pitch and tennis court, and then encouraging everybody to use them. And she instigated the building of a community hall which was used for many years as a venue for concerts, parties and other functions.

Mrs. Bridget Johnston died in 1939, at the age of 80. She is buried in Moruya cemetery.