THE WAY WE WERE
SCHOOL STORY Rosalie Thun sent in this photo of the Kummerow family with their horse and sulky on their way to the Bowenville School in circa 1935. They were cousins of Fred Kummerow (1932-1938) who told the following story of school days as a former Bowenville State School pupil.“My most vivid memory is that of ‘Quicksilver’. We had to travel six miles from Prospect Park to Bowenville School, and with two sisters Mable and Elsie the journey was by sulky. We were dissatisfied with the old slow-coach horse we had which had literally to be pushed all the way, so Dad bought a lively chestnut gelding (badly broken as it turned out) called Silver. He could go like the wind! The trip from Prospect Park, through Girraween and Bells to school was done in record time. Alas! It was harvest time and the Bowenville wheat stack was growing daily. A School end-of-year dance was planned. Father had presented a large box of chocolates for a waltz prize. We had to deliver it to school, with strict instructions about its care. We arrived at school and dismounted the sulky outside the paddock gate. I was holding the reins and asked Mable (Mebs) to get the box of chocolates from the back, under the seat. It was wrapped in shiny brown paper. Well that paper rattled, and Silver went into action! He ripped the reins out of my hands and went into full bolt. A rug we used over our knees caught in the front splash board and its flapping increased his miles per hour quite a lot. Lumpers on the wheat stack, were amazed to see this apparition of a silver grey horse with ears laid back, madly flapping rug in the midst of the spinning wheels, of an almost air-borne sulky as it crossed the Railway crossing. Apparently, Silver maintained that pace until he came to the closed lane way gate leading into the Bell’s property. Unable to get through that, he went straight on along the track which wound in and out amongst the timber - one wheel off this tree, one wheel off that! Bits of sulky and harness strewn along the track. He finished his run at the end of that dead-end lane where my older brother, who had been informed of our calamity found him a shivering, sweating wreck of horse flesh. The box of chocolates got to the teacher’s table unscathed!”