Former student now uneasy about favourite teacher

WHEN Natalie (not her real name) boarded her 7am flight yesterday, she did not expect to see her former teacher on board, especially not flanked by detectives.

The northern NSW woman travels often for work but this flight was different.

As she lined up ready to board, she heard mutterings in the line that Chris Dawson, accused murderer and the subject of record breaking podcast The Teacher’s Pet would be onboard after being arrested on the Gold Coast a day earlier.

The 70-year-old was her physical education teacher in the 1990s at St Ursula’s all-girls school in Yeppoon.

Natalie said he was her favourite teacher – he was everyone’s favourite teacher.

Dawson and other teachers has since been accused of predatory behaviour.

Natalie said she had no knowledge of this. Mr Dawson was simply the cool PE teacher who brought old modelling photos of himself to school.

But looking back, she can think of a few comments that now make her feel uneasy.

Like the time Dawson was teaching 14-year-old girls, when one asked what the best type of exercise was to keep fit, he replied: “Sex”.

As uncomfortable as this memory is for Natalie, she knows it is only one from years of schooling and the vast majority of her memories, even looking back, are positive.

Perhaps it was because at that time, in the late ’90s, Dawson was on to his third marriage, to a woman called Susan.

Susan’s daughter, Kobi, went to the school, Natasha remembers, perhaps a year or two younger than herself.

Then Dawson’s niece (his brother Paul’s daughter) Kristie also came and worked at the school.

Natalie remembers her as being fun and bubbly, everyone loved her as well.

That’s why only a couple of years after Natalie graduated and explosive allegations surfaced that her teacher murdered his first wife and groomed his second, her heart raced and her stomach sank the same way it did yesterday morning.