JOURNALS
A TALE OF ALICE SMITH As told by Lindsey Smith
Alumna and daughter of Alice Fairfield-Smith
Yes, the school was very important to Mum. As you will see later, she could never stand to be idle and would always find some constructive occupation. As it may still be the case, it was not possible for the wives of expats to work in any ordinary job - their lives are just the Selangor Club and endless bridge parties. I don’t think mum could have stood that. On the other hand, she never set out to create a school. As her hand written document left in ‘95 says, the school just happened. There were young children there with absolutely no schooling available and she was a trained teacher. She was dragooned into it. And it just grew and grew. I think she was always a bit surprised but of course delighted. The school outgrew the small house, then outgrew the big house and moved into the Masonic Hall. More teachers were found as needed. I remember Mrs Muir and Mrs Duckworth and Hazel Read taught me piano. I recall the leave-taking ceremony when mum was completely overwhelmed and cried. As a 10 year old, I was, of course, mortified. Mum was born on 4th July 1905 as Alice Pierce Johnston from Santa Cruz, California and opened the school in 1946. She was then married to my father, Hugh Fairfield-Smith who’s Scottish/British and had me with my brother Hugh. In 1950, we moved to North Carolina where dad was a lecturer at NC State. Once the house was in order mum rapidly became bored. She trained as a librarian and worked at the Raleigh City Library. She also had creative hobbies: “button gardens” and chip-carving. In 1953, we moved back to Canberra - where my parent had agreed to retire. Mum and I went ahead to build our family house. William, our family friend at the time had arranged to buy the block of land in the area they had chosen. The two families had always been close. William and dad met when they came to Australia on the same boat in 1927 - both bound for jobs at CSIRO (The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation).
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