Teacher’s extra-special visit

From the outback to Great Missenden

In 1989, during Mr Taylor’s second year of teaching in the dry and dusty settlement in central Australia, Mintabie Area School was one of ten remote schools selected to join a telephone link up with Roald Dahl who was visiting the country as part of his book tour promoting the recently published Matilda.

“From his first words, my class was hooked,” explains Mark.  “We knew we were speaking to someone special, someone wonderful, and Mr Dahl didn’t fail to entertain. He had a way of saying the most extraordinary and hilarious things, while remaining perfectly calm and teaching us at the same time.”

Now an abandoned mining town, Mintabie was not an easy place for a child to grow up. Dry, hot and more than 1,100km from the state’s capital, Adelaide, the harsh conditions meant many children felt isolated and a long way from facilities that other children would take for granted.

Mark adds: “But then Mr Dahl said to my class: You are incredibly lucky. You live in a place where treasures are dug up from the ground. There could be treasures all around you, waiting to be found and you might never know it. In fact, you could be sitting or standing on an incredible treasure now.”

“And I watched as the looks on my students faces transformed. He changed the way they looked at the world in a good way. They weren’t living in the outback in isolation and missing out anymore – they were living somewhere special. It was magic.”

“Mr Dahl asked about opal stones and if the students ever found them, to which my class announced that indeed they did. A young boy named Michael asked Mr Dahl if he would like a piece of opal, and Mr Dahl politely responded that he would love one if it could be organised.”

An opal stone was duly sent to Roald Dahl, via publishers Penguin and the children’s author wrote back to the class along with a copy of his latest book, Matilda.