This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the Cloncurry School of the Air and Bridget (Bid) O'Sullivan was the first teacher.
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Adelaide Meethke conceived the idea of using radio to create the School of the Air and the first lessons were transmitted from Alice Springs on the Flying Doctor network in 1949.
In 1960 it was Cloncurry's turn and teacher Bid O'Sullivan came out of retirement to teach 22 students on 11 different properties in north west Queensland.
Bid was from Taroom and had extensive experience in bush schools, having taught in Winton, Charleville and Chinchilla before the Second World War.
In 1942, she began work in the Correspondence School in Brisbane where she remained for 17 years.
Her voice became very well known as she conducted many school broadcasts for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Correct elocution was one of Bid's hobby horses, and she used every attempt to inculcate a high standard of grammar and pronunciation.
Later, a School of the Air parent, recalled that it 'was her voice, of course, that captured the children. It held all the warmth and generosity of her personality'.
Aged 63, she delivered her first lesson on 25 January 1960 to 14 boys and girls from remote stations across the state using two-way radio communication.
The broadcast was delivered from the Royal Flying Doctor Service residence in Cloncurry.
The first broadcast began: 'This is a proud day for Cloncurry and the Royal Flying Doctor Service. It is the very first day of the School-of-the-Air'. But the console had not been switched on, and Bid had to repeat her opening.
The School of the Air provided social contact for pupils spread sparsely across 800,000 square km from the Gulf Country to Birdsville, Each day's lesson was followed by a 'cockatoo' session which Bid arranged so the shy children, unused to contact with the wider world, could chat to each other.
Miss O'Sullivan designed a school badge in 1960 and a motto: per ardua ad caelestia' - through difficulties to the heights.
She organised a concert at the end of the first year and one father dragged the piano across the house so that it would be near the radio for his daughter's item.
Bid said it was the 'longest school concert in the world'.
Bid O'Sullivan was became a Member of the British Empire in the 1963 New Year's honours list 'for her outstanding services and devotion to the children of Queesland in the field of education'.
In May 1963, Bid retired when she was 67 years old and a big testimonial function was held in Cloncurry. She was presented with the Cobra microphone which she used for so long. It had been dipped in gold, mounted, and inscribed: "Service above Self".
Chris McDonald of the Friends of John Place in Cloncurry said that after four years, the RFDS base was moved to Mount Isa and the School of the Air transferred with it.
"The early history of those first four years is acknowledged at the John Flynn Museum and later this year, there will be celebrations for past and present students," Ms McDonald said.
"So when students are battling with home learning this year, spare a thought for those early mothers, who were probably cooking for a station and responsible for other children all those years ago. It's all happened before, though technology has advanced from communication by HF Radio to the internet."
Ms McDonald said thanked Helen McKerrow who wrote the history of the first 25 years of School of the Air in North West Queensland in her 1985 book "Over the You".
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