Recently we received a letter from a deputy principal at a school in Brisbane who thought she had a ‘creative superhero’ in her midst. Jackie Welsh, from Sunnybank State School, said 70-year-old cancer survivor, June Hallahan, came to the school every week (a one hour round trip) to teach girls from all cultures the fine art of the handmade. When we tracked June down we discovered Sunnybank was not her only port of call. June is sharing the crafty love around!
“Last year we asked June if she would help to organise a craft club for our girls in years six and seven as we’d heard of her reputation and experience with running a similar club in another Brisbane suburb,” says Jackie. “Despite the fact that she does not keep good health, June manages to facilitate the club for us... Last year we had 20 girls enrolled in it... in 2008 we had to limit numbers to 35, even though many more wanted to share in this wonderful weekly experience."
The only sewer in her family - “I used to make my mum’s dresses for her. She was even buried in one” - June originally comes from the country and says, as a young mother with two daughters of her own, she had to provide all their creative stimulation herself. “I even taught my girls oil painting,” she says.
Yet it was when her granddaughter, Amee, started school that June returned to the classroom as well. “I always enjoyed working with children so I took to volunteering at Amee’s primary school and when she moved on to high school, so did I,” says the amazing June.
While young Amee is now 15 and at a private school, Sunnybrook has a different make-up and the children have different needs. “We have 350 students at Sunnybank, over 50 per cent of these students are from a culture other than Australia,” says Jackie. Because of this, when forming the craft club, the school had some specific ideas on what it hoped to achieve.
“It was not only to teach the girls some traditional craft skills,” says Jackie, “but also to give them the opportunity to share with the group their thoughts, feelings and frustrations with school and life in a non-threatening environment. What better time to talk than when you are doing craft? Many of the girls were in need of a support person; someone who was interested in them, loved to talk to them and hear their stories and was there when they were feeling down. June has become our lifesaver."
So dear is June to the girls that they’ve taken to calling her Nana and June says she can’t visit the local shopping centre without she and her husband hearing “ooooh, there’s Nana” at every turn.
“They’re lovely young eager girls,” says June. “They love to get in close to Nana. Sometimes I can hardly breathe. There are girls from Asian countries, Muslim girls, girls from places I’ve never heard of. Many of them have never seen craft items like we’re making. Once a term I make little cakes and bring them in. Some of them have never seen cakes baked from scratch.”
“To date the girls have learnt how to scrapbook, bead and sew and create a mulititude of projects,” says Jackie. “They are proud of their creations that are often displayed in the foyer of the school for all to see,” says Jackie. “To have her work acknowledged by your magazine is just a small way we can thank June for her wonderful support of our school.”
June works (for free, of course) at her granddaughter’s school on Mondays and at Jackie’s school on Thursdays. In between she’s out trying to scrounge up supplies at the lowest possible prices (Sunnybank’s budget for the craft club is not huge), getting ideas together and, often, cutting out the basic elements of certain projects to speed things along.
“The hardest thing for some of these girls is just threading the needle. Don’t ask me why. Sometimes, if we’re doing embroidery I might mark the fabric for them so they can see where to put the needle in. At one point I taught 36 of them to crochet. It nearly killed me,” says June with an infectious laugh.
June may not be getting any younger but her ideas keep up with the times. She’s about to kick off sewing machine lessons with some of the older Sunnybank girls - she’ll give three of them three and a half hours at a time - and wants them to be able to leave the school able to sew on buttons and take up a hem. At a previous school she taught the children to iron a shirt.
“Sometimes my friends show me ideas, like the facewasher bag we did recently, and other times she sees things when she’s out and about that inspire her. “I beg, borrow and steal remnants. Not too long ago I had the idea of ripping fabrics and making shoulder bags. We have so much stuff stashed around the house that my husband has started asking me what he will do with it all if I die!”
While there’s little chance of that being a problem for this powerhouse of a woman for a long time yet, behind the laughs and the stoicism, June is a big softie at heart. “There are some sad cases at every school, no matter what,” she says. “But sometimes you know one of them has a particularly hard situation going on and I might just say to them, ‘Are you having a bad time right now?’ and they’ll say yes and come in for a hug. I treat them all as if they were my own granddaughter. I’m no counsellor. I give them the same advice I’d give her.”
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