Ross had been teaching at Drummoyne Primary School for two years when the inevitable, though unspoken, announcement finally arrived: Ms Crisp was retiring. The news itself caused only the slightest ripple among the staff. After all, Ms Crisp had been at the helm long enough for everyone to anticipate her departure. What did raise a collective eyebrow, though, was the subsequent declaration from the Department: her replacement, the new headmaster, was to be Mr Ross Cooper.

Ross had taken to teaching like a duck to a country dam, full of noise, splash, and a sense of destiny disguised as play. The classroom, to him, wasn’t a box for rote and regulation. It was a living, breathing organism, part chalk dust, part imagination, part controlled rebellion. He refused to let it sit still.

Of all places in the wide, bustling world of classrooms and chalk dust, Ross was to commence his “in-school practical training” at none other than Drummoyne Primary School. The irony was not lost on him. Drummoyne, where the streets smelled faintly of laundry and the river whispered of lazy afternoons. His days at Drummoyne though were locked behind the steel gates of the orphanage. And here he was, about to navigate the labyrinthine politics of pencils, playgrounds, and primary-level pandemonium just a few hundred metres from the very place.