Teachers were comparatively poorly paid in this period, especially if they were only qualified to work in small rural schools. In 1912, for example, a 'Class VI' teacher, controlling a school of up to 35 pupils, earned about 46 shillings a week, or £120 per annum, the same as the basic wage. After nine years of service, this could increase to a maximum of £200 a year.¹⁹ In 1918, women teachers' salaries were raised to at least four-fifths of the rate paid to men of the same class, but the 'family obligations' of men continued to be recognised with higher salaries.²⁰ By 1920 the young male teacher received £3 per week, his female counterpart £2 8s. Annual increments over a five-year period raised this by nearly a pound a week. This meant that after training at the Teachers' College, and with five years of experience, a male head teacher earned only 6s 6d a week more than the basic wage. He earned significantly less than a head sawyer, faller or millwright, and the same as a sawmill labourer.²¹

For the Otway Saw Mills teacher, about one-quarter of his weekly salary was needed for boarding-house meals alone.²² A correspondent to the Colac herald argued that the 'totally inadequate salaries' offered by the Education Department were the main reason for the difficulty in finding teachers to work in rural districts of Victoria. This resulted in the employment of 'an army of temporary or unskilled teachers who are receiving less remuneration than many of the lower paid hands in the timber mills of the Otway forest'.²³ The difficulty the Education Department had in filling the vacancy at Henry's Mill school during the 1920s may thus have been a systemic problem relating as much to unattractive pay scales as to the isolation and poor living conditions.

Initially, female teachers were explicitly excluded from appointment to the mill school. During the earliest negotiations for its establishment in 1905, the District Inspector noted the lack of suitable accommodation for a female teacher, and that a male teacher would be provided with a room rent-free. The boarding house at the mill could provide accommodation for neither men nor women, offering only meals at 13 shillings per week. Over time, male-only appointments became an established practice at the mill. Given the isolation of the settlement, and the generally brief stints of male teachers at Henry's Mill, it may have been felt that the location was too remote for female teachers to cope with. However, single women routinely worked at schools in nearby towns such as Forrest and Barwon Downs, and at other mill schools at least as isolated as Henry's. Blanche Murphy, for example, applied successfully for a position at the Rubicon school in the Central Highlands. Her time at the mill was marred, however, by the climate, poor accommodation, lack of companionship, cost of living, and drunken pranks and language of some of the men.²⁴ Alice Hartley was the only teacher posted to the Loch Fyne Mine school near Matlock, in the Central Highlands, from 1899 to 1902, an extremely remote and rugged location.²⁵ The reluctance to appoint women to the school at Henry's Mill is also anomalous because with so many tiny rural schools opening and closing in this era, finding teachers to staff them was a constant challenge for the Education Department. Forest-based mill settlements were not necessarily any more isolated than many other rural settlements at some distance from towns, railways and roads.

Comments made by teachers about the isolated location of the mill school reveal a consistently negative response to the local environment. This may also hint at their response to the social environment of the sawmill community. Bernard Flood, for example, in applying for transfer, felt that

Even the mill owner, WR Henry, acknowledged that the site was 'in an almost inaccessible Forest',²⁷ while a District School Inspector noted the 'wet weather, 6 months practically of very wet weather, and the mountainous character of the country'.²⁸ Another inspector recorded that the school was 'situated in an inaccessible part of the forest. There is no road to it; no horse can get over the mountains. The only way in is from Forrest by a sawmill tram'.²⁹ As noted earlier, the remoteness of the mill had been used as a justification for establishing the school in the first place, as it was 'situated in a lonely, narrow valley ... The children are quite isolated'.³⁰ The school's first teacher, Leo O'Kelly, had argued for a full-time position because the mill lay 'in a solitude entirely cut off from Forrest and Barramunga'.³¹

Locomotive and horse team on Henry's tramline, c. 1908. Courtesy of Birregurra District Historical Centre