Commencement day for the new Dover Gardens Girls Technical High School was 8th February 1965. Here was a brand spanking new girls high school for the growing southern suburbs. The first intake included 4 first-year classes of girls from the local suburbs, including Somerton, Warradale, Brighton, Seacliff, Darlington, Dover Gardens, Sturt, Seacombe Gardens and as far south as Christies Beach. A single second-year class was made up of local girls who transferred from Vermont Girls Tech. In total, the school had an enrollment of 176 in 1965. During that first week, all first-year girls completed a streaming test, which saw us all placed in home groups (“creatively ”) or, unfortunately, depending on how you looked at your placement, named 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D.
Our school principal was Mrs Sheila Roberts, who was proud and determined to make this new school a place for building confident and strong young Australian women. She certainly ruled the school with strict discipline and a very loud voice, which could drive fear into our young hearts if necessary!!!! Other staff members included the following: Mrs P Brinkworth—home group teacher for 1A, and her teaching subject was Maths; Miss M Kuningas– home group teacher for 1B and teacher of English and Social Studies; Miss C Putland—home group teacher for 1C and her subject was Art; Miss R Madigan—home group teacher for 1D with her subject being Science.; Miss P Pomeroy was the home group teacher for the 2nd year girls and was also their commercial teacher. Along with these core staff, we also had Mrs Mckay for sewing, Mrs Conaughty for Home Science, Mrs Haddow for Physical Education and Mrs Dallwitz as our Librarian.
For us 12—and 13-year-old girls, the staff seemed so old. As we look back now and do the sums, we realise that so many of our teachers were so very young, hardly older than ourselves. It’s funny how perspective is in the eye of the beholder, yet these young teachers guided us through that very important and historic year of 1965.
The school colours were maroon, bottle green, white and black. Our summer uniforms in that first year were still in the design and production stage, thus requiring us to attend in the sports uniform of the traditional 3-box pleated maroon tunic tied at the waist with a green girdle and a white short-sleeved shirt. Added to this was the hated BROWN long socks; we were told they were necessary to hide the dirt, which coated everything from spending recess and lunch times in the dust bowl, which was to become the school oval in later years. To top off our summer look we wore a straw boater hat, resplendent with the bottle green ribbon. You either hated the hat with a passion or felt quite chic wearing head attire so blatantly different from the usual school hats of the day.
Dover girls liked to stand out, and didn’t we when it came to the winter uniform?!! We looked resplendent in our fashionable knife-pleated maroon skirts, white banded-over shirts, maroon school V-neck jumper trimmed at the neck with a bottle green stripe, and maroon blazer with our new and very modern monogram of the Sturt Desert Pea flower embroidered on a white background and including the school motto “Truth and Courage.” This was topped off with a maroon beret and fawn gloves.
School life followed the very English tradition of having a school hymn, which was the 23rd Psalm from the Holy Bible, sung at the beginning of every school assembly and the dividing up of the pupils into 4 houses for sports day and other sports competitions during the year. Again, we bucked tradition and had houses named in traditional indigenous dialects. These were Koonawarra/blue in colour—meaning black swan; Murragamba/green—meaning tea tree; Tarraleah/ochre—meaning red kangaroo; and Yantamarra/yellow—meaning falling star. Our house banners were always on display in the school hall.
