First Day of Term 1 – Unley High School (1988)

Unley High School opened for the first term of the 1988 school year with 940 students enrolled from Year 8 to Year 12 and a teaching and support staff of sixty-eight under Principal Graeme Whitford, then in his fourth year in the post. The school occupied its campus on Kitchener Street in Netherby, its 1957 buildings set among open lawns, jacarandas and eucalypts at the foot of the Mitcham hills.

The term began the morning after the national Bicentenary. The previous day's celebrations, and the re-enactment of the First Fleet's arrival in Sydney Harbour, filled the front pages of the papers that teachers carried into the staffroom, and several classrooms still carried the Bicentennial flags and commemorative posters distributed to schools over the summer. Whitford referred to the anniversary in his opening address and announced that the year's history and social studies programmes would take it as a theme.

The day was organised around the new Year 8 intake. One hundred and ninety-six students began their secondary schooling, drawn from more than twenty primary schools across Unley, Mitcham, Goodwood and the southern hills, Blackwood and Belair among them. Most arrived knowing only the handful of classmates who had come from the same primary school. They gathered in the hall for a dedicated welcome assembly before the rest of the school arrived, where Whitford and the Year 8 coordinator explained the timetable, the bell system, the layout of the campus and the expectations of conduct and uniform.

The intake was divided into seven homerooms and allocated to the school's four houses, named for the Torrens, Onkaparinga, Murray and Sturt rivers. Each homeroom spent the rest of the morning with its teacher, collecting timetables, locker allocations and booklists, and walking the campus in small groups led by senior students. The new Year 8s wore the summer uniform of sky-blue shirts, with the navy blazer held over until the winter term.

The returning year levels resumed with less ceremony. Years 9 and 10 collected new timetables and settled into their classrooms. The Year 11 and Year 12 students, facing the subject choices and examinations that would decide their university and employment prospects, spent much of the day in meetings with subject teachers and the senior school coordinator.

The afternoon was given to the first full lessons of the year. The day closed at the final bell, with the Year 8 students dispersing to the buses, the trains on the Belair line and the waiting cars of parents who had come to hear how the day had gone. No incidents were recorded.