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Earlier this month, the first cohort of students from The Canobolas High School held a reunion to mark 60 years since the inception of Orange’s second public high school.
While it has been six decades since those students entered their First Form classes, it would be another two years before they actually had a school of their own.
The new high school in East Orange was originally scheduled to welcome students at the start of the 1966 school year, but when the new year dawned a site had not even been purchased, let alone any building work commenced.
The interim plan, put forward by the Education Department, was to house the East Orange students at Orange High School, essentially running two schools under the one roof.
The “East” students (with the delineating line being the centre of Lords Place) would have their own separate classes, their own uniform and their own provisional principal.
The following year, the school welcomed its second cohort of students, along with new principal Fred Dobbin, who later served three terms as the mayor of Orange.
But when Mr Dobbin arrived just weeks out from the start of the 1967 school year, there was still no school. With the opening of the then-new infants' campus in Torpy Street, the department decided to temporarily house the new high school in the old infants' campus in Sale Street, which is now known as the Orange Cultural Centre.
In a recollection some years later, Mr Dobbin described the first look at his new school:
“Old, last century stucco building in front with three ramshackle, very old wooden double portables and one single behind. A tumbledown paling fence on the two sides and the inevitable toilet blocks. It's hard to describe the latter. They had seen better days.”
Along with the old infants' campus, which underwent a hasty renovation, the new school was given access to an old laboratory at the technical college two-and-a-half blocks away, an unused wooden building at the back of Orange Public School, and was furnished with items from Condobolin, where a new high school with new furniture was to open.
But stores and other equipment had not yet arrived when students turned up for the first day of term.
“It is hard now to imagine starting a school with just furniture and two boxes of borrowed chalk,” Mr Dobbin recalled.
“There was no paper, typewriter, duplicator or projector. No science, industrial arts, home science or physical education equipment. No textbooks, library books, or money to buy them. Science was two-and-a-half blocks away and home science one-and-a-half, in rain, snow, hail, or just plain cold.
“There was no room at the school for more than the minimum physical education, so it was frequently taken at a park, without toilets, two blocks away.
“To the great credit of the students, these difficulties were overcome without complaint, without accident and without the school receiving one complaint from any of the many houses or shops along the way.”
It was in March 1967 that the school officially adopted the name “The Canobolas High School”, having previously been known as “Orange East High School.” Other names considered were Mitchell High, A.B. Paterson High, and Banjo Paterson High, but The Canobolas High was the clear winner when voted on by the P&C members.
The following year, in March 1968, 479 students and 25 staff members excitedly moved into the brand-new, well-equipped and newly completed classroom blocks at The Canobolas High School.
The Canobolas High School was officially opened on December 7, 1968, by the NSW Deputy Premier, Minister for Education and Science, and Member for Orange, C.B. Cutler.
