First Day of Term 1 – Blackwood Primary School (1983)

Blackwood Primary School opened for the first term of the 1983 school year with 318 students enrolled from Reception to Year 7 and a teaching staff of fourteen under Principal Lenora Farquhar, then beginning her fifth year in the role. The school drew its families from Blackwood, Belair, Hawthorndene, Coromandel Valley and, by choice, from suburbs further out such as Panorama.

The year began in the middle of one of the most severe droughts South Australia had known. The summer had been hot and almost rainless, the grass on the oval had burnt brown, and the bush along the school's boundary stood dry and brittle. The staff spent the final days of the holidays preparing for the heat: classroom blinds were drawn by mid-morning, the drinking taps were checked, and recess and lunch were moved into the shade of the gum trees and the verandahs of the 1957 wing.

Returning students gathered in the yard before the morning bell and moved into the classrooms of their new year levels. The term opened with a whole-school assembly in the hall, where Farquhar welcomed students and families, introduced the year's teaching staff, including one new teacher appointed over the summer, and set out the school's expectations for conduct and for care during the hot weather. Students were reminded that the scrub at the oval's edge was out of bounds until the fire season had passed.

Forty-four children began their formal schooling that day, divided between two Reception classes, nearly all of them brought to the classroom door by a parent. Several of the new children had older siblings already at the school and arrived with them through the gate. The Reception teachers spent the day on the foundations of school life: names and bag hooks, the bell and the lines, the toilets and the drinking taps, where to sit at lunch, and how to ask for help.

For the older year levels, the day was given over to organisation. Teachers issued exercise books and timetables, assigned desks and classroom monitors, and introduced the term's integrated theme, around which literacy, social studies and art would be taught for the following ten weeks.

The grounds had been readied over the last week of the holidays by Murray Hartley, the school's groundskeeper, who cut fire breaks along the bush boundary and cleared the gutters of the hall and the old timber schoolhouse. The day closed at the afternoon bell. Reception children were collected from their classrooms, and the older students were released to walk, ride or catch the bus home through the heat. No incidents were recorded.