School Poem and Hymn

Yep, formality was the order of the day with Miss Foley.  She tried to instill a feeling of goodwill and community amongst us all.  Whether it worked or not was a different matter!  Here are the school's official Hymn and Poem as we used to hear frequently at assemblies and formal gatherings.

To open this up for search engines, here is the text of the above

School Hymn: Let there be peace on earth



Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

Let there be peace on earth the peace that was meant to be.

With God as our father, brothers all are we.

Let me walk with my brother, in perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with me - let this be the moment now.

With every step I take, let this be my solemn vow:

To take each moment and live each moment in peace eternally.

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

School Poem:  All Beauteous Things

I love all beauteous things

I seek and adore them

God hath no better praise

And Man in his hasty days

Is honoured for them

I too will something make

And joy in the making

Although tomorrow it seem

Like the empty words of a dream

Remembered on waking

Absolutely incredible how non-secular, patriarchal and obsolete these things are.  The current school motto is "Pathways to Learning"!!  You'd probably get sued by people having this school poem and school hymn in this day and age.

Right... What now??

...phew!  As you may be aware I used to have a Gorokan High website up on my personal web space with my ISP IntergrityNet at Gosford (not a bad ISP - excellent service, but expensive).  When I changed ISPs back to Telstra BigPond, then that website disappeared, and it has been down for a lot longer than I had hoped it would have been.

We are now back with a vengeance, and with the option to include a lot more data (unlimited - it's hosted by "Blogger", which is a service provided by Google, so one can assume they have a big hard drive or two to keep the data safe).  My personal web space was limited to a mere ten megabytes, and at the time of it going offline, the thing was occupying 8.96 megs, so we didn't have far to go.

Putting the site on to a blog is going to be tricky, as the arrangement of the blog is primarily chronological.  IE the articles will come up in order of when they are posted.  However the hosting charges are nil and as mentioned we have unlimited space, so there are huge differences.

The old blog was restricted to just MY year at Gorokan High (Year 10/1980).  There is no reason to limit this blog to any year at all.  In the early days of the blog, my material will naturally come from the early years because that's what I've got, but if I come across anything else useful from future years (or the one before), I'll put it online.

- Yours truly.

In addition, Blogger allows user comments (and I want to see a lot of them, guys).  So it has the chance to be alot more interactive than the old web site. Another big plus is that it doesn't just have to be me adding the blog posts.  If anyone would like to become either an editor or blogger, and you have the IT skills to be able to do it properly, please send me a line by email.  (Finding my email address on the blog might be your first challenge - although it IS very prominent)!

Okay, so away we go.  What on earth am I going to make the first (substantive) post, I wonder...

Inaugural post

Okay, this is EARLY days, but the old Gorokan High site I used to have up will be transferred here in a new format shortly.  For now this blog is merely a placeholder.  But don't panic, we will be placing MANY things here in the near future.

-Peter Deane  (Year 12/1982)  (Second year of GHS)

Reunion: 2009 for 40-ish year olds at Wyong Leagues Club at Kanwal

This reunion was organised by Darlene Williams-Woodger. The message she posted on Facebook read:

If you are now 40-44 ish years old, we are having a Gorokan High School get together and hope you can join us.

VENUE - Wyong Rugby Leagues Club Auditorium
DATE - 10th of October 2009
TIME - 7pm
COST - $25 per person
PAYMENT DUE 22nd of Aug

You have to pre-pay for this event as TICKETS WILL NOT BE SOLD AT THE DOOR. The cost includes venue, security, finger food and music. Partners are welcome.

This was quite a well-attended reunion.  Naturally, I only hung out with a limited number of people from my school year.  So if you attended this and have more pictures, I'd love you to send them to me and I'll add them to the blog.  These pics were taken on Deahne Campbell's (nee Gray) camera - many thanks.

Deahne Campbell (Nee Gray) and Murray Howard

Sharon Deane (Woy Woy High) and Peter Deane (I did wake up later)

Doug Vincent and Deahne Campbell (Nee Gray)

Doug Vincent, Deahne Campbell (Nee Gray) and Murray Howard

Elizabeth  Bell (Nee Jenkins) and Scot Nieass

Craig Hemers and ???

Press: 2009 Doug Carley



Photo courtesy of the Newcastle Herald

Oh, how the mightly have fallen.

No Gorokan High School blog would be complete without a mention of Doug Carley.  Remember him?  He transferred to Gorokan High from Cardiff in early 1979 and taught in the English Department.

He was Canadian, and thus one of his hobbies was Ice-Hockey.  He also participated in Basketball, Drama, Philosophy and was a general agitator for the common good.  He transferred away from Gorokan High the next year, citing the fact that all the rest of the staff had ostracised him.  This seemed to be a pattern with him, as his history shows him transferring to quite a number of high schools in the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie area.

He joined the ALP and went on to get preselection as a Lake Macquarie councillor, eventually progressing  to become Mayor in 1991.  I can remember a Lake Macquarie Post article of the time depicting his father coming out from Canada to proudly see his son receive the Mayoral chain and robes.

In Easter 1993 he went to Fiji with a 15-year old youth called Derryck who supposedly referred to Doug as a "Dutch Uncle" (whatever that is).  After all the inuendo and speculation he resigned from the post of Mayor and went back to teaching.  It was at this point that he separated from and became divorced from his wife Judith - they used to live just up the road from me at Caves Beach and attended the Swansea branch of the ALP when I was frequenting it.

In 1996 he was placed on a three year good behaviour bond after being charged and convicted of indecently assaulting a fifteen year old boy who he coached at basketball.  Hopefully the education department came to their senses at this point and stopped hiring him as  a teacher.

In the intervening years he must have hit the skids, as he's popped up living in Fowler Street, Hamilton South, an inner-southern suburb of Newcastle.  For those who know Hamilton South it needs no repeating that it's an area of Public Housing - reasonably high density flats and villas, all occupied by people from a lower socio-economic status.

Well, just recently he's hit the newspapers again.  In 2009 he pleaded guilty to the aggravated indecent assault of a 12-year-old boy whilst living in the Fowler Street area.  I need type no further, for those of you interested in reading the links to the Newcastle Herald articles, here you go:

• Former Mayor on Sex Charge (10 Jan 2009)
• ex-Mayor guilty of indecent assault (25 Aug 2009)
• Former Mayor Sorry for Abuse (3 Oct 2009)



From Lake Macquarie Council Collection

He's also mentioned in Jeff Corbett's blog (Housing Children - 24 Sep 2009), and made The Australian in 2006 as the start of a string of ex-ALP Lake Macquarie councillors who seem to be into sex crimes (Doug Carley and Milton Orkopoulos (who actually gave me a lift home from a Swansea ALP branch meeting one night)).

He'll be out of gaol at the current point in time, and he was mentioning his intent to return to Canada.  I wonder whether they'll let him back in?

Misc Photo 2005 New School Gates

Parents and friends noticed a severe lack of class with the school gates and main entrance.  Essentially it was unchanged from the opening of the school in 1977.  In 2002, P&C Manager0 Larene O'Neill started "Operation Facelift", a large Community Project to give Gorokan High School an environmental facelift.  It began with the help of the Central Coast Express Advocate and a group of volunteer Gorokan High School Students from grades 7 - 12.  Three years later, in 2005, assisted by a large donation from Delta Electricity it struck pay-dirt, resulting in new school gates and a couple of signs.   Here are the photos (thanks to Larene O'Neill for the pictures)

Press: 2002 Reunion Class of 1979 & 80 at the Beachcomber

On Saturday 5 October, 2002 a reunion for our year and the year before was held at the Beachcomber. It was organised by Darren Gates, Lisa Cook(nee Crawley), Deborah Swan, Ben Ratcliffe, Kim Salodine, Catrina Cowan, Cathy Crooks, Donna McMillan, Linda Cummings and Kerrie Gordon. (phew). It was a very successful night, with music from a couple of bands (Rockin' Horse and Quadravibe) in the "Underground" room of the Beachcomber, and we were able to breakout into the quiet area near the pool entrance (formerly called the Nautilus Bar) which allowed wistful conversations. There were a couple of newspaper articles on this re-union.

NB: if these images are a little too difficult to read, click on the image to get it up in a separate display.  You can then download the image by right-clicking it and selecting "Save Picture As".  You'll probably be able to see it better displayed on your own computer where you can scroll around and enlarge it with much more control than here on the blog.

Misc Photo 2001 Aboriginal Students

Click on photo for full-size image, or right click and choose Save TARGET As... to download.

Gorokan High prides itself as being the centre for Aboriginal studies on the 'Coast, with a dedicated building being constructed for the purpose.  Here are the students who identified themselves as being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in 2001.

Staff Photo 2001 (all)

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In this photo: (coming later)