Our day started with a catch up at the old school gates on Fort Street! Lots of OMG moments, as well as "how (who) are you" - name tags helped out a lot! 35 people were able to attend this part of the day. We were given front row centre seats in the hall at the start of the Term 4 assembly. They still do a processional in and sing "Gaudeamus Igitur" - what a blast! Robert Wood spoke to the assembled throng about what it's like to be three times older than anyone in a school uniform!
And yes they sang the girls song - to different words (why?) and gave the boys a thrill to sing their song - with the same words! We then received a lovely morning tea, spoke to interested Year 11 kids about life 'way back then', who took us on personal tours around the school. The Fortian Foundation had set up the Ron Horan room with 70's memorabilia and a whole lot of material directly applying to our year.
All in all a great effort by the school on our behalf.
Last people out left by 1pm and thus 6 hours until the evening reunion bash at PJ Gallagher's in Leichhardt. Their upstairs area had been decked out by the committee and so lots of photos from Fortian magazines and school archives on display.
There were more OMG and now "who (how) are you" moments as people arrived. Again thank goodness for name tags! However pretty quickly people started to move around and spend time with old friends and venture into the dark territory of talking to someone you never spoke to much (at all) at school! 63 people were able to attend the evening. Another 25 would have liked to be there but given other commitments (many due to going overseas) were not able to do so.
There was a break in the chit chat for a presentation which covered off a number of things including addressing how the whole event had come together and a mini Q & A session. The highlight was archival footage (super 8 movies) from Observatory Hill which featured many of the girls from our years. This was met with a mixture of amazement and unbelief that this material existed, yet with many laughs also at how 'things' around 'fashion and figures' had somewhat 'changed'. It became evident that much of it had been filmed by some of our girls all those years ago.
And yes we did break into dancing to the hits of 1976-78 until 1am at which point we moved downstairs. We are lead to believe the last people left around 4:15am! Legendary effort for 55 year olds!
So there it is. Quite simply a great day enjoyed by all.
This is now the 4th reunion and a lot of esprit de corp exists across our group which is not often seen in such gatherings and so as you will see we are keeping this going!