Richmond High School

Richmond High School | Melbourne Victoria Australia

Richmond High School opened it's doors on the 7th February 1967 to 61 boys and 31 girls in four temporary classrooms in the grounds of Cremorne Primary School.

Three years later, staff and pupils assisted moving the school to a new purpose built home on the banks of the Yarra River, near Bridge Road, Richmond.

I (Brian Kosbab) was one of the lucky students first through the gates in 1967 and stayed until 1971 completing Form 5 (year 11).  My sister, Wendy Kosbab (later Dart] was also a pupil of RHS starting 4 years later in 1971.

In 1992 Richmond High School became Richmond Secondary College, but then closed at the end of 1992, many of its female students going to Richmond Girls Secondary College.

In 1994 the building and grounds opened its door to the Melbourne Girls College.

Information and links - Richmond High / Secondary College

I spent a little time researching Richmond High School in 2001 but there wasn't much to find.  Then in 2002 I joined www.schoolfriends.com.au and located a number of Richmond High School pupils, but none from my years at the school. 

In 2004, I discovered that all Richmond High School files and records were moved to the Victoria's State Archives office [Melbourne] along with files from Richmond Secondary College [VPRS-9654-P1].  Public Record Office Victoria - 03-9285-7999

Even as late as 2006, in order to find this page, you have to include the word "Melbourne" when searching Google or Yahoo for "Richmond High School".  The first result in Google is OnlyMelbourne guide to Richmond High School followed by Richmond High School Reunion.

Closure of Richmond High School / Secondary College

IT TOOK the people of Richmond 95 years from the time compulsory education was first introduced in Victoria to secure their first high school. It took the Kennett Government less than five months to decide to close it down.

In response to a question about the schools closure, I obtained copies of press stories from the time which are included below. News Articles

Richmond High 1967-1968

    1967 Class 1B     1968 Class 2B*

RIGHT TO LEFT - 1968 2B Picture

TOP ROW
Tasis Georgopolous, David Burke, Brian Kosbab [moi!], Jim Makris, Barry Billows, Alex Fergin

2ND TOP ROW
Con Tsakas, Robert Orr, Roselyn Evans, Veronica Sinclaire, , Mike Ellis, Robert Anderson

3RD ROW
Peter Foster [Gouby?], Theo [opoulopopopopopoloulopos], Nick Gidas, Dale Carrol, A Fazlic, Nick Kharsas, Con Mastrop..., Ron Stafford**

BOTTOM ROW
Effie Panopolous, Angela Scogomillio, Pam Carter, Dianne Stojas, Mr Retchford***, Anna Padoulos, Denise Altham, Cathy Short, Pam Hewitt.

*Highlighted names mean we have made contact.

Who me?

Walking out the school gate that last time, I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my life but I knew then, I wanted to get away from that school.

30 years later, I now understand all I wanted was to get away from a group of bullies who had made my latter high-school years a misery. I won't bore you with the details but it was years before I realised how it affected me.

I went through a succession of jobs until at the ripe old age of 32, something clicked. I walked out of a job, marriage, home and set-off to see the world. I travelled to Europe and spent the next 15 years living in England, Austria and running a bar [Boomerang] on Crete in the Greek Islands.

My beautiful sister Wendy died very suddenly in 2001, which again changed my life. I had just married, a second time and it made me realise how much I missed my family and I wanted to spend the rest of my life back in Australia.

The marriage didn't last a year, I moved back to marvellous Melbourne where I met my life-partner Lynda and 9 months later my little rock arrived, Jaxon.

In no particular order..
- The mighty Tigers and the Richmond Football Club.
- Telling the world about Marvellous Melbourne.
- Helping the fight against Bullying and Discrimination.
- Fun with Ripefruit Publications.

Today I manage my own web publishing company [www.ripefruit.com] from a home office in Preston. On the weekends we walk, cycle and run along the rivers, creeks, streets and parks of the most marvellous city the planet. Melbourne.

If you are one of the faces in the pic, feel free to contact me or schoolfriends

Brian Kosbab (now KING)

* Apologies for spelling errors.

** I broke poor Ron's nose playing cricket in unbelievable, almost comical circumstances...

Picture a cricket game on a normal sports field except away to the left on the edge of the field, some students are practicing other sports.

The ball is bowled and I latch onto it so well I don't even bother to run. We watch the ball sail [seems like forever] until everyone watching realises it is heading straight for the back of Ron's head.  Everyone yells 'look out', to which Ron turns around at the precise moment, the cricket ball hits Ron shattering his nose.

He never forgave me. "I" had done it on purpose.

*** I never got along with Mr Retchford. I didn't particularly like his demeanour or his subjects. It may have resulted in the 'breakdown' I caused the poor bugger to have on March 8 1971. Can you believe I know the date?

I never felt I could contribute to his lessons or answer any questions, so to my amazement he asks a question about something I knew about, so I shot my hand up. He tweaked those enormous glasses and nodded in my direction. I should point out it seemed we were the 'only' class in the school 'not' watching the Muhammad Ali v Joe Frazier boxing on TV in the other classrooms...
and he asked a question about "Frazier"!

By the time I had finished my reply his face was purple. We all thought he was going to explode, which he sort of did by having a breakdown that caused him to miss many weeks of school in recuperation.

Turns out 'retch' was asking about a British politician (not a boxer).. so here I am 30 years later, saying sorry dude!

35 years later, in 2006 I learned Mr Retchford passed away.

Why Only Melbourne?  You mean, my little hobby site?

Richmond High School - History

Turns out the Richmond High School I attended was not the first.  According to Monash Uni's now defunct series on Australian Places, a "Richmond High School was opened in 1920 in a silvan site beside the Yarra River, looking across to Hawthorn's historic St. James precinct."

It sounds like confusion because they then go on to say "The girls' high school near the Town Hall was transferred to the high school, amidst much acrimony, and renamed the Melbourne Girls' College."

This information describes a situation very much like what happened to the school I attended some 50 years later doesn't it?

Since writing this page in 2001 about Richmond High School, I have been trying [quite unsuccessfully] to make it searchable through search engines for the term : Richmond High School. 

It appears now as I write this in 2006, that the school is more commonly referred to as Richmond Secondary College!

Richmond High School - From Wikipedia

Community fights on for a hsrd-won school

Author: Michael Hamel-Green
Date: 25/04/1993
Publication: The Age
Section: Opinion and analysis

MICHAEL HAMEL-GREEN reports on the apparent loss of a historic school that evolved through hard struggle.

IT TOOK the people of Richmond 95 years from the time compulsory education was first introduced in Victoria to secure their first high school. It took the Kennett Government less than five months to decide to close it down.

As Richmond historian Janet McCalman relates in her aptly named book `Struggletown', working-class education was never a high priority for successive Victorian governments.

As late as the 1930s, the conditions and curriculum of Richmond's schools seemed more designed to turn out docile factory fodder than give working-class children access to high schools and professional careers.

Yet it was not a Labor government but the Liberal Bolte Government that gave Richmond its first high school. This followed a public campaign by parents, councillors, teachers, residents and politicians that consumed the Richmond community from 1959 to 1966. And there were some astonishing parallels with the current community action to stop the school's closure.

Then _ as now _ parents, residents, teachers and students organised an occupation of the site, a kind of ``strike in reverse", in which the community carried out the tasks the Government refused to perform. On 27 March 1966 _ after years of deputations to the Education Minister _ some 40 parents and residents occupied the present Yarra bank site and within hours had built a corrugated iron shack, the site's first school classroom. They then erected a sign that read ``Stage 1 of the Richmond High School _ started 1958". Not long afterwards the then Education Minister, Mr Bloomfield, announced the school would start in the following year.

Now _ as then _ parents, teachers, residents, students, supported by the Richmond City Council, are once again occupying the school site, keeping the school going for some 26 students in years 8, 9 and 10 in defiance of the Kennett Government's decision to close down 55 schools, many in working-class suburbs.

Now _ as then _ dozens of community members, parents and teachers are risking arrest for the sake of giving Richmond youth a chance in a society with few breaks for those who live on the wrong side of the Yarra.

Leading the battle is the former School Council president, Elvie Sievers. She and her two brothers all went to Richmond Secondary and her son, Greg, is a current student. She talks passionately, as only a local parent can, of the sense of pain and anger that the Government's attempt to close the school had caused. ``This school would always give every kid a chance. Richmond would give you a go, without any sort of culling ... We don't believe that any government has the right to shut schools. The Government doesn't own them, they only hold them in trust for the community." As Ms Sievers notes, the school had developed special programs and expertise in teaching migrants and working-class children, and in its final year had achieved a VCE pass rate of 84 per cent compared to a state average of 76 per cent.

Now all this is being destroyed as Richmond kids are shunted off to middle-class, largely Anglo schools in adjoining suburbs which, despite their good intentions in making Richmond kids welcome, lack multicultural expertise and cannot prevent the inevitable frictions caused by differing social backgrounds and overcrowded classrooms.

According to the Richmond Save Our Schools Community, about 60 former students have preferred to go on the dole rather than transfer to other schools where they expect, rightly or wrongly, that they will be treated as second-class citizens.

Students still at the occupied school fiercely defend it. When I sat in on a ``home group" (pastoral care) class, the anger and disappointment was palpable. Sam Tsakalis, 14, showed me an essay he had just completed for English, in which he wrote: ``I don't really want to go to another school because I like this school better than the others. It was better here last year because the teachers were friendly. They taught us well. Personally, I think that Kennett wants this school closed just for the land and just because Richmond is a Labor town." Another parallel between the campaign to get the school and the one to save it: the extraordinary courage, persistence and imagination of the Richmond community. In the late '50s and early '60s, the campaigners for the school successfully pursued their goal against the odds, battling an unsympathetic Liberal government and local hurdles.

In the current campaign, now in its third month of occupation, 15 volunteer qualified teachers are successfully maintaining full years 8 to 10 programs, and the school is even expanding its community role to include evening tutoring programs for VCE students who have moved to other schools.

They are also organising joint sporting events with fellow rebel schools, such as Northlands. And all this while maintaining a vigorous community campaign that has won support from the Richmond council and the teachers unions.

THE occupation is not the only line of attack. As a Richmond parent and single mother, Ms Sievers is pursuing a case in the Equal Opportunity Commission that the Government decision discriminates against Richmond boys since girls can continue to go to the Richmond Girls Secondary School. The case has already resulted in a decision preventing the Government from removing equipment from the school.

As a consequence of cuts to legal aid services, Ms Sievers is conducting her own case before the commission. At each hearing, she sits at one end of the table, a lone mother unable to afford legal counsel, yet empowered enough by her Richmond Secondary College education and her community's long history of struggle to challenge a legal battalion of three Government barristers and three instructing solicitors arrayed at the other end of the table.

She is remarkably unfazed. ``I feel the scales are balanced up by the fact that we are right. They might win the legal battle, but we'll win the moral battle." Dr Michael Hamel-Green teaches community development at Victoria University of Technology.
 

Author: MARK BRUER
Date: 12/02/1994
Publication: The Age

The images are distressing: a burly policeman appears to dig his fingers hard into the sides of the neck of a sitting protester, whose face screws up in pain.
The policeman lifts the weakened protester by the neck in a hold that revives memories of the grotesque theatre of `World Championship Wrestling'. Except that this is for real.

Elsewhere, another policeman wearing rubber gloves seems to have gripped a protester by the ear with one hand, and grasped his chin with the other. The demonstrator, whose face is also contorted in apparent agony, is virtually dragged by the head from his place of protest.

These are the images of Victorian police on the nightly news bulletins on Thursday after 60 police cleared about 80 anti-logging protesters from outside the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources in East Melbourne.

Doctors are alarmed, warning that what police call the pressure-point technique may seriously injure or even kill people.

It is inevitable that if protesters refuse to move, and police have been instructed to shift them, then police will use force of some kind, and force of any kind is invariably ugly. As a society, we have to accept that those who are charged with our protection cannot always conduct themselves in a photogenic manner.

So Thursday's images need to be put into perspective. Police say the protest was not unusual, and was not regarded as violent. There were no arrests, and only a few protesters were subjected to the kind of handling highlighted in the media.

They also say they have used pressure grips on the necks and heads of protesters before, and so this was nothing new. Maybe so, but that does not make it right. The fact that nobody has been badly hurt so far may be due to good police training; it may also be just good luck.

The call by the deputy commissioner, Mr Bob Falconer, for an investigation into the police handling of the protest is to be welcomed. It shows that the police hierarchy is at least concerned about the use of force against what was, after all, a peaceful demonstration.

In the meantime, the use of pressure on the necks of people who, however stubborn they might be, do not pose a threat to the safety of officers or the public should be stopped. The warnings of the doctors should not be taken lightly.

Of course, it is far easier to suggest what police should not do in these circumstances than to say what they should do.

The question of what constitutes reasonable force in any situation must always be a matter for the judgment of police on the scene. But underpinning that judgment must be a keen awareness of the need for police to develop a relationship of trust and cooperation with the community.

This kind of encounter, repeated too often, must damage the relationship between the police and at least a substantial proportion of the public. While many people will welcome a tough police stand against protesters, there will be many others who regard heightened displays of police strength in defence of government property and policy as inappropriate and even frightening.

And there is a risk that such displays may become more frequent.

Late last year, police used a military-style baton drill to break up a demonstration at Richmond High School, leaving several of the protesters bloodied. Later, the police assistant commissioner (operations), Mr Brian Church, said police had learnt their lesson after officers had been assaulted, and were upgrading their public policing policy.

Exactly what this means is unclear. But if it means that police are going to go into protests with greater vigor, in greater numbers, and with techniques and equipment that may cause grave injury, we have a problem.

The image of the Victoria Police is confused by this resort to a more severe physical response to protesters.

On one hand, they are building bridges. They are trying to foster closer links with the citizenry they serve through the community policing policy, under which police and community representatives get together to think of ways to reduce crime and make policing relevant to social needs. This is surely an admirable aim.

Out at Ferntree Gully, country-style policing is being adopted, in which officers stationed and living in the area for a long time will spend several days each week mixing with locals. More bridges.

On the other hand, the conduct of police at protests may be building walls. The use of batons, pressure-point tactics, and maybe the new capsicum spray being tested at the moment will cast police in the role of the enemies of legitimate dissent.

Such a perception, fair or not, will be unhelpful for a force that is otherwise striving for a constructive partnership with a community in which there will always be dissent.

Students doing the three-school shuffle

Date: 20/10/1993
Publication: The Age
Section: Letters to the Editor

from Barbara A. Sharpe,former state secondary schoolteacher A distressing aspect of the latest round of school closures and mergers in Victoria is that some students face a forced change of school for the second year in a row.
In the north-west metropolitan region, the old Newlands High School became Newlands Secondary College, but was then closed at the end of 1992, many of its students going to either Coburg High School or Preston Secondary College. Now, these two schools are to merge with a new name yet to be determined and on a site yet to be determined (but possibly the dilapidated old Newlands site).

In the south-east metropolitan region, the old Richmond High School became Richmond Secondary College, but was then closed at the end of 1992, many of its female students going to Richmond Girls Secondary College. Now, this school is to ``merge" with the distant Malvern Girls, perhaps as Melbourne Girls Secondary College. Where? yes, on the old Richmond High site.

Students who began secondary schooling in 1989 will end up attending three schools under four names on two or three sites, without moving house or choosing to change.

One wonders what happened to the values of security and continuity in schooling.

One wonders what further one-step-at-a-time-thinking changes may yet be announced by Mr Hayward and the gnomes of the directorate of school education.

Barbara A. Sharpe, Thornbury.

From black hole to brown shirts?
Date: 15/12/1993
Publication: The Age
Section: Letters to the Editor

From black hole to brown shirts? The outrageous and shamefully brutal actions by Victoria Police at the Richmond Secondary College on Monday exemplifies our Jeff's slogan that Victoria is indeed ``on the move" _ to fascism. We can forget our Government's fabricated economic black hole because the darker clouds of oppression hang ominously over Victoria.
Peter Gatto, West Brunswick.

They bought it The demonstrators at Richmond Secondary College were given ample warning to keep the demonstration peaceful, but clearly the ``rent-a- crowd" group sought aggression. It should be pointed out that the police were in fact enforcing a decision of the court.

Ray Chapman, Box Hill South.

Cry for Australia I am still in a state of shock and horror at the scenes I saw on television on Monday of the beating by police of protesters, especially by the policeman who several times rammed his baton into the pit of a young woman's stomach. My beloved democratic Australia! What has happened to you? Phyllis Dewar, Yarraville.

What price freedom? The screaming battle cry of police and the random bashing of demonstrators made me feel ashamed to be a Victorian. What a terrible sentence has been inflicted on all Victorians by the people who voted this Government to power. Is balancing a budget worth the loss of our freedom? Barbara Osborne, Doncaster.

Spirit of Eureka Congratulations to the Richmond rebels for their heroic way that they stood up against the violence used on the picket line. The spirit of the Eureka Stockade still lives.

Brian Butler, Ballarat.

The black and blue brigade Police evidence can no longer be believed when a very senior police commissioner can claim that a phalanx of police needed to slam and prod with batons to protect themselves against unarmed Richmond Secondary College protesters. It was with extreme cowardice that our police attacked defenceless mothers.

Kevin Grover, South Yarra.

Some vision of democracy! I thought Jeff Kennett had envisaged a Victoria of the future, a state both free and fair. The appalling tactics used to defend his Government's decision regarding Richmond High has blotted out this possibility. So much for consultation and the right to a voice in a civilised democracy.

Glen Thomas, Plenty.

Health hazard Police batons break bones and cause serious injury. There can be no justification for the sickening attack by police on peaceful protesters at Richmond High. Elderly and young alike were beaten and bloodied for simply trying to save a school. Free speech in the Kennett state may be bad for your health.

Nick Fahey, Fitzroy.

One more mountain After slugging the poor, boycotting the press, sacking public servants, intimidating the judiciary, strangling FoI, bashing protesters and generally governing for one's mates and supporters, what is there left for Jeff to do? A gerrymander springs to mind.

Wolfgang Rebien, Welshman's Reef.

Kennett's dark side Victorians, we are in the process of having our democratic freedoms eroded piece by piece by Kennett's ``big brother" legislation. So many independent bodies have been abolished and we should worry because fascism has always operated thus. You have been warned, Kennett is more dangerous than the clown part we see so often! John Llewellyn, Box Hill.

Milestone How fitting that Kennettism's first year ends with a scandal striking at the heart of our legal system and its legitimacy.

Keith Mitchell, Warburton.

Page last updated: 22nd March, 2009.