By Christine Rau

Back in the day,1976 to be precise much of Blacktown and Lalor Park was made up of dirt roads and dairy farms, now long vanished beneath sprawling McMansions.Rough-and-tumble pubs such as the Robin Hood at Blacktown station and the Stockade at Lalor Park were hose-’em-down, break-up-the-brawl affairs. Norwest Boulevard wasn’t even a glimmer in a planner’s eye.

Blacktown Boys’ High School and Blacktown Girls’ High School had just introduced co-educational classes for Years 11 and 12, and children roamed the neighbourhood until the streetlights came on.

Some, like future Paralympic gold medallist Helena Brunner, were rising at 5am for swimming training. Others, including Carl Rumph, Dave Simmonds and Peter White, were training hard for the inaugural statewide Amco Shield rugby league competition, which they went on to win that year.

John Parsons and Frank Seckold were jamming on guitar and keyboards, beginning what would become a lifelong involvement in music.

A young John Brumpton dreamed of becoming an actor, while Bruce Gow had his sights set on joining the police force and, later, the fire service.

Fast-forward 50 years and the class of 1976 celebrated its milestone school reunion last month.

“I’ve never organised anything where I’ve been thanked so profusely by so many people. It was all a bit overwhelming,” said Gow, who now runs his own pest-control business.

For Gow and fellow organisers Parsons, Rumph, Brunner and sisters Robyn and Kerry Croft, the event involved a six-month logistical learning curve. They linked with nine local Facebook groups that collectively reached as many as 200,000 people. It was also a crash course in artificial intelligence, which, for this purpose at least, lived up to its potential for good.

Many former students did not use social media, so old-school networking helped fill the gaps.

The committee had hoped perhaps 50 people would attend. As it turned out, the party at Seven Hills RSL on 8 August exceeded the venue’s usually strict 100-person limit.

“They were packed in so tightly that photographer John Durr couldn’t get a group photo,” Gow said.

He is now using AI to compile one.

After an initially awkward start for some who had not seen each other in decades, the decibels rose and dancing followed — although perhaps not quite on the tables.

The now-greyer school band rocked the crowd with Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” before mellowing into blues and soul classics such as Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”.

“The noise level was a lot higher than we expected, so we just had to let some ideas go, such as a comedy program because you wouldn’t have been able to hear it,” Gow said.

“But people were laughing and talking, so it just didn’t matter.”

Some single women had been hesitant to attend alone, so the organisers created a table for singles to help overcome that hurdle.

“There was just a lot more connection than we expected,” Gow said.

That enthusiasm flowed into several additional activities, including a golf day, a bowls day and tours of Blacktown High School and St Patrick’s School.

Another sometimes-overlooked group was the army cadets, past and present. Those who had been cadets at Blacktown Boys’ High in 1976 met the current group of local cadets, led by Natalie Johnson.

While the thought of organising a 50-year reunion can seem daunting, Gow encouraged other school groups to follow suit. However, he recommended allowing 12 months for planning rather than six.

“That way, we could have done a bit more with sponsorships to help disadvantaged kids,” he said.

The Blacktown reunion was so heartwarming and created “such a friendly environment” that plans are now underway for a reunion for the class of ’77, as well as one for the class of ’75, which missed its 50-year celebration.

“Now we have so many contact details, and we can build on that much more easily.”