A spectacular beginning
Port Hacking High School opened its doors to students for the commencement of the 1959 school year after transferring the entire complement of enrolled students from the old Sutherland Intermediate High School which was bursting at the seams and had an enrolment of about 900, although it was designed for about 350.
Miranda Fair (now Westfield) didn't exist then - it was the brickyards - and students took a short-cut through the clay pits to the station. Port Hacking High School took its name from the river Bass & Flinders rowed into and discovered on April Fools Day in 1796. The word Deeban was the Aboriginal name for the river.
Selby Jenkins was the first Headmaster and the new school had a very strong staff including about a dozen teachers who had been servicemen during the war.
A very unusual event occurred within the first days of the school opening. Just after lunch on 30 January 1959, the pupils in some of the classes on the upper floor of the new Port Hacking High School (the current English /History rooms) were eye-witnesses to the mid-air breakup of a Naval Fairy Gannet aircraft.
At about 1pm, there was a loud bang and students rushed towards the windows just in time to see an aeroplane explode and crash. The tail of the plane was seen to come away from the fuselage as the engine appeared to explode. The tail section plummeted to the ground, while the pilot, who had taken control of the recently serviced Gannet four minutes previously from the Bankstown Airport, remained with the craft to guide it away from homes in its inevitable crash path. The plane hit the ground in a flurry of smoke and flames in Bellingara Road, Sylvania, alongside the Jubilee Caravan Park. The pilot was the only fatality. Had he not remained with the aircraft there would undoubtedly have been great loss of life.
The wreckage was scattered over about a kilometre and the body of the plane was found to be inverted and burning fiercely.
Bruce Watt
Head Teacher HSIE
