Victorian P-12 College of Koorie Education (former Glenroy High School, Box Forest campus), Glenroy campus

Victorian P-12 College of Koorie Education (former Glenroy High School, Box Forest campus), Glenroy campus.

In the 1960s and 1970s the eight children in the Murray family (Diana, Stephen, Gary, Brian, Margaret, Wayne, Bev and Greg) attended Glenroy High School close to their home. They were the only Aboriginal children in the area and at the school:

We were the first Aboriginal family to move out here. …My brothers earned a reputation as the Murray boys. Because around here it was very tough, very tough neighbourhood It was everybody, everybody, you had Maltese, Germans, every nationality… (Bev Murray Interview BM1).

The five Murray boys were well known in the school and the community:

Bev Murray: Oh yeah, the boys were very popular…you know in their teenage years they had a lot of friends (Bev Murray Interview BM1).

Nora Murray: And of course the girls loved them and there was a lot of jealously between our, you know the white boys of course, and our boys because they were the ones who got all the girls (Nora Murray Interview NM1).

Bev Murray: All the pretty girls, hey (Bev Murray Interview BM1).

Bev Murray recalls the sport they played at the school:

Yes yep we enjoyed sport. And sport I guess was, you know, sport always helps to break down barriers, it doesn’t matter where it is or what it is… Oh, we played everything from you know netball to basketball, hockey…soccer… Yeah, we did everything… Cricket too, cricket, Gary was into cricket, and it must be footy for the boys (Bev Murray Interview BM1).

Years later the Box Forest campus of Glenroy High School closed down and the site is now the location of an Aboriginal school. In 1995 a new education initiative for Aboriginal children was launched in Victoria with two campuses of the Koorie Open Door Education (KODE) schools established in Morwell, and Glenroy in the City of Moreland. KODE state schools, funded by the state government, offer standard kindergarten to year 12 curriculum to mainly Aboriginal children but also to children of non-Aboriginal background that attend.

The KODE philosophy is founded upon the dreams of Koorie Elders which have been clearly articulated over many decades in a variety of contexts. The KODE campus has a brief to provide the best of Indigenous and the best of Western knowledge in an educational environment that while welcoming all, is firmly based upon key Koorie values of community and respect. This school has resulted in significant structural, curriculum, pedagogy and paradigm shifts creating a holistic educational package that is improving rates of access, attendance, retention and success (KODE profile 18/06/02: 2).

There are currently four KODE schools in Victoria including the campuses in Morwell and Glenroy and also campuses in Mildura and Swan Hill. The locations for school campuses were decided

based on the demographic of Aboriginal children in these areas. Glenroy is part of the “northern wedge” of indigenous settlement in Melbourne which stems from Fitzroy, northward including the Moreland, Darebin and Hume local government areas as far north as Craigieburn (Barney Stephens Interview BS1). About 50 Aboriginal children (or 75% of the student population) attend the KODE school in Glenroy. These students’ families originate principally from Mildura, Shepparton and Gippsland and from places as north as the Central Desert and Queensland.

According to Barney Stephens most of these children would have been born in Melbourne but some relate very strongly to their “roots, from where their parents and grandparents are from” (Barney Stephens Interview BS1). The school promotes a community attitude to learning which is important for encouraging involvement from “family Elders” and getting children to attend school (Barney Stephens Interview BS1). The school’s culturally sensitive approach and inclusion of indigenous studies means that children can still feel a link with their culture even while at school. In particular it is the understanding environment fostered at KODE which takes into account the needs of children to be absent from school to return to country for family commitments and understands the difficulty of getting children to school, which makes it an important place in the area for the families of Aboriginal students who extend north to Roxburgh, south to Coburg, east to Heidelberg west and west to Pascoe Vale (Barney Stephens Interview BS1).

KODE is well placed in Glenroy as many Aboriginal people live around the Glenroy, Hadfield,

Broadmeadows area:

…everybody [who] stays at Glenroy one way or another or has known of Kode school and sends their kids there because, you know people think well you know, it’s the only way that my kids are going to learn without being prejudiced and racism and taught where it’s an Indigenous school where it addresses the needs the issues of Indigenous and it’s controlled by Indigenous people, so you know, it’s got that community involvement which is really important for kids, I mean, always making sure that who they are, at sports, causing respect, you know… But yeah, Broadie, Glenroy has always been a travel route for Indigenous people because basically that’s where the high level, of housing, the public housing was in those days (Gary Hansen Interview GH2).

Gary Hansen and the Brunswick Power Football Club see the KODE School as an important part in developing sport opportunities for young Aboriginal people:

We’re currently negotiating with the AFL to, to have an Indigenous Football College where, where a set of criteria is attached where we’re encouraging Indigenous footballers who want to take football, sports instruction as a career that we’re to develop a football course in conjunction with AFL, KODE school and as so we can …sporting achievements and our economical goals too, opportunities, and we’re, KODE school is great diverse school that deals with a whole lot of issues and we think that it will be centrally located for everybody because there’s you know there’s a bus run so bus can go round pick up the students or there’s community buses that pick up, pick up other kids and so’s all this development of partnerships around everything that KODE School given the right opportunities would be the ideal place for developing Indigenous sports, football as sports, because we’ve got some of the great clubs like Brunswick Power we’re hoping you know we have an affiliation with the college so we get the best of their players who aren’t being picked up in the colleges (Gary Hansen Interview GH2).

The Murray family still have associations with the former Glenroy High school, now KODE school:

Nathan was here, Nathan Lovett Murray, the footballer, he’s our nephew, and he would go over there to give talks to the kids, sort of footy clinic with them and that’s about it. The school, yeah, my nephew, my Cody, Wayne’s son, he’s supposed to be going there this year, he’s starting there. But, they, I’ve been over there, and they need a big injection of resources, you know (Bev Murray Interview, BM1).

Bev Murray believes the school needs more funding in order to develop and achieve the samefacilities as other public schools.

They’ve got areas there that need to be developed and I mean, there’s also white kids going there. They wouldn’t be like that. It shouldn’t be tolerated. They should have all the resources they need, those kids… I congratulate them on, on it’s surviving this long, really. And I’d like to see it developed further, they’ve got all that space there, but they need more funding support. Those kids should have their own social area, with all the amenities that they need and they’ve got very little (Bev Murray Interview, BM1).

At the beginning of 2006 the four KODE campuses amalgamated to form a new school, The Victorian P-12 College of Koorie Education. The four campuses are still retained (Barney Stephens Interview BS1).