THE Scots School Albury’ started its 150th anniversary weekend on the right note when opera tenor Thomas Strong performed Nessun dorma at Friday’s commemorative dinner.
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The Boree Creek-raised Strong went to The Scots School and was among hundreds of former staff and students who attended the school’s founders weekend activities.
Principal Peggy Mahy said people had travelled from overseas as well as many parts of Australia for the anniversary.
"I think our commemorative dinner on Friday night was amazing,” Ms Mahy said.
“Having multiple generations of former students coming back, men and women who represent Albury Grammar and also Woodstock, and then The Scots School Albury, which started in 1972.
“Many of those students now, 44 years later, have amazing careers and they were catching up and very excited to hear from their former principals and classmates about what they've done.
“The absolute highlight of the night for me, was to hear Thomas Strong, who's a former student from 2001, finish the evening singing Nessun dorma, which brought the house down."
Melburnian Robin Pleydell, 84, liked seeing how Albury Grammar had evolved into The Scots School.
Mr Pleydell’s family lived at Berrigan when he was a boarder for four years between 1944 and 1948, when Alex Sellars was headmaster.
"It was straight after the war and has got to be seen in that context, but I remember the boarders used to think the food was terrible,” he said, with a laugh.
The Border’s first independent boys school, Albury Grammar School, was founded in 1866 and it amalgamated with Woodstock Girls School in 1972 to form The Scots School.
Former classmates Rodney Tinning and Michael Kemp have remained friends since their student days in the early 1960s.
"I was a boarder here from 1960 to 64, five years,” said Mr Tinning, a retired public servant from Canberra.
“My family had a dairy farm in Cobram and there was no high school in Cobram so I came here as a boarder, I was only 11.”
Mr Kemp, a Melbourne architect, was a day student.
"I wasn't a boarder I was a day boy, we lived in Elmore Street, behind the showground,” he said.
"It’s a school that has transformed. The amenities, especially in the past decade, have changed fantastically."
Ms Mahy said the school would continue to evolve but would remain “fundamentally a boarding school” with a goal to have flexible models for part-time accommodation.