SOTA News

SOTA's 60th Birthday

Posted on June 04, 2018

On Wednesday May the 16th, an afternoon tea celebration was held to honour the rich history of Port Augusta School of the Air (SOTA).

Many past and present SOTA families, teachers, and people with an interest in SOTA, gathered to celebrate sixty years of our existence in facilitating and supporting distance education across the far-flung remote regions of our state.

A brief timeline saw..

• 7 July 1958 SOTA Commencement day in a makeshift base at the RFDS
• 9 October 1959 official opening of SOTA in its own studio
• 2 February 1978 Norm Bartlett appointed first Itinerant Teacher
• 31 October 1984 Arson lit fire destroys building, equipment and records 1991 SOTA and the Correspondence School amalgamate to become OAC 1999 Two SOTA families appeared on Sesame Street
• 2003 UHF radio turned off and replaced with Centra on line lessons
• 2008 Celebrated 50 years of SOTA and 30 years of the Itinerant Teacher Service

Guest speakers at the party included two SOTA veterans Colleen Manning and Ron Dare. Both had put many years into SOTA and told us of their experiences.

Students sang the SOTA Song and Petie Rankin, one of the organizers of the event, was given the task of cutting the birthday cake.

It was a great chance for people to catch up on years gone by and many stories were remembered and swapped.