School song composer Errol Duck-Chong returns to Inverell High School

Music teacher Errol Duck-Chong was asked to compose the school song when he started at the school fresh out of college in 1958.

"Within my first month the principal of Inverell High at the time came to me and said another teacher Bill Simpson had written the words for a school song, and he wanted me to write the music," Mr Duck-Chong said.

"I still smile when I remember it because being asked something like that straight out of teachers college blows you away.

"I did it, but I haven't written anything else, and I'm not likely to.

"To know it is still being sung more than 60 years later is wonderful."

Inverell High School's aboriginal liaison officer, Jenny Donnelly, had attended a reunion at her old school Forest High in Sydney a few years ago where Mr Duck-Chong had been deputy principal. The two struck up a conversation when she gave him some mementoes from his time at the school.

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Mr Duck-Chong asked Ms Donnelly to have the words of the school song (which he had forgotten) sent to him. An exchange of photos and memories then began between him and school administrator officer Tracy Scott.

Ms Scott arranged for Mr Duck-Chong's visit last Monday, and as a surprise made a collage of the historic photos he had given her to hang in the main school building.

"It was a great honour to see these things and to hear the school choir sing the school song," Mr Duck-Chong said.

"I wanted it to be a low key event but to see the collage of the photos I had taken, and to hear the school song was a great honour.

"You don't do these things for recognition; they are just something you do at the time as part of life."

After a long career in education, Mr Duck-Chong retired from Forest High more than 25 years ago, and while he has returned to the Inverell area to judge eisteddfods over the years, he has never returned to the school. He enjoyed walking around his old stamping ground and seeing the infrastructure improvement made over the years, but he says he is glad he is not teaching anymore.

"I think some of the greatest changes in education have been in the behaviour of kids and sometimes the lack of expectation in their behaviour," he said.

"I think people can identify with that and I'm glad I had the opportunity to make some impact on the lives of kids when I did."

In terms of music education, Mr Duck-Chong said he thinks kids have a lot of opportunity these days.

"Watching and listening to the children at Inverell High School demonstrated the wonderful opportunities that are available to kids now," he said

"They were singing and playing but like anything, the opportunities are there, but the possibilities will never come to fruition unless the person does something about it.

"The possibilities and the opportunities remain the same as ever, if not greater."

Mr Duck-Chong's grandparents were Chinese immigrants who lived in Tingha where his father was born and raised before he moved to Sydney as an officer in the Salvation Army.

When he left teachers' college, Mr Duck-Chong says he was grateful to be offered Inverell because it had a strong Salvation Army community.

"I intended only to do one year here, but I ended up staying for seven because I became involved in many things and it is a wonderful town," he said.