This Time of Year—April 2023

Principal

Our School Assembly, around this time of the year, is always one that holds a particular solemnity and reverence. We have the global Christian tradition of Easter coinciding with the national significance of ANZAC Day and the deeply personal acknowledgement, for our community, of the anniversary of the Christmas Creek bus accident.

The stories, reflections and messages of ANZAC Day remind us of the powerful example of people’s stoicism and sacrifice, the waste of war and how much we all have to be grateful for in our free democracy. Many of our families will have taken part in ANZAC Day services and our students participated in the students' service and sang at the annual Nurses Vigil.

Against the backdrop of the wars our nation has fought in, at home our School experienced its own very personal, very close tragedy. Joining a community such as ours means getting to know about these events that define us. And for those of us already here, even for decades, it is just as important that we stop, pause, reflect and remember, as Mrs Julie Caton (1981) did so sensitively in her address at Assembly last week.

Both the commemoration of ANZAC Day and remembrance of the Christmas Creek bus accident give us reason to think deeply about important questions: what do we learn out of difficult times—collectively, individually? What qualities and strengths are shown in adversity—and how can we draw upon them for inspiration to live a little better, find greater purpose, and maintain an active hope for the future?

We have so much to look forward to this Term. Year 12 students are excitedly planning, and probably dreaming about, their Formal. Our runners are training hard for QG Cross Country, with an invitational meet held at Rangakarra earlier this week, and our dedicated musicians are rehearsing for the exquisite music that has become synonymous with the Cathedral Concert. All are embarking upon new topics in their subjects with their passionate teachers. Fundamental to that learning and these experiences is presence.

We all remember the thrill of the return, post quarantine, and how delighted all were to be here and together—physically present, looking into one another’s faces, connecting through their eyes. And yet, it seems that there is a powerful new trend emerging—a type of voluntary, self-imposed isolation. Students with faces glued to their screens sitting side by side, or dangerously crossing a road. Students with AirPods stuck in their ears, missing all manner of personal contact including perhaps the small gesture or kind words they needed that particular morning, the opportunity of making a new friend at the bus stop, forming a deeper connection to another.

There is most certainly a very important place for solitude in our lives but as the message of WH Auden’s poem New Year Letter written in 1940, during World War II, reminds us: 'every day in sleep and labour, our life and death are with our neighbour'.  I hope our students see the promise of the Term ahead and take some time to renegotiate their relationship with their phones, social media and one another. For the basis of an academic community, any community, is relationship and attention.

I hope this Term is a very special one for our students and that, when they get to the end of it, they can look back and be proud of how hard they have worked.