College News

St Ursula’s Visit

A small and very enthusiastic group of Year 11 students and I travelled down to St. Ursula’s College in Kingsgrove, Sydney to celebrate their schools Feast Day.

The adventure started early on Sunday morning, October 20th at Armidale Train Station, with the trip taking about 8 hours, but no major delays, so that was good.

Once at Central Station, we bravely fought our way through the Sunday afternoon crush ($2.50 all day train travel) and made our way to Kingsgrove Station, where we were met by the 6 excited host families. All of the students and their families gathered for a BBQ on that evening before going home and enjoying a chilled out night.

Monday morning saw the start of the celebrations. A whole school Mass was held in the Lady of Fatima Parish Church, right next door to the College, with approximately 1200 students in attendance. It was amazing to see and experience. Induction of new leaders took place at the conclusion of the Mass along with a small speech delivered by our students.

The whole school population was then bussed (another massive, logistical management exercise) to Kogarah and a beautiful sight to behold - a massive picnic in the park by the water. The girls laid down their picnic blankets, put out their picnic food and commenced to eat, talk, laugh, play music, some swam or sunbaked - all done in a most wonderful and relaxed way. The whole day ran like clockwork and all students seemed to know exactly what was expected, even down to the gathering at the end of the day when they had to get back on the buses to be shipped back to school. Many of the teachers that I spoke to commented that St Ursula’s College do picnics very well. (I totally agree:)

The students had the opportunity for a bit of downtime on Monday afternoon, the hosts taking them into the city or to the beach. Tuesday it was time to say our goodbyes before we headed back to Central to catch the train home.

It was an absolute pleasure and privilege to accompany these 10 students to Sydney. The connections and friendships that have evolved from this reciprocal visit has been absolutely worthwhile (even the 2 days travel to get there and back for one day of celebrations).

Following are some reflections from the girls:

“I found it interesting to be involved in the St Ursula’s Mass and their Feast Day celebrations. I was lucky enough to meet so many lovely people from the College, and enjoyed their wonderful hospitality.”

Mrs Channon

Public Speaking

Congratulations to year 10 students Eliza Boland and Elian Cotter who participated in the Rotary public speaking competition this evening. Although they didn’t win, both girls spoke confidently and eloquently.

Engineering Challenge

Year 10 students Eliza Boland and Cyan McLauchlin were selected to attend the 'Experience It' day at Macquarie University.

A great opportunity! Well done Eliza and Cyan. Here is a report from Eliza-

It was challenging and lots of fun. We designed and constructed a prosthetic leg made out of materials Engineers Without Borders might use in landmine areas in Columbia. We also used mechatronics to wire and code a sonar. Civil engineering was incorporated into a bridge building workshop where we were required to hold a weight using very limited resources. While we had completed similar tasks in the past, this proved to be much more challenging due to a restriction in materials. Our group won this challenge. We created a floating house to hold marbles, a challenge we also won. We enjoyed the coding and the floating house activities the most. At the end of the day during a ‘Quick Fire Questions’ session we heard from civil, biomedical, mechatronic, environmental and electronic engineers from all around Australia. Cyan and I also had the opportunity to talk to different engineers in multiple fields throughout the day to get a thorough understanding of the endless opportunities available to women and others in engineering.

The optimist says that the glass is half full, the pessimist says it is half empty and the engineer says that the glass is double the size that it needs to be. Engineers are the real problem solvers.