From the Boarding Captains

The past month has been filled with building excitement as the end of the year approaches. Despite the final school assessments and exams, many ‘ end-of-year’ traditions are looked forward to by our boarding community. These include the Boarding photo competition and the annual Christmas dinner held in the dining hall. This is the fifth year that Mrs Franzinelli has run the Photo Competition and although there were many beautiful and unique pictures entered this year, Darcy Barrett's snap of Jet Ski was voted number one to take the win, well done Darcy. Congratulations also go to Hamish Murphy who took out second and third place.  

The Christmas dinner also included a new competition, introduced by Darcy and I; the Christmas carol competition. Eclipses’ catchy version of Silent Night, Endeavour's  Aussie  Jingle Bells, Breakseas’ energetic All I Want for Christmas Is You and Anchorages’ joyful Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.  Darcy has revealed the winner in his article below.  

Another exciting event was the boarding orientation sleepover. I enjoyed meeting all the new families joining our community next year and getting to know our new boarders through competitive games of spikeball, UNO, and the competitive Igloo-mania game. It was great to see so many other boarders come to Michaelmas that afternoon to say hello and join in on a game of footy or have a chat with some friends from home. I’m looking forward to introducing our new Year Seven, Eight and Nines to the community at our Welcome Lunch next year. 

The Christmas dinner also marked a celebratory farewell to three significant members of boarding staff. Ms Robertson, Mrs Ball and Ms Bromhead have all contributed extensively to the wellbeing of our community in many ways. In particular, Ms Bromhead has been instrumental in my boarding experience since moving into Breaksea House. The Breaksea students can always rely on Ms Bromhead for support of any kind, and her selflessness among many other amazing personality traits make her essential for the functionality of Breaksea, and boarding more widely. One thing that Ms Bromhead is especially passionate about is legacy. Undoubtfully, Ms Bromheadds’ legacy has strongly shaped every dynamic of boarding positively, in her own unique, loud and bubbly way. Although we are sad to see you go, we wish nothing but goodluck for your new job over east and thank you for the inspiration you have seeded in your three years at GSG. 

Similarly, I wish Mrs Ball the best for her move back to the family farm and thank her for her hard work as the Head of Middle Boarding this year. We also thank Ms Robertson for her efforts in Anchorage House, we will miss her kindness greatly.  

I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday this summer and look forward to welcoming you back to boarding in 2023.  

Ava Smith | Boarding Captain

The end of the year is finally upon us. The last six weeks have been being extremely busy, with the Albany Show long weekend, an overnight stay of the new boarders of 2023, end-of-year assessments and exams, and the annual Boarding Christmas Dinner. The Years Ten and Eleven students have been busy over the past two weeks with their end-of-year exams. Lots of study and hard work have been put into the preparation for these examinations. The results have come back for most, and the majority of students are very pleased with how they performed.

On Thursday 17 November we welcomed the new 19 boarders for 2023 from Years Seven and Eight into Michaelmas House for an overnight sleepover to get them used to the whole new lifestyle of boarding. It was a great success overall. This was a good chance for the new and current boarders to bond and play games together despite the bad weather, everyone was laughing and having an enjoyable time. The next day was the day school orientation that they all attended. They learnt about the names of classrooms and buildings and made friends from the day school. It was nerve-racking for them all at the start as they were quite shy but socialising and talking made everyone more comfortable with one another.

The boarding Christmas dinner was a blast! Everyone loved the Christmas spirit and the new competition of the boarding Christmas carol singing. Breaksea came out on top overall with their loud rendition of their Christmas carol and as a result they are the official winners of Boarding's Got Talent for 2022. 

This year we have introduced 'Spirit of Boarding' awards. These awards are given to two people from each house. These boarders are organised, compassionate, respectful, support weekend recreation activities and support and help out fellow boarders not only in their boarding house but around the whole boarding community as well. These boarders represent the values of a GSG boarder in their day-to-day life. The boarding values are 'school', 'service', 'spirituality', and 'self'.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday with friends and family. I wish everyone a good harvest (despite the weather) and I am sure I will see a lot of you around in Bremer Bay.

Darcy Barrett | Boarding Captain