Program News

Performing Arts

Work Experience

Within the NBC Arts team we are strengthening our cross campus connections even further by supporting and enabling some of our senior school students from the Goldsworthy campus to come across to our junior campuses one day a week and work alongside one of our many innovative, talented and extremely creative Arts teachers. 

This initiative benefits everyone involved immensely, senior students get to work more in depth on their passion, in conjunction with obtaining work experience allowing them an insight into future career paths, junior students as they can become inspired by working collaboratively with older students and get to see the love they have for the subject and the primary teachers get a chance to see the impact they make on students at the other end of their learning.

This term we have Baxter Clifford, a year 12 student interested in pursuing  a career in the Performing Arts industry. Baxter is working closely with Colette Brennan and Jaimi Baxter, who run the prep - 6 Performing Arts program at Wexford campus. 

NAIDOC WEEK

During week 1 term 3 NBC celebrated NAIDOC week across the College. For thousands of years Aboriginal communities have celebrated the arrival of Bogong moths and have been interwoven into their songlines and stories. The students learnt about the importance of the Bogan moths to our First Nations People and for survival of our endangered Mountain Pigmy Possum. Each student from P-6 across the College made their own Bogan Moth and have been displayed around their campus. The Grade 5/6 Students from Hendy said, “They found the activity really fun as they enjoyed the design aspect and it was very interesting to learn about the Moths and Aboriginal culture”. 

Year 9 & 10 IMPACT Drama Performance 

Yesterday at the Goldsworthy Theatre, our talented Year 9 and 10 IMPACT students showcased their immersive drama piece in front of a selected student audience. The performance was a powerful display of creativity, collaboration and expression—highlighting the incredible work they’ve been developing through the IMPACT program.

The performances were inspired by the students on ideas and were both performers in the performance and in the audience.

Well done to all involved for your passion and professionalism on stage.

State School Spectacular 

On the 13 September a group of 35 students from Northern Bay will be performing in front of an audience of 10,000 at John Cain Arena. This term the students have rehearsed with other participating schools. To finalise their performances. 

These students are to be congratulated for their dedication and persistence throughout term 2 and 3 and we look forward to sharing their performance in the next newsletter and later on channel 7.

IMPACT

Over the last few months our IMPACT students have had many experiences out and about.

Lord of The rings took place at the Comedy theatre in Melbourne and was cumulation of the three Lord of the Rings stories. With lots of singing, dancing and adventure this proved to be a very popular show and created a new group of followers

The stage sensation Bettlejuice introduced students to a whole new level of theatre. To the magical whimsical world of Beetlejuice to being able to talk to the cast and crew afterwards, it was indeed a very special day for our IMPACT and Drama students.

The Titanic VR Experience gave opportunities to a different group of students. Through the VR headsets, the students got to step onto the RMS Titanic and learn about the boat and its workings, right till that fatal day the Titanic hit the ice berg.

First Nation Drawings

At the end of last term, the Northern Bay College's Visual Art teachers led students in the Drawing Us Together project – a collaboration between Charter Hall (Corio Village) and Indigenous authors to create a children’s storybook of short stories and poems.

80 students illustrations from our P-8 campuses were then on display near the Corio Village food court. Voting was open during the school holidays, and the most-voted artworks are now being printed  in a published book with Norther Bay College's students illustrations in it!

One of our campuses was lucky to have an author from the book, Coral Reeve come and speak with them.

Coral Reeve is a proud Gunditjmara woman with ancestral ties to Country in Warrnambool. Raised in Southeast Melbourne, Coral developed strong cultural connections through her nan, an Elder among the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung peoples. Her nan’s experience as part of the Stolen Generation shaped much of Coral’s early cultural grounding. When her nan passed, Coral experienced a period of disconnection—grieving both a matriarch and the cultural thread she represented. Over the past decade, she has gradually and powerfully reconnected with community, embracing culture, strength, and identity on her own terms.

A passionate storyteller from a young age, Coral’s love for literature grew through school, studies, and professional experiences. She is particularly drawn to transforming non-fiction into fiction—offering stories that blend lived experience with creative expression. Her writing is grounded in culture and memory, carried forward in a contemporary voice.

For NAIDOC 2025, Coral’s short story was inspired by this year’s theme and imagined through a child’s eyes. It’s a reflection on legacy, strength, and the future—as seen by the next generation. While the piece is fictional, it holds traces of traditional knowledge and deep cultural meaning, conveyed in a form that speaks to both young readers and the broader community.

To Coral, NAIDOC Week is a vibrant celebration of history, resilience, and pride. The theme resonates as a passing of the message stick to children, reinforcing that they are never alone—we stand beside them as Elders, Aunts, Uncles, and Respected Persons. She honours the week by attending as many events as she can, especially the NAIDOC Ball—where joy, recognition, and community shine brightest.

College Sports

👏 Congratulations to our Year 8 Girls and Boys teams on a fantastic effort at the Division Volleyball Tournament!

🏐 Our Girls team showed great skill and determination, winning several sets and putting in a strong performance, just narrowly missing out on the finals.

🏆 Our Boys team played outstanding volleyball—winning their pool, taking out the semi-final, and finishing it off with an incredible win in the grand final! Their teamwork, strong serving, and persistence truly paid off.

A huge well done to all our players—you should be very proud! 🎉

Interview with Stoofa

How long has SEED been happening? 

We started in 2008.

How many students started in the program with you? 

We started with 14 and now we've got nearly every student at school participating in some way.

Explain SEED a little bit for those that don't know. 

Yeah, SEED stands for sports, empowerment, education, development. It's about teaching students' skills that they can use in every part of their life or when they leave the college. Skills that they can take with them. 
We' teach them about accountability, resilience, respect, and we teach them with sport. We have specialised coaches that come in and train the kids and get the best out of themselves. 

And what about the SEEDLINGS? 

Seedlings is a good program, Gordana Krsul does a great job with that, she's outstanding! So her, along with the junior support staff, give our Year 5 and 6 students a taste of for all the sports that they're going to be in competition with when they get to senior school. It could be baseball, t ball, cricket, netball, etcetera. On every Friday, all junior campuses come together, for a transition program. The rules have same concept as ABC, attendance, behaviour, character. It's been great for students know what the SEED program is as early as year 5 and 6 and has increased students attending SEED in senior years.

What sports does SEED provide access to? 

Oh, lots of sports, everything. All the sports that we do in the sports program, which Ben Lowery, Sports Coordinator, organises. There is baseball, softball, netball, volleyball, badminton, hockey, AFL, netball.
Lots and lots of sports. The good thing about at the moment is we're working on a working on specialist academy, for volleyball and badminton. So that'd be an extended program for students that are good at those sports. We have some very talented students. We'll have professional coaches and will run after school. Ben's doing a lot of work with that at the moment. 

Are there any particular sports that Northern Bay, excel in? 

Oh, 100% - basically all the ones I just named! Particularly volleyball, badminton, soccer. Bring a multicultural school, sports bring us together, especially those ones. 
These are sports that they've played before coming to Australia. Cricket's also a big thing, and I’m very excited about golf. We just built a new golf complex. Sometimes we can get up 50 students at lunchtime that want to go out and practice.

What do they like best about golf? 

Golf is a great progression sport. Like at the start, you can't hit the ball. 
But once you learn a couple of little drills, and get a few lessons and all of a sudden, you hit the ball well, and they can see the constant improvement! Watching a student miss the ball ten times and all of a sudden they hit ten times straight and they feel good about themselves. It's also a great de-escalation strategy as well. I see some students that highly escalated, instead of doing something bad, they'll come to us, we put a 7 iron in their hand, and hit a golf ball. They get the best out of themselves with that.

We’ve had some pretty impressive students come out of our school and are doing amazing things right now. 
Can you tell us about a couple of them? 

Yeah, 100%. We've got Jessie Blackney, who is outstanding, who come out of the school and she was a trainee. Our first ever trainee, She's studying teaching but she's outstanding in the community and what she does with SEED. Jack Hall, another great footballer, done very well. We've got Lauren Kelly who is excelling in cricket. 
She's been amazing. And we've also got some young up and comings, like Muhammad, who's doing very well academically and sport. 

What do you hope for the future of SEED?

I hope it continues. I hope that when I'm finished at the college there will be a succession plan. Someone will sit in this seat, and they’ll be able to continue what I do and what Ben does. It's been good because we've employed basically about 13 students to work as coaches in our program. We like to employ ex-students and it's fantastic to know what we have put in place will continue on through them. 

And anything exciting coming up this year? 


We’ve got a friendly in soccer coming up. Setting up The Academy is a big one, so once we set this academy up, it'll be good to see the students join in. 
We've got golf scholarships that we've about to give out. On November the 23rd, the track club and fit club start again for the summer. 
So that will take around about 23 students that go and run in the Essendon Gift. This will be the third time we've done it with the Victorian Athletic League, and this is huge for our students. We also have seven years of SEED coming up, so it's outstanding, that's continued for that long. 

What were you doing before you started working at Northern Bay?

I was doing a lot of sport fitness, wellbeing, a lot of counselling, and I was also, once I started at Northern Bay, I was in the wellbeing team when I first started. But before that, I was doing a bit of motivation circuit and stuff like that and training elite athletes and everything. 
But this is what I love. I love giving a bit back to this school and the community.

Northern Bay College is a really special school. What stands out to you?

Yeah. 100%. I come here for one day just to do a PT class and I'd worked at numerous schools, but this one, this was where home was, this is where I went to school, this is where I grew up just across the road. 
Our partnerships with so many amazing organisations like Corio Village Shopping Centre and Victoria Police in the Blue Connect program. It’s the staff here, but it's also our leadership. Scott Diamond, Lisa Gray, Pene Gibson. These people, including Jessie Blackney and Kirsten Thomas, wake up every Friday morning, to get here at 6.30am in the morning to cook breakfast for a lot of students in the Blue Connect program.

Everyone goes above and beyond. They always give a bit back, yeah, and I think that's the key. 
The students can see that, and they can feel it - and you know what? Our students are very smart. They understand who's working for them and who's working against them, and that kind of knowledge has been given to them by the staff here, which has been vitally important for our students to take with them into the future.