Principal's Report
150 CELEBRATIONS
When first thinking about celebrating the 150 anniversary, we set ourselves a few goals, those being:
· To bring the community together to celebrate what the school has achieved over 150 years, building a sense of pride in our school and community, while reconnecting people along the way.
· To gather and preserve memorabilia for everyone to enjoy for many years to come.
Overall, we’re really pleased with how everything panned out and we hope everyone enjoyed what was on offer.
We really didn’t know how many visitors would join us over the 2 days, but the event certainly turned out to be very popular. It was a packed house in the gym on Friday morning at our assembly and lots of parents and community members stayed for the costume parade and whole school photo. We then had a steady stream of visitors looking through memorabilia until mid-afternoon. We had an enthusiastic crowd in the Bowling Club on Friday night, where many stories were shared, including over the microphone, which everyone enjoyed. And to finish off we had a steady stream of visitors join us on Saturday to look through memorabilia and take a tour….and they all loved it. So overall, the event was very well supported.
The students (including the choir) did an excellent job presenting at the assembly and all of the kids maintained their attention throughout, despite the assembly going through until 10:45am. That was a good effort.
It was fabulous to see the kids embrace the event to such an extent, which clearly shows in all of the photos. They loved the costume parade and really enjoyed the history related activities that followed. Thanks to parents for encouraging and supporting their children to dress up. We know this requires an effort, but it was certainly worthwhile. A costume parade will certainly be something we’ll do at every dress up day in the future.
It was also great to get a whole school photo (including visitors) before everyone departed, a copy of which you can see below.
Thanks to everyone that supported the event in any way. That includes those that shared stories and images on the Facebook page, those that found photos for us to digitise and preserve, those that volunteered to assist with the serving of morning and afternoon tea, the Burke family for giving us access to their golf cart for the day and to the many people that came along to be part of the various events.
A big thankyou to the members of the organising committee, those being Sam Elshaug, Jess Fleming, Kartya DeGraff, Linda Wight, Narelle Sullivan & Nicole Phillips and the Buninyong Community Bank, which helped finance the celebrations. And of course, a big thankyou to our staff who did a great job connecting the kids to the anniversary and built a real sense of excitement.
Don’t forget that the interviews with past staff and students are available on the 150th tab on the school website https://buninyongps.vic.edu.au/.
The commemorative medallions and 150 photo books are still available at the school office for anyone who would like to purchase – Medallions $5.00, Photo Books $15.00
