From the Executive Principal 

Dear Families and Friends,

Welcome back to Term 2, and I pray the holiday period offered opportunities for quality family time to energise, relax, and prepare for the busy term ahead.

Over the holidays, I have discovered the allure (and my wife says almost an addiction) to online ‘next-day’ free home delivery from providers such as Amazon. It still baffles me how I can order several completely different products, in different transactions, on one day and they all arrive the next day - often in the same box, to my front door (even on a Sunday)! It’s as if Amazon has a ‘mega’ 24/7 Adelaide warehouse stocked with one of ‘everything’ that every time I click “buy-now” a little robot activates and retrieves it to a courier parked out the front!

The photo below shows one such delivery arriving over the holidays. Part of the ‘fun’ is forgetting exactly which delivery is arriving when (what I call the ‘lucky-dip’ phenomenon of multiple pending deliveries). I was most excited by the significant size of this particular box (Oswald, our Tonkinese cat, is posing for scale - and he loves the boxes almost more than me). Although I couldn’t remember ordering something so big, the sheer magnitude of this box, however, had my hopes and excitement up!

The second photo shows the ‘grand-opening’ to see what sizeable treasure was indeed inside (this time, our other Tonkinese cat, Loki, is also helping with ‘scale’). To my sadness and disappointment, the content was 95+% empty air with another tiny, almost invisible and underwhelming bland box at the bottom. A box in a box!

This delivery saga is a bit of a metaphor of social media for our kids (and us!). On the surface, it can promise the world in size and magnitude; present a bit like a ‘lucky-dip’ (such as Reels!); and is certainly alluring and addictive – but in reality, it can also be 95%+ meaningless and empty. 

Additionally, rather than simply resulting in unfulfilled expectations, the impacts of social media on our children can be quite harmful. This includes FOMO (fear of missing out) through to a vehicle for online harassment and other even more harmful risks to our children. It is for this reason the Australian Government recently introduced new laws to protect our most vulnerable under 16s.

Late last term, it came to our attention at Emmaus that, despite these new laws being implemented and the associated companies apparently complying, many of our under-16 Emmaus students still had active accounts on these platforms. 

My first thought was, “How is this possible as I thought the companies shut this possibility down?” As a parent, I have learned that we cannot sit back and assume the new Government laws have made this online space now safe for our kids. 

I encourage you all to have open and honest discussions with your children about their online social media accounts, and more so, work through the various settings and options with them on their device(s), not assuming this role has now been done for us by the Government. We must remain vigilant and ‘active’, keeping our children safe in this online world!

The River Red Gum

For our South Plympton families, you may have noticed a big difference on-site this week. It is with mixed emotions that we have had to say farewell to the very large River Red gum tree on the south-west corner of the campus. Despite being recently inspected and pruned by our regular arborist, this year alone it still dropped four very large limbs onto the road and our Emmaus grassed playing field where students sit and play. This is why the corner of the grass playing field was roped off and inaccessible for students in Term 1. 

Under the ISO 31000 Risk Management Framework, another independent, senior Arborist subsequently assessed and classified this tree as being in the formal category of “Non-Tolerable”. Simply put, their assessment was this tree was indeed ‘sick’ and presented an unacceptable risk of harm as it will continue to randomly drop very large limbs from a significant height onto those below. As safety is paramount at Emmaus, this left us with no option but to farewell this tree. 

To show homage to this tree long term, we have engaged a mobile timber miller to come on site and slice the sizable trunk into useable redwood lumber, kiln dry it for the next 3 months and deliver it back to our Emmaus Tech-Studies department. 

Our Emmaus students will use this special ‘seasoned’ redwood for various furniture making projects for years to come. They will take pride of place around the school grounds forever, memorialising the memory of this big, beautiful tree that provided shade for longer than this suburb has been developed. For your interest, the picture below is linked to a video of this tree being professionally brought down (quite a spectacle indeed). 

Early Learning Centre Reynella Tour

Finally, yesterday we hosted the inaugural Principal's Tour (pre-opening tour) of our new Early Learning Centre at Reynella with an impressive turnout of over 60 people, confirming the high demand for a distinctly Christian, high-quality ELC in this area. 

Building is still ‘on-track’ for a second half of 2026 grand opening! Below are some building progress photos (that we can compare to the end result later in the year).

Blessings,

Andrew Linke

Executive Principal