What a Work Party!

This year we celebrated 61 years of the Work Party tradition at St Philip’s College and while there has not been a Work Party here every year in that 60 years there has been at least 50 here in that time. That’s pretty amazing! 

The first Work Party at St Philip’s goes right back to when Fred McKay organised almost 300 people from all round Australia to come here over a three month period in the second half of 1964 to help get the college up and running.

Of course, they didn’t all come at once but in five separate groups and if they hadn’t come, I don’t know how the college would have begun in 1965. 

The first Work Party in 1964 removed 50 tons of rubble from the building site, quarried stone to help pave the driveways including the construction of a causeway across the Charles River, erected fencing, made curtains for the dormitories, broke up anthills to use in the laying of the tennis courts, carried out landscaping and dug a massive storm water drain 300 metres in length from up near the chapel right down to the river. It was a bricked in drain not just a trench! 

They planted lawns, erected rotary clothes lines…. ….cleaned and polished, laid hundreds and hundreds of metres of water pipes to the bore where water had just been discovered (during Work Party 2), graded the oval and then planted it with kikuyu grass.

Every Work Party put so many of us to shame with their work ethic and their dedication. They each come with their own skills and trades and have saved the college an estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years.

You can see below their job allocations for 2025 and we sincerely thank them for all they do.

• Sand and varnish Swag Chapel
• Repair 11 pews in the Swag Chapel and varnish
• Furniture for Bridging Hub to be assembled
• Check old Boarding House furniture and tighten as necessary
• D/C furniture check and fix remove old partitions
• Oil all outside wooden furniture
• Replace bridge timber outside Fred Shed
• Assemble 2 new outdoor bench seats for Fred McKay Education Centre
• Remove old carpet from Gappies Wing
• Paint old dark room 
• Paint rooms 7 and 8 internal walls
• External building wall inspection for painting
• Repaint low concrete walls around café and wellbeing
• Paint outside of Rooms 58 & 59
• Paint inside Room 62
• Paint around new windows in Old Boarding House (inside and out)
• 500kg of wire stripping for recycling
• Old air conditioners stripped for metal - total was over $1000 earned
• New lights to laundry
• Night time audit of all external lighting - replace where necessary
• All cisterns to be checked and replaced (77 in total)

Paul Bailey

Foundation, Enterprise & Development