From the Archives

St. Peter’s College opened its doors to students in 1994. Prior to this, since 1987, the College was known as St. Francis Xavier Junior Campus. 2024, therefore, it is the thirtieth birthday of St. Peter’s College. This week ‘From the Archives’ looks back twenty years, to the tenth birthday of the College. In 2004, Mr. Terry Feely was the Principal, Deacon Tony Aspinall was the Chaplin of the College, Mrs. Julie Kelly was Chairperson of the St. Peter’s College Education Board (as it was known then.) and Mrs. Sue Burhop was President of the Parents and Friends Association. A major project for the year was the extension of the original administrative and staff area. It was a Production Year, and the College presented a musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummers Night’s Dream.” This was a collaboration between Mr. Frank Carter and Mr. Ian Coffey. The director, and choreographer, was Mrs. Emma Ingles (nee Clancy), a teacher and former student of the College. One of the cast members was former Glowrey House Leader, Jason Blackburn. The cover of The Rock of 2004 shows the size of the cast and the scale of the set. It was an ambitious production that was highly successful. Even at that stage of its development, St. Peter’s College was active in Social Justice and, according to The Rock raised $5398 for Caritas and Project Compassion. There were 880 students enrolled in 2004. This equates to over $6 per head towards Project Compassion. The students won both the Mitch Rabot Staff v Student cricket match and the Staff v Student netball game. The Senior SIS Debating Team argued their way to the Grand Final Debate. Blue Team (House) won all three carnivals: Swimming, Athletics and Cross Country. St.Peter’s College was second in the SIS Swimming Carnival, fifth in the Cross CountryCarnival and First in the Athletics Carnival. The Under 15 Girls 4x100 Relay broke the record for the carnival. The team consisted of Courtney Footman, Anita Fernandez, Sarah Beck and Aleyshia Parker. Aleyshia is the sister of Sydney Swans captain, Luke Parker.

Overall, an impressive tenth year for St. Peter’s College.

St. Peter, Pray for Us.

Greg Nelson

College Archivist

Y12 VM Excursion

On Tuesday 5 December our Year 12 VM students, along with Clyde North, travelled to Melbourne. As part of their Personal Development Skills subject they visited the Queen Victoria Market, where the students took part in a scavenger hunt and located different food items and recipes for use during the College Harmony Day celebrations in 2024. They also visited the Sandridge Bridge, which was the first steel bridge over the Yarra River forming a link between the city and Port Melbourne, where thousands of immigrants first landed on Australian shores.

VM Christmas Activities

Our Year 10 Applied Learning and Year 11 and Year 12 VM students have had a busy week leading up to Christmas. Keeping in the spirit of the holidays, they prepared gingerbread biscuits and made personalised Christmas cards for our new year 7's for their orientation day. They would like to wish everyone a safe and happy Christmas.

Mrs Rhiannon Clark

VM Coach - Cranbourne Campus

GOODBYE AND THANK YOU EVERYONE

Dear students, staff and parents of St Peter’s College,

As it will not be practically possible to meet each one of you in person, I would like to use the opportunity of the Newsletter to express my heartfelt thank you to all the past and present members of the college community, and especially those of Clyde North Campus where I had the privilege to serve for the last thirteen years.

A little bit of history of the beginnings of Clyde North Campus

It has been a real privilege and an honour to be one of the three pioneer teachers (Mr Justin Dee, Mrs Marjorie Canal and myself) of the Clyde North Campus in 2011, then called the East Campus, with Mr James Roberts as the first Head of Campus and Mrs Leah Wheelock (then Miss Christie) our first Office Manager. I can still recall our first 42 students into three Tutor Groups, G, H and I. Due to the initial buildings, the Lyons Building and the Discovery Centre, not yet ready to welcome us, we all started in ‘portables’ on the Cranbourne Campus for the first 3 terms of the year. It’s only at the beginning of Term 4 that we all could all come down to the ‘East Campus’.

It was really exciting and a privilege to be the first students and staff to be using the school facilities, which consisted of only the Lyons Building and the Discovery Centre. The playground only consisted of the Lyons Basketball court, the front grass area of Lyons and the little space on the side of the DC. All the rest was “JUST MUD’, such that, during the first year, students had to take off their shoes before entering the Lyons building and the DC so as not to damage the brand new carpet. Note that the DC also incorporated a little area for our ‘very small’ staff.

All the staff found themselves teaching a number of subject areas of the curriculum and, though challenging, it allowed for opportunities to create very strong bonds between staff and students. We were ( and are still) a family. We all realised that we were making history of the campus, as everything we started was ‘the first time’. We all knew that we had a challenge, but also the privilege to build the reputation of the school. With new students and staff joining the school over the years, we have just kept building on the foundation laid. It is amazing that after thirteen years, the Clyde North campus population will pass 1000 students, next year, in 2024, thanks to the hard work and dedication of staff, students as well as parents who have been very involved in the various college activities and in spreading the news around.

Throughout my thirteen years on the Clyde North campus, I had the privilege to initiate and coordinate a few extra-curricular activities to help get our students involved, in one way or another, in the school life. I can vividly remember one morning after our prayer in Tutor Group, one of my students, Mikki Hardy, asking me if we could pray as a group at lunchtime, which I obviously immediately agreed. And this was the humble beginning of the Prayer Group ( 10 minutes with Jesus) with around 10 students gathered in Lyons 3. I’m so humbled that since that day, back in 2011, we have continued to meet every Friday for the last 13 years. I am very thankful to the many students and staff who have joined us to pray together over the years. A very special thanks to Quincy Canceran (one of our original cohort ), our very first Prayer group Leader, who very faithfully took her role from year 7 until she left in year 12. Then Dominic Rode became the Prayer Group leader, a role he embraced from Year 7 to Year 12 with so much passion and faith, while also being the College Captain in his last year at school. I thank our current Prayer group Leader, Sharleen Muigai, Abigail’s sister, our 2023 Liturgy Captain. I am very grateful to all of them for ‘Being Not Afraid” to be witnesses of their faith to the college community. I am also very thankful to Mr Ehsan Islami and Miss Jennifer Phanjoo for their active collaboration and support over the last couple of years or so and for accepting to continue to coordinate the Prayer group as from next year, 2024. I feel very humbled by the attendance of such a large number of students and staff who joined my last Prayer group session last Friday. This was followed by the amazing interpretation of some Christmas Carol songs by Mr Nigel Patawaran’s Music Ministry group led on the day by Miss Madeleine Tabacchiera. It was simply magical, and I’m so grateful to them too.

I also had the immense privilege to witness the birth of St Thomas the Apostle Parish and to attend the inaugural Mass and many more masses being held in Lyons building until early this year where the actual church was completed. This has allowed me to build a strong friendship with Fr Denis and the first parishioners. Along the way, a strong association between St Peter’s College and St Thomas the Apostle Parish was born. In 2014, during the Year of the Family, under the inspiration of Bishop Christopher Prowse, the Bishop of Sale at that time, I set up and coordinated a Family Prayer group, to provide an opportunity for staff and students and their families to come and pray together once a month on a Friday evening from 7.30p.m. upstairs in Lyons. Unfortunately, COVID took its toll on the sessions in 2020, due to restrictions on gatherings. I hope to be able to start it back again in the parish.

As a pioneer staff member, I felt the need to introduce an Environment Club on the campus so as to promote a culture of care for our school environment and also to inculcate in our students a greater sense of stewardship for God’s Creation. Hence, in 2011, the Environment Club was born. The first action was to get our first cohort to build a sense of strong connection with their school environment. Hence, everyone of our 42 students as well as the original staff members were given a little plant to put in the soil, next to the DC. It was great to see how passionate each one of us was about it. The following year, a veggie garden was set up in the little spot available next to the outdoor stairs of the Lyons building. It was wonderful to experience the passion demonstrated by our students to prepare the soil and the carrot, and cabbage seeds planted as well as some fine herbs. All the harvest was then used for our Food Tech department. The interest kept growing and we had our first fruit tree planted at school. This is the lemon tree behind the DC, which is still producing amazing fruits throughout the year. This is one of the wonderful legacies of our Environment Club. Our first cohort of Year 12 students were also invited to plant a row of trees on the side the oval facing MacKillop Way, which have now reached an appreciable size.

As we were a young campus, with every project being the first one ever, I also saw the need to inculcate in our students a spirit of compassion for the most vulnerable, which is a vital component of Catholic Social Teaching taught at every Catholic school. Hence the first Social Justice group was born which collaborated to run activities to raise funds for St Vinnies and Caritas primarily. Two of the most successful ones being the Soup Day and the Bake Sale. It was great to see students and staff fully immersed in the projects as well as the active collaboration of parents by providing ingredients for the soup or the cakes for sale.

To my dear Assisi students, staff and parents, past and present (and also Avila House who I led jointly with Assisi in 2015 & 2016 with Mrs Olivia Barrett as my wonderful Assistant). I had the privilege and honour to lead Assisi House from 2015 to 2022. You have been such an important and exciting part of my journey at St Peter’s College. We have shared memorable moments, some very exciting, others challenging, but we always came out with very positive outcomes. I am very grateful for what we have been able to achieve together as the big Assisi Family over the years. I wish you all the best in your future endeavours. Thank you to my very supportive and dynamic Learning Advisors who have immensely collaborated to make Assisi House what it is today, and which I’m sure will continue to be. To all the parents I had the opportunity to get to meet and eventually develop a very friendly and positive relationship with over the years, I thank you all for the trust you placed in me.

It would take too long to describe the many events and activities I had the privilege and honour to initiate or be part of during my thirteen years at St Peters. I always refer to the Clyde North Campus as my fourth child, having seen it grow from scratch into this amazing school it has become. This would not have been possible without the collaboration of each and everyone, students, parents, teaching and support staff, the school leadership and all stakeholders who together form the wonderful family of St Peter’s College. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for having been part of my amazing 13-year journey at St Peter’s College and you have all, in one way or another, contributed to mould me into who I am today. I will deeply miss everyone and you will stay for ever in my heart. Jesus taught us to remember and follow these two most important Commandments: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ And the second : ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Matthew 22: 37,39). All I wish is that the whole St Peter’s College community continue to put in practice these Commandments, which are at the source of every peaceful and joyful relationship. I praise the Lord for all of His support and guidance over the last thirteen years at St Peter's College and I ask for your kind prayers so I endeavour to always follow His will and do everything ‘His’ way as I embark on my faith and educational journey in my new school community in 2024.

Some pics of the beginnings:

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This is what our campus looked like in 2011 outside the Lyons Building and the DC

My first Tutor Group back in 2011.

Our first harvest from the vegie patch

Some members of the early Environment Club

The Bishop Greg Bennet attended one of our Prayer Group gatherings ( 10 minutes with Jesus) on his first visit to St Peter’s College in 2022.Here with Dominic Rode our previous Prayer Group Leader

My last Friday Prayer gathering with students and staff on Friday 1st December 2023

May God bless you all. Long Live St Peter’s College.

Mr Jean-Paul Antoine

Hospitality Clyde North Campus

The end of the year has come by so quickly and it’s been a busy year for the hospitality students. It truly has been a wonderful year building great relationships and experiences. To my students, thank you. I look forward to seeing you in 2024 ready to learn, explore and take on new challenges. To the students moving on to further studies and/or work, I wish you the best in your future endeavours.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

Kind regards

Jeannette Valencia

Moonlit Sanctuary - Pearcedale

Our Keeper Club Holiday Program is back for the summer school break! We hope that you might consider collaborating with us once again to spread the word about this popular event. As a token of our appreciation, we are happy to offer you a complimentary family pass, providing an ideal opportunity to support your fundraising initiatives.

In case you're not familiar with Moonlit Sanctuary, it's a wildlife conservation sanctuary in Pearcedale where you can get up close and personal with some of Australia's most unique animals. Our mission is to make sure everyone knows about these critters and why we need to look out for them.

A highlight of our educational initiatives is the Keeper Club School Holiday Program. Run by our Education Officers, Keeper Club is great fun for kids and lets them dive into hands-on environmental activities, hang out with cool animals, and discover how to take care of our native buddies, all with a focus on fun!

We operate without government support and are entirely dependent on funds raised to support our work. The income from our holiday program, and visits to the Sanctuary in general, help provide our conservation, breeding and education programs.

Your support means the world to us and our furry, scaley and feathery friends.

With warm regards,

Michelle

Michelle Raki

City of Casey

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