A long relationship with Preshil

June McKenzie

Yesterday I was finally able to visit Preshil and say farewell to Marilyn. This was an especially important occasion for me as being part of the Preshil community has been such an important part of my life. When I knocked on the front door of Arlington and was ushered into Margaret Lyttle’s drawing room in 1976, I would never have imagined that it was the beginning of a long and wonderful connection, with her and the school. 

Beginning at Yallambie in 1977, I joined a team of people who were formative in establishing the Secondary school at Preshil. There was much to learn, especially about understanding the development of children, which was pivotal to Margaret’s philosophy. Our weekly staff meetings in her lounge room focused on children and she introduced us to the relevant writing of academics alongside her lengthy weekly notes about how learning was evolving at Preshil. My teaching focused on English and Humanities.  As play and creativity are central to every child at Preshil, I became increasingly interested in the creative arts.  At one stage, all teachers had to spend the morning with a different age group and being in the sixes and sevens, in the Gym School, was enlightening seeing how the nature of creative expression was enhanced. This led me to eventually teaching art in Primary schools.

During one Yallambie staff meeting in the old kitchen, there was a knock on the door and Hyllus Maris, an indigenous woman (founder of Worawa Aboriginal College), entered with two elders from Mornington Island. This was a life changing experience, as Beil (Ian James) and Jardi (Alick Hills) became teachers at Preshil and lived with me, in my flat for a month. Every day they immersed the students in learning language, story telling, Lardil law and customs, dancing and art. With my husband Graham, we went to Mornington Island the next year, 1978. The knowledge and spirituality of these people brought such different perspectives to our lives. Preshil’s relationship with Mornington Island continued for many years as different groups stayed with us and sometimes participated in programs at Preshil. After I left Preshil and had children, Margaret and I hatched an ambitious plan for a group from Mornington Island to live with us, in Graham’s studio and work for a few weeks at Deepdene Primary School, where I was working, and then at Preshil. It is the most exciting project I have ever worked on.

Then in 1999, I returned to Preshil, with a colleague from Deepdene, Martin Arnold to establish a new program for Year 7 and 8 at Yallambie. So began my second innings at Preshil. This was a time of overarching investigative projects, school musicals that involved every student, and art exhibitions. 

Yallambie, ten years on had grown, with buildings constructed at the back of the property, in addition to the beautiful homestead, the amazing workshop that had been presided over by the craftsman Dickie Blackman and the original library transformed into a music room. Unfortunately this site was sold and these younger years then joined the senior students at Blackhall. The ground floor rooms at Kalimna provided the new heart for this program. 

Over the next nineteen years, different paradigms resulted in changes to curriculum and approaches.  This has culminated in the introduction of the International Baccalaureate that offers exciting possibilities for twenty-first century education. I have collaborated with many interesting teachers, some continuing to be friends and as my daughter Tess McKenzie came to Preshil Secondary, I became a parent member of the community. I value this web of people. In recent years, finding myself teaching the children of former students was amazing and a delight.

Teaching at Preshil gave me the challenge and the freedom to create engaging curriculum that hopefully sparked curiosity and offered touchstones to life long learning. The students and parents I worked with were constantly broadening my understandings. I thank you for this remarkable privilege. 

I continued teaching until 2018, when I needed to take leave to be with Graham who although he had cancer continued working as an artist, until he died in 2019. So at the beginning of this year I retired, never believing that Covid would shut me off from saying goodbye to all the wonderful students and families that I have known.  I hope these recollections offer some reconnection to my long collaborations with the Preshil community.

June McKenzie