Principal's Message

Good afternoon parents and careers,

After a few false starts (due to flooding), the Year 4 students finally departed on Wednesday for their long anticipated excursion to Dubbo.  The school bus bay was a buzz of excitement at 6:45am as the student arrived ready for an adventure.  Although many parents were anticipating anxiousness and teary goodbyes, most students departed with a simple 'Bye!' before making their way onto the bus to position themselves next to their seat buddy ready to go.  Our Year 4 students have represented the school (and themselves) extremely well throughout the three days ensuring manners and a respect for each other were naturally on display.  No doubt our parents have been enjoying the many highlights through the Facebook posts, indicated by the many likes and shares.  Thursday was an extremely busy and eventful day for the students visiting the Dubbo Open Plain Zoo, the Old Dubbo Gaol and the Royal Flying Doctors Service, along with parks for morning and afternoon tea.  The adults on the excursion checked their step counts at the conclusion of the day with an average of 19,000 steps and approximately 14kms.  We could only guess how many steps our students averaged with much shorter strides.  The up side was that the night time routine on Thursday night was extremely short, with all students falling asleep very quickly, which was very pleasing for all the adults that were also struggling towards the end of the day.

Please enjoy a couple of photos from our adventures in Dubbo.

This week we welcomed a new member of staff to the St Philomena's family, Mr Guy Sweeney, taking on the position of Grounds & Maintenance after the retirement of Mr Paul Cooke.  Guy joins us with an extensive range of skills and experience in the field of grounds, maintenance and landscaping and we look forward to him putting his stamp on the already well maintained grounds at St Philomena's.  No doubt all our staff, students and families will make Guy feel extremely welcome.

Not that I need to remind our parents, but there are only 23 sleeps until Christmas and even less until the end of the 2022 academic school year.

Enjoy your weekend!

God bless,

Jamie McDowall

Principal