Beginnings, Returning and Resetting

Tim Argall - Executive Principal

I want to mention a sequence of God-given moments of connection and clarity of thinking that have taken place for us as a school, over the last few years.  We have quietly been exploring the long history of the location of our school, before 1975 (the year of our opening) – in fact, even before it was a farm and adjacent orchard. 

It is likely that, before the region was developed as a suburb of Melbourne, the natural topography and fruitfulness of the location led to places like where the “cross on the hill” is becoming natural gathering places for the meeting of local clans.  As an extension of this, we have engaged with indigenous leaders, both locally and nationally, across aboriginal communities and church, in order that we better understand how we work well with them as a Christian community, providing safety and partnership for our indigenous brothers and sisters, where and when appropriate. 

I am thankful for deep conversations had amongst the governance and leadership groups of the school, which has brought us to a point of partnering with aboriginal Christian leaders to stand alongside them in acknowledging God at work in our school community, as an extension of his work amongst the first peoples of the land which now houses our school.

At the first assemblies of both the Primary and Secondary, during the first week of the year, I was able to reflect on this as I led us in a formal acknowledgement of how we will seek to express this work together:

As we gather here, we would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people who are those appointed by God as the traditional custodians of this land — both within the area called Woiwurrung, which we now know as Donvale, and widely across this country we now call Australia.

We would like to pay our respect to Elders past and present of the Kulin nation for the way they have stewarded the Lord’s good creation, and we extend that respect to other indigenous people past and present, and those future generations who we pray will continue this task, trusting that our creator will continue reconciling all things to himself in Jesus Christ.

Shalom!