MacKillop Retreat

The Year 11s headed to Pax Hill scout camp near Ballarat for their retreat. It gave the students a great opportunity to reflect on a busy start at CRC Sydenham and set some goals for their time here. The students were mesmerised by former student, Michelle Newland, story of strength, faith and resilience. After suffering an asthma attack and being dead for 10min, Michelle’s family was told that she would never move again. After years of fighting, Michelle now shares her story with people all around Australia.

Joseph Shaw

VCAL Students 2019

Chloe Gross M3 - MacKillop

As all the Year 11’s started Catholic Regional College, Sydenham there have been a lot of great things that have happened throughout the month being here. The start of the school term we had a large school assembly with all staff and students to kickstart the start of the year. The assembly was about starting a new chapter for us Year 11’s and brief explanation on what happens around the college. We have also had our first whole school mass as a college. On March 7th all the year 11’s went on a retreat to Ballarat, the place we stayed at was the Pax Hill Activities Centre, it is somewhere in the bush. During our time at the retreat we all had different activities we did in small groups. The afternoon activities included going inside a gold rush mine which most people managed to hit their head accidentally, archery, standing on stumps, going through a tire without touching it and sitting on a log without moving it. After the afternoon activities we had an hour to ourselves to do whatever we wanted, then we had dinner/dessert. After dinner we had three nighttime activities which included roasting marshmallows/creating a fire, bushwalking and making the rosary. The next day on March 8th we had a guest speaker who talked about a battle she has fought for over 17 years. Michelle our guest speaker suffered a large Asthma attack and had a brain injury at that time too. It was very empowering to hear her story. After the guest speaker we went back to CRC Sydenham and had a little assembly/mass to over view what has happened for the past couple of days and were dismissed.

Joshua Needham M3 - MacKillop

So far for the year 12’s in MacKillop this year has been quite a busy start to the year. We’ve had plenty of assembly’s, big and small. We’ve all been going to our wok placements, every Wednesday to make some money and get use to and prepared for the workforce, we’ve had heaps of tasks that involve us running around the school looking for stuff and plenty more. We have been working on planning the formal, and have been preparing for or Project Compassion charity work. Recently we went on an excursion to Melbournes own Queen Victoria Market. We ran around, searching for stuff to buy, from cheap, knock off clothing items, to unfathomably appetising food.