From the Principal

On Tuesday this week, students and teachers in the Secondary School commemorated Remembrance Day with a special service for the centenary of the Armistice, which concluded the Great War. Remembrance Day has been celebrated ever since to honour all those who served or gave their lives on behalf of their country in that terrible conflict and also to remember the many men and women who have since served their country as members of Australia’s Armed Forces.

In addition to the Ode of Remembrance and the Last Post, there were two moving reflections from Year 11 students Lindsay McNeil and Mackenzie Lofts, providing context around such a distant topic for young people today, and two other reflections by our Senior Campus Chaplain, Ms Lihou, and by Mr Corcoran.

Lindsay spoke of her great grandfather who was a member of the London Regiment of the Royal Fusiliers during World War I and her grandfather who fought in the British North Africa campaign during World War II; and read a poem The Eleventh Hour, written by Herbert Swaffield who was in the same battalion as her great grandfather. Mackenzie spoke about how those who fought for their fellow men and women secured our futures and shaped our culture, with our lives today based on core values including courage, perseverance, sacrifice and mateship.

A very poignant moment was the performance of In Flanders Fields by the Jazz Vocal Ensemble and Chamber Ensemble. Then at the conclusion of the service, Isabel Binnekamp and Lachlan van der Pluijm, Service Prefects, laid a wreath at the foot of the pine tree in the front garden, which has been grown from a pine cone seed from the Lone Pine battle site at Gallipoli.

The School’s Remembrance Day Service followed a Remembrance Day Service on Sunday at a packed St Peter’s Church, which I and other Redlands colleagues attended, along with our Service Prefects, the Jazz Vocal Ensemble, Chamber Ensemble and Junior Voices. Our musicians’ performance of In Flanders Fields was as deeply moving at the Sunday service as it was at the service this week at our School. The School was also represented at the Remembrance Day Service at North Sydney by School Captains, Chloe Church and Josiah Tea, who laid a wreath of remembrance on behalf of the School. Lest We Forget.

Dr Peter Lennox

Photo captions: Cultivating green thumbs and sustainability with our Redlands House preschoolers.