Reconciliation Week
This week at our school, we've taken some powerful and visible steps forward on our journey of reconciliation, honouring the rich culture and wisdom of our First Nations peoples.
A beautiful First Nations painting has been installed outside the Prep classrooms, with another to follow outside the Year 1 and Year 3 rooms. These stunning artworks were designed by BJ, a talented local First Nations artist. BJ also created the decorative bollards placed throughout the Woodlands, which many of our students admire and walk past daily. These artistic pieces are more than just decoration—they are reminders of the deep spiritual connection between Indigenous people and the land, and symbols of storytelling, identity, and culture.
Last week, our Year 5 students attended Mass with Fr Tho, reflecting on this year's National Reconciliation Week theme: Bridging Now to Next. This theme speaks of the ongoing connection between past, present, and future—encouraging us all to learn from the past as we look forward, walking together into a future built on truth, justice, and hope.
As part of our school’s ongoing commitment to reconciliation, Julie, our Religious Education Leader (REL), created and shared powerful slideshow resources for all classes. These included songs, prayers, and historical information about Sorry Day and past referendums. These resources have helped bring important conversations into our classrooms—not just this week, but for use throughout the year as we continue learning and growing together.
We also shared the following prayer in last week's newsletter, written by Aunty Di Langham. It remains a moving reflection of our hopes for unity, healing, and understanding:
In the front foyer / display cabinet we have framed information of the Bollards and our Wadawurrung coastline.
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Visual Art:
'This term in Visual Art, Year One students explored both traditional and contemporary Australian Aboriginal art, focusing on its cultural significance and sacredness within First Nations communities. They learned about the importance of Aboriginal art as a means of communication and storytelling, particularly through the use of symbols.
To consolidate their understanding and develop their artistic skills, the students created an Aboriginal-inspired artwork influenced by the story My Little Barlaagany. This book, written and illustrated by Melissa Greenwood—a proud Gumbaynggirr woman—features a Dreamtime story that follows a mother and her baby’s journey throughout the day, told through poetry and vibrant illustrations.
As part of their creative process, the students explored the Art Elements of shape, colour, and space, and worked with the medium of acrylic paint. They used these skills to create their own vivid representations of Aboriginal-inspired symbols, including the sun/sunshine (barlaagany), moon (giidany), and stars'.
In Term 2 2025, we arranged for a well known Wadawurrung Artist, Billy Jay O’Toole (BJ) owner of Papul Art, to work with our First Nation student to decorate 3 bollards in our school yard. First Nation students (Djarmbi Trait, Frankie Harrington, Amelia Hughes, Will Hughes and Lucy Bigolin) all worked through an introduction workshop with BJ to learn about his art
journey to date and what symbols represent what in his artwork. They were also lucky enough to be shown some sacred Wadawurrung artefacts that have been found on this country.
BJ then sat down with the students to plan out how the 3 bollards would look, the 3 themes the students came up with was to represent Sky, Earth and Water. Each of these features hold deep connection to Wadawurrung People and all first nations People.
Each background on the bollards was to represent the colour of the element- Blue for the water ways, orange/yellow for the sky and red/brown the land/earth. Images were painted on top of these base colours which included animal tracks, meeting symbols both men and women, leaves, water, sun and Bunjil the eagle, who is the creator of Wadawurrung Country.
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