From the Boarding School
Welcome back to Term 3! It has been a busy but happy start to the new term, with all the girls naturally falling back into the full swing of Boarding life.
Term Break works
While I hope you were enjoying some well-deserved downtime over the break, it was a busy time on campus –
- 20 of our Year 12 Boarders stayed with us in Lang House for the first week of the ‘holidays’ so they could participate in the Study Camp. My congratulations go to the girls who worked so hard during this time along with my thanks to our wonderful Boarding staff who made this possible.
- Our Facilities Team did a fabulous job of installing a new kitchen in Goodlet House. The girls are loving the fresh and functional design and are thrilled to have the option of baking in house!
- The offices in Marden, Lang and Goodlet Houses were treated to a makeover and are sparkling with fresh paint and new carpet.
- New technology lockers were installed in Goodlet and Marden Houses.
The quiet achievers of agricultural advocacy – our Boarders and their families
Many of you will know Amanda Ferrari, the Director of Boarding Schools Expo Australia. Amanda and her team do a great job, they are wonderful advocates for Boarding and regularly share relevant articles. Towards the end of the term break, Amanda published the following piece, which I am sharing with permission, and it reminded me of how lucky we are to have such a thriving Boarding community at Pymble. It also filled me with gratitude for our wonderful country families who do load up the wagon with Day girls over the holidays, echoing the generosity of our local families who step in so willingly to support our Boarders throughout the term.
AN OPEN LETTER UPON REFLECTION…
To the quiet achievers of agricultural advocacy. Our boarders and their families. Wherever you call home.
It’s school holidays again. They roll around quickly. Right across rural and remote Australia there are families reunited. Together again for the ordinary. For the joy. For the day to day of life at home.
Then there’s the city kids and international students experiencing our way of life for the first time. The crop inspections. The dust settling as the truck heads off to the sale yards. The collection of eggs on a cold winter’s morning. The yarns around the campfire. The trips to town. The picnic races. The cordial parties. The camp drafts and rodeos.
The connections to rural and remote Australia are being forged so deeply they will never be broken, memories being made that will never be lost. These are our school holidays.
At a time when the divide between city and country feels insurmountably wide, there’s a quiet and powerful kind of agricultural (and rural regional) advocacy happening throughout the bush. It’s not delivered through social media campaigns or formal lobbying, but through friendships formed on the ovals, in the dorms, and around the lunch tables of our Australian boarding schools.
Agricultural bodies often struggle to be heard – their messages about food security, fibre production, sustainability and the devastation of drought can be hard to translate into everyday relevance for the average Australian. Yet quietly, gently, one rural boarder at a time, our boarding schools are doing what no billboard or parliamentary inquiry can: nurturing a genuine understanding of life on the land and in our rural towns.
More and more, we’re seeing that many kids – particularly those growing up in our big cities – are disconnected from where their food and fibre comes from. The statistics are startling: at the recent Primary Industries Education Foundation Australia’s (PIEFA) conference it was highlighted that three-quarters of Year 6 students think cotton comes from an animal. That cows are still milked by hand into a bucket. It’s no wonder that agricultural literacy feels like a forgotten subject in many classrooms.
But in the boarding house, where country kids often bunk in with city kids and international students, or sit in classrooms together, something different is happening. There’s a kind of grassroots advocacy going on. These aren’t policy debates or school projects – this is the real thing. Real conversations. Real exposure to rural life. A culture shared not by lecturing, not by glossy media campaigns, but simply by living alongside each other.
And let’s be clear – this isn’t new. For generations, country families have sought broader educational opportunities for their children beyond what’s available in rural and remote communities. It’s been a long-time response to the postcode penalty. But today, more than ever, the role of country boarders in city schools feels vital somehow. Urgent even.
At the 2023 Australian Boarding Schools Summit, the panel discussion Country Culture in the Boarding House opened up this very conversation. One of the speakers, Natalie Kenny from North Queensland, spoke about the joy of having her kids’ school friends – from cities and overseas – spend time on their cattle station. There, they got a crash course in everything from growing fodder crops to feed lotting cattle. Over dinner, they chatted about the ethics and logistics of live export. The moral obligation of countries like Australia to ensure that third world countries have access to protein even though they have no access to refrigeration. And every moment of it was real. Unfiltered. Life on the land, shared firsthand.
These moments aren’t limited to one property or one family. Hosting city kids has been happening for as long as I can remember. In fact, it was my introduction to the country – as a teenager visiting a boarder friend’s family in the bush. I’ll never forget the feeling of crisp, clean air. The frost beneath my impractical city sandshoes. The stars… oh my the stars.
And it didn’t matter if the boarder was off a farm or from a town. Just being part of that community – hanging in the main street, mucking around on the tennis courts, popping into the local bakery. Everyone knew my host family. The newsagent wanted to know how school was going. It all left a mark. It planted something in me. That sense of belonging, of connection, of knowing where things come from and how they’re grown – I’d never experienced that in the city.
For me, the impact was life changing. I went country… full throttle country. I didn’t last at University in the city, instead I headed to Ag college and before I knew it, I’d made a life on the Central Western Slopes and Plains of NSW. Married a farmer. Raised country kids who themselves went off to boarding school – and brought home their own crop of city friends for the holidays.
And there I was, the girl from the city, teaching a teenager from Sydney how to start a syphon. Explaining where their jeans come from as we drove past cotton fields. Cleaning out troughs on a frosty morning and talking about the importance of clean water for our livestock. Wrapping up harvest with a couple of icy cold ones and a pot of freshly caught yabbies. Chasing chooks into the pen on dusk with a few haphazard city kids. I had become that country mum, that quiet advocate for rural Australia and I know, from lived experience, that it matters.
Because in those moments, minds are opening. Perceptions are changing. And while we’re not handing out flyers or lobbying for headlines, we’re doing something just as powerful. We’re building bridges.
So bravo to our boarding schools – the ones filled with day students and city families who openly admit their school would feel hollow without its country boarders. These schools are more than just places of learning – they’re melting pots of culture, connection and genuine advocacy.
And bravo to our boarders who fill the wagon with their city mates and have rural parents all over the country navigating logistics, cooking up a storm. And all the while they’re advocating through friendship what it means to be rural. Truly rural. What it means to live on the land, in the small towns and our regional centres.
If you’re looking for a reason to be hopeful about the future of agricultural literacy in Australia, look no further than the boarding house. You’ll find it there – in the muddy boots, ripped work shirts, and open hearts of the next generation.
It’s the ultimate collaboration: rural boarders x agricultural advocacy.
Keeping Up With Our Boarders
`I am always proud to share our quarterly publication, Keeping Up With Our Boarders. This Boarder publication is a great snapshot of the term that was and I hope you can find the time to leaf through our Term 2 edition. https://issuu.com/pymbleladiescollege/docs/2025_term_2_keeping_up_with_our_boarders
Is a Gap Year calling?
The Australian Government has broadened the eligibility for the Tertiary Access Payment, a one-off payment of up to $5,000 to help students from regional and remote areas with the cost of moving for tertiary study. You can find more information here: Eligibility for Tertiary Access Payment Expanded to Include Gap Year Students.
House Hoodie ?
Our Boarders’ Representative Council (BRC) are a busy Boarder group who meet fortnightly to provide feedback and develop initiatives for our Boarding family. Last term, following feedback from the various year groups, they designed a House Hoodie for the girls who live in Marden and Goodlet Houses. The hoodies cost $50.00 each. If you would like your daughter to have one, please complete the following online form:
Love It Ms Theresa Mimmo
It was apparent we were back into the swing of things with our weekend activities. Year 12 reconnected on Friday night in Lang House with treats and games. Year 7 and Year 10 enjoyed a Saturday evening in Avonmoore enjoying each other’s company and some laughs. It was a very relaxing evening with a variety of games such as UNO and Jenga. A trip to the Northern Beaches rounded out the weekend. Boarders travelled by train and ferry to Manly. Whilst it was cold the sun did shine providing opportunity to walk along the Corso and browse the markets.
We have a very busy weekend ahead with activities celebrating NAIDOC Week, TASFest, a trip to the movies and our community event with the wider Pymble Gordon Uniting Church coming to share a chapel service and brunch with us.
If you would like to look ahead to what else is coming up in our Love It program this week, please click the following link: https://issuu.com/pymbleladiescollege/docs/2025_term_2_keeping_up_with_our_boarders
View From My Window
Hi, my name is Stella. I’ve been here, there, and everywhere, but since moving back to Australia, I have been living in the Hunter Valley, in a suburb called Bolwarra. I live in a lovely family house with my parents, my two brothers, and my dog, Bertie. My dad works in the trading industry, and my mum does part-time teaching at the grammar school near our house. (Fun fact: she used to work at Pymble.) I have two brothers—Johnny, who is ten years old and goes to school at home and Eddie, my older brother, who is 17 and currently in Year 11 at Joeys.
So far, my life has involved a lot of moving around, and the view from my window has changed quite a bit—about ten times throughout my life. Each house and view has been different: from looking out over other apartments, to seeing farm animals, to gazing at a park, to my own backyard, and now finally looking out over my suburb while watching the sunset. When I do come home, I love the comforting feeling of seeing the sunset every night something I’ve learned to appreciate after living in the city for a while. I can assure you, it’s much better seeing the sun lower over the river and the land too. It is also so quiet now. Where in the past I would fall asleep to the sound of sirens and buses, now it’s only the sound of Bertie snuggled up next to me.
What I have learnt after moving so many times is home is not so much about the house you live in but the family that surround you wherever you are. Coming to Boarding in Year 8 was one of the best things to happen to me because I now know that for the next three years of my life, I will always have that “home away from home” to come back to and friendships that are as close as family I will cherish for life.
Boarder of the Week
Congratulations to our first Boarder of the Week for Term 3, the very deserving Annika. Annika joined us from Moree in Year 7. Now in Year 10, Annika is absolutely delightful in every way. She is kind and thoughtful, organised and tidy and works hard in the Learn It program. She is a wonderful ‘big sister’ – taking the time to be with the younger Boarders and sharing her experiences with wisdom and empathy. Annika has a gentle sense of humour and can always be relied on for a smile. A proud Marden Boarder, we are certainly pleased to call Annika one of ours.
Save the Date
3 August – Community Day 9.00am- 12.00pm (no leave during this time)
4-14 August – HSC Trial Examinations
31 August – Dads and Daughters – Burgers and Bowls Father’s Day Celebration
19 September – Boarder Parent Group Meeting followed by FABBA event
20 September – Garden Party
25 September – Farewell to Year 12 Chapel Service (all Boarders required to be in attendance) followed by Year 12 Celebration dinner for Year 12 Boarders and their families
25 September – Boarders’ Travel Day
26 September – Year 12 Speech Day and Valedictory Dinner
Carolyn Burgess
Head of Boarding