SENIOR SCHOOL

St Mary’s students Lucy Lönnqvist (Year 12), Grace Hailes (Year 11) and Alana Gregory (Year 10) were afforded the incredible privilege of participating in the 2021 Premier’s Anzac Student Tour, a thoughtprovoking 11-day trip around Western Australia in commemoration of the Anzac legacy.

From April 16 to 26, the girls and 11 other students from a mix of metropolitan and regional

WA secondary schools travelled to Kununurra,

Wyndham, Broome, Rottnest Island and Albany in a bid to better understand the Anzac legacy in the context of the State’s heritage. They visited a number of important historical sites during the tour, including the flying boat wrecks in Broome, the

Oliver Hill battery and tunnels at Rottnest, and the

Special Air Service Regiment Museum at Campbell

Barracks.

While the girls enjoyed all aspects of the tour, their highlights varied in large part due to personal experience. Lucy, a passionate historian, said the tour gave her a greater appreciation of WA’s wartime history.

“While these tours typically venture overseas, I feel as though I benefitted from learning the history and heritage present in my own backyard. Learning our local history turns the grand patterns of historical change into concrete stories that tell the lives of individuals. We don’t need to visit Flanders Fields in Belgium or Anzac Cove in Gallipoli to see reflections of the Anzac legacy, because they begin right here, on our own soil.” Grace, who has four relatives who served as Anzacs, particularly enjoyed the group’s interaction with Special Air Service Regiment veterans at the Campbell Barracks. “Listening to veterans who had fought share their experiences rehumanised the wartime experience for me. They spoke from the heart and the humility surrounding their work was something they seemed to all express.” For Alana, the tour’s stops at Rottnest Island and Albany were particularly poignant. Alana’s greatgreat grandfather, Wilhelm Asmus, was held on the Rottnest Island internment camp during WWI due to his German heritage; her great-uncle, Private John Alexander Latto, was killed in action while fighting in the 11th Australian Infantry Battalion; and her grandfather, Captain Roger Blazey, was conscripted to serve as an army psychologist in the Vietnam War. “My favourite part of the trip was being in Albany for Anzac Day. We were fortunate to attend the dawn service on top of Mt Clarence to commemorate those who have served Australia in war. Visiting Rottnest was also very significant for me because my great-great grandfather was a German prisoner on the island during WWI.”

Year 12 students, Poppy Briggs and Lucy Lönnqvist, triumphed over a stellar field of inventors to claim ClickView’s Aussie Student Inventions that Change the World Upper Secondary title in March. The environmentally minded pair won over the esteemed judging panel with their ‘Bin it Right’ app, which utilises artificial intelligence to identify what rubbish needs to be disposed of in general waste, recycling or FOGO bins. As part of their reward for claiming the prestigious title, Poppy and Lucy recently had an opportunity to tap into the creative mind of one of the competition’s judges, ClickView founder Evan Clark, who armed them with an array of new ideas to refine and improve ‘Bin it Right’. The dynamic duo are also set to meet with the competition’s other two judges, renowned inventor, Sally Dominguez, and prominent Australian physicist, Dr Niraj Lal, later this year. Poppy and Lucy have become accustomed to receiving acclaim since bringing their ‘Bin it Right’ brainchild to life. In 2019 they received the City of Stirling’s ‘Stirling Star Award’ and won the ICT Young Explorers State Finals competition, which led to an invitation to pitch at the Waste and Recycle Conference in Sydney, where they later received a $4000 prize to continue developing the app. More recently, the inspiring duo were nominated as one of four finalists in the 2021 WA Youth Awards’ Sustainable Futures Innovation for a Sustainable Future category.

Agroup of talented St Mary’s Year 10 students went within a whisker of claiming back-to-back National da Vinci Decathlon titles in June. After being crowned Australian champions in 2019 as Year 8s, Anya Chen, Madison Hamilton, Siena Hamilton, Jaime Leivers, Isabella Love, Mae Siah, Sorielle Smith and Misree Trivedi placed second in this year’s final. The event was not held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The girls, who participated in the national final via video link, won the Arts and Poetry category, were runners-up in Creative Producers and Ideation, and performed strongly in the remaining competitions.

Sixty-five inspiring St Mary’s students helped raise more than $63,000 for the Leukemia Foundation by participating in the School’s World’s Greatest Shave event on 22 April. Eight brave students had their heads shaved, while another 57 girls chopped their ponytails in front of several hundred supportive students at the lunchtime event. St Mary’s 2021 World’s Greatest Shave organising committee, Year 12 students Remi Caldow, Isobel Finnie and Skye Simpson, set an initial fundraising target of $15,000. However, their ultimate goal was to surpass last year’s fundraising total of $28,000, which they eclipsed before the event even took place, thanks to the generosity of the entire School community.

Some of the Year 11 and 12 girls who took part in the event had been growing their locks for an extended period of time in preparation for the fundraiser. Year 12 student, Ingrid Sefton, donated more than 60cm of her hair for the cause. Her lengths, along with the other girls’ hair, were destined to be transformed into wigs for cancer sufferers undergoing chemotherapy. Another highlight of the event was an inspiring Q&A with Year 6 student, Chloe Warburton, who recently won her battle with leukaemia.