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Wilderness Times | Summer – Autumn 2022
CHAIR OF THE GOVERNING COUNCIL SPEECH NIGHT ADDRESS
Welcome everyone. Tonight, we come together to celebrate the achievements of our senior students and to formally congratulate and farewell the Year 12 class of 2021.
Shanti Berggren Chair of the Governing Council
We also come here tonight to honour and farewell an icon of Wilderness School, our Principal, Ms Jane Danvers. I have been toying with the idea that we should hand out tissues with tonight’s program, but we are Wilderness women (and Wilderness men). A couple of deep breaths and we’ll get through it. This year it is 40 years since I was in Year 12 sitting at Speech Night cross legged on the floor of the School Hall, now the Newman Theatre. What I remember the most from that evening was the crescendo of noise as we met as a school community for the last time in 1981 - the solemnity of our Speech Night ceremony led by the then Chair of Council, Mr Colin Thomson, followed by the rising quiet as we dispersed into the evening. It would be another 25 years before I learned the secret of those who serve on the School Council and came to understand my own ‘why’ in doing the same. To be honest, I have only been able to articulate it this year, captured in a wonderful Zulu word ‘ubuntu’, which means ‘I am because you are.’ Ubuntu captures the recognition that we are all bound together in ways that are invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others. The three most powerful words that can be uttered to someone are ‘You belong here.’ Our girls, our Principal, our staff, old scholars, parents and friends, and our Governing Council have a deep sense of belonging to Wilderness School, but Wilderness School is not about the grounds, the beautiful buildings, or the Sparaxis trees.
Belonging to Wilderness School is belonging to something greater than ourselves. It is a connectedness that exists between people. Over time each of us here tonight is part of an unbreakable chain of people going back and forward in time, back to the Misses Brown and forward into the future to the end of time. Each of us in this chain of people have our arms interlocked with those on either side of us. We are unbreakable together - even immortal. Jane Danvers you will always belong to Wilderness School. You have an abundance of ubuntu here. Your life’s work is here. Your daughters grew up here, and tonight we welcome Chloe Danvers back to Wilderness as our special guest. Jane, you have celebrity status inside the gates of 30 Hawkers Road. This year the Foundation Board honour you by renaming the Foundation Prize the Jane Danvers Foundation Prize which you will award for the first and last time tonight. You have been one of the greatest guardians of the vision of the Misses Brown and have reinforced their vision as an expression of the purpose of Wilderness School, ‘to make each girl the best she can be throughout her life.’ You cradled a dream of excellence in leadership until it has now sustained its own life and will seamlessly continue to serve the School. The Governing Council and I are optimistic about the future of this school. You have set us up well. So, Jane you go with our enormous gratitude. You go with our love. In 2021, the Wilderness rituals and experiences tying us together have started to return, as the long shadow of covid slowly retreats. Saturday morning sport was back to its splendid self. I have heard entertaining stories
