Welcome To New Staff
We would like to welcome Emma Buchanan-Jeffs and Louise Bocxe who have joined our staff this term. We are delighted that Mrs Buchanan-Jeffs and Mrs Bocxe have so quickly settled into GCCC life and the students have had such a smooth transition. Both teachers will write an article for the newsletter over the next few weeks.
Parent Pipeline
Our first Term 2 Parent Pipeline will be announced very soon. We will be considering your feedback to decide what the focus will be. Please feel free to make requests for these sessions at any time. Just email [email protected] and express your needs. Our aim is to help families by equipping parents in the way we teach various aspects of the curriculum. This is your opportunity to have input into the sessions we provide.
ANZAC Day Assembly
Primary Students participated in the whole school Anzac Day assembly last Thursday (24 April) and I would like to congratulate them for their contribution. Madeleine Roulston and Patrick McKenzie as Primary Captains introduced the Primary items. Year 2 students each presented one letter from an ANZAC Alphabet book – for example, “B is for Bully Beef which was tinned corned beef the soldiers were given during the war”. We were so proud of the way each student read their section. There were some very big words in these ANZAC descriptions.
Year 6 students recited a well-known poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. The poem is about the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War, in the Ukraine in 1854, where the British, French and Turks fought the Russians. One of the lines of the poem is “Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred”.
Listening to the students reciting this poem made me think of another group of men – our 800 Australian Light Horsemen who, mounted on “Walers” (a New South Wales stockhorse type – strong, great hearted animals), rode into Beersheba (Israel) in 1917 and did what no one else had been able to do – to take the city and capture the wells. This was perhaps the greatest victory of the war, and has been recognized as one of the greatest cavalry charges in history.
On October 31 1917, 400 years to the day after Islamic forces had taken over the Jewish settlement of Beersheba, the 4th and 12th Australian Light Horse regiments took back the town, with just bayonets in hand, in the last great cavalry charge in history. The Turkish and German armies were taken by surprise as, even in 1917, a cavalry charge was considered old-school and primitive. The Turkish artillery in particular found it impossible to adjust the sights on their heavy equipment quickly enough to fire at the Australians advancing 5 times faster than the tanks they had become used to. Later that day the captured German Commander was to say of the Australians: “They are not soldiers at all; they are madmen”. The taking back of Jerusalem 6 weeks later would have been impossible if the crucial water supplies of Beersheba weren’t captured first. And so it was that the youngest nation on Earth opened the way for the eventual restoration of the world’s oldest nation, Israel.
For those who are interested, you may wish to watch a very moving video clip with original footage of this amazing victory by our Australian Light Horsemen in World War 1.
The link is: vimeo.com/87320174
Our nation of Australia has deep connections with Israel as a result of this battle in 1917 which opened up the way for Jerusalem to be freed from 400 years of Ottoman rule.
Watching videos on the Australian Light Horsemen at Beersheba always moves me to tears. We have so much to be proud of in this nation’s history.
ANZAC Day March
All students who attended the Beerwah march with GCCC or a march in another area with family Scouts, Girl Guides etc. will receive a 2014 ANZAC DAY CERTIFICATE OF ATTENDANCE. Teachers marked class rolls on Friday 25 April, but as usual we would like to include any students who were involved in honouring those who fought for this nation at another Anzac Day assembly.
Please make sure that class teachers are aware of this if your child didn’t march with GCCC on Anzac Day but attended elsewhere.
Congratulations on such a fine representation of students from all primary levels at the Beerwah service.
Research on student wellbeing shows that connectedness to family, school and the wider community is a key factor in developing strong, resilient, confident young adults.
Cheryl Bryers
HEAD OF PRIMARY