I hope you all had a restful break and enjoyed some valuable family time. While some of you were camping on the coast, visiting other parts of Australia or travelling overseas, work at the College reached fever pitch.
School holidays are the perfect time for our Property Team to action many large jobs that can’t happen when students are around.
Work continued on GPAC
There is one bonus to this drought and that is that the Hospitality Kitchens and Dance and Drama Studio are well on track for opening early 2020. Progress has been remarkable and everyone was pleased with what they saw at the recent site meetings.
New carpark
If you dropped your children off or picked them up from College anytime this week you wouldn’t have been able to miss the excavations besides M and B Block. We are building a new carpark which will be a welcome addition to our infrastructure. It will take another five weeks or so to complete (depending on weather conditions) and will look a bit messy in the meantime.
The new carpark won’t affect parents or the pickup and drop off procedures but will be a safe place for delivery trucks and more convenient parking for visitors to Main Admin. There will also be a differently-abled carpark for those who need this facility.
New primary toilets
We replaced the old primary demountable toilets with brand new facilities over the holidays. It was a bittersweet moment watching the crane take away the old toilet block that was one of our original buildings. However, they were well and truly past their use-by date and the new ones have already been hailed as a very welcome addition to the campus by staff and students.
The new toilets have individual entries like the ones in N Block and each one has its own washbasin and exhaust fan.
New lawn for Prep M
Ever since the temporary toilets were removed from Prep M, the grass has struggled to recover. The fenced yard is also used as a safe waiting area for students before their bus arrives so the extra traffic and the drought have well and truly killed off the last few viable blades of grass outside Prep M.
We now have a lovely new and (almost) indestructible faux grass lawn that will look good all year round. Heather Dodwell also plans to put a small garden down the side of the lawn to engage the students and beautify the yard.
Multiple smaller projects
Alongside the big projects, the Property Team managed a multitude of smaller projects which included: laying a concrete slab on the new oval, creating a new garden outside B Block and near N Block, topping up the Prep sandpit, installing a fence across the back of E Block, building storage sheds near D Block, repainting stairwells and the seating in the Art Courtyard, installing two new bubblers (one on the new oval and upstairs on K Block), building garden boxes in the Hospitality Courtyard, and scrubbing the UA.
Wild weather
Anyone who enjoyed a staycation these holidays would be aware of the incredible winds over the past couple of weeks. We even had heavy hail in Beerwah at the beginning of the break. Fallen branches and a few truckloads of leaves to be blown have increased our Property Team’s already huge workload.
I want to take this opportunity to thank them all for the incredible job they do taking care of GCC. Not only do the team work hard but they do it with a smile on their face and a wonderful attitude in their heart. Thanks to Tim Siggs, our Property Manager and his team: Mark Becker, Ben Joy, and Ben Ukkola.
Mike Curtis, Principal