24 | BOOMAL ACK A
DO YOU REMEMBER? Mrs Nola Squire
FORTY YEARS ON! Can you believe it? Our House system is celebrating its 40th year! Decades of memories of House can be recalled: House meetings, tute meetings, House rooms, House dinners, family picnics, swimming and athletic sports, House badges and mottoes, service days, Robin barbecues, Krome donuts, walk-a-thons, swim-a-thons and sleep-a-thons, House Chapel Services, brother-sister House activities, House choral competitions, war cries, banners, the pageantry of “entries”, Smith sausage sizzles, the 40-hour Famine, House picnics, House Tutors (now Mentors), the cheering and the tears of sharing, the colour, the friendships and loyalties, the joy of belonging
and having a role to play. You will want to add to this list. Perhaps you might like to send your reminiscences to the Editor for the next issue of Boomalacka. We hope that these photographs will bring back memories for you.
SOME HISTORY OF THE HOUSE SYSTEM FOR PASTORAL CARE In Boomalacka Issue 35, June 1978, the Headmaster, Mr Graeme Renney, made this announcement: “SCHOOL TO ESTABLISH HOUSES”. Following careful planning in 1978, the current system was introduced at the commencement of 1979; it was a huge change to the organisational structure.
As School Captain Lynn Sampson wrote in the school magazine in 1979, “Gone were the old divisions… and in their place were ten houses…House members from forms one to six mingled in house rooms, locker rooms, and classrooms, even that sanctum sanctorum the Cleaver common room was thrown open to all comers…The benefits have quickly become apparent ... there is a new atmosphere of loyalty and allegiance and a feeling of belonging to a group of people who care, and who could forget the swimming sports in first term? House Banners, hordes of cheering Cuthbertities and Nevettlings (to mention just a few), frantic barracking during every race, and an electric excitement in the air. The school had never seen, or heard, anything like it!”
