Where Your Treasure Is

At Yarramalong, a village in the hinterland of the beautiful Central Coast region of New South Wales, Barker College has its very own Darkinjung Barker campus.

In the main classroom, on the wall facing the hillside, there is a framed notice, which says: “Teaching is a work of heart”.

That was how I began my words of encouragement during the Whole School Commencement Assembly at the Rosewood Centre on 27 January 2023, the first day of Term 1. As always, it is a great joy to see Barker’s current students (Pre-Kindergarten to Year 12, including the Darkinjung Barker and Ngarralingayil Barker students), and Barker’s staff all together. And on this occasion, we were joined by the School Council’s President, the Right Rev Kanishka Raffel, Archbishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of New South Wales.

It was an opportunity for me on behalf of Barker’s Governors, to thank the teachers and the staff who support them at Barker’s Hornsby, Yarramalong, Wollombi, and Gunyangara campuses; to acknowledge our current students as the most important members of the Barker community, and to wish them well for the coming year; and of course, to bring a warm welcome to all new staff and to the students commencing their Barker journeys in 2023.

“Teaching is a work of heart” are words to celebrate the gift of teaching and could well have been the main reason why each teacher came to the profession. I observed that the wellbeing of students and staff must be front and centre of all that is said and done at Barker, and that the School Council’s purpose is to govern the School, so that it is, and always will be, a place of belonging for all.

In that spirit, I suggested that we could adjust ever so slightly the words on the notice in the Darkinjung Barker classroom to put it this way – Teaching is work for heart. Barker’s teachers and the staff who support them, enable outcomes which have real and lasting significance for future generations. Their caring work facilitates Barker’s Vision to be a leader in education that inspires hope, beyond the North Shore, beyond

Sydney, beyond Australia, to a global level. Underpinning that Vision of course, is Barker’s Christian framework, a framework established by Barker’s founder and first Head Rev Henry Plume in his early work at Kurrajong Heights and continued by his successors through to the present day with Barker’s ninth Head, Phillip Heath AM.

Barker strives to bring joyfulness and hopefulness to all within its community, and for its students to have the finest and best character and experiential education. And the key is education of the heart. For it is the heart which holds within it all that is most precious, all that we must protect. So, as we continue the great Barker journey, may we all hold in the most precious of places, the God-breathed words (Luke 12:34; Matthew 6:21) - “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.

David Charles (75) Chair of Council