La Salle Greenhills Visits De La

in our activities, including touring neighbouring towns and sites, eating at delicious restaurants and educating them on the finer points of a few Aussie Card games. Leaving Keesera at the end of the month was difficult for all of us. We had spent four weeks working, playing and talking with the children, young adults and teachers who all have so little, yet their pride in themselves and the value they place on education was something that we all, and in particular our young men, saw as inspirational. With the work finished, we became tourists and visited the ruins at Hampi, the beaches at Mangalore and the magnificent Amber Palace at Mysore. Christmas Day saw us enjoying a smorgasbord lunch beside a pool at a Mangalore Hotel, whilst New Year’s Eve found us at the base of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur witnessing the firework display. It is with much sadness that we farewell Br Denis from the Coolies project for the time being. His initiative and dream has inspired over fifty young men and an increasing number of staff to step out of their comfort zone to experience the wonder of India and lend a hand to those in need. From my perspective, it is an experience to visit this intoxicating country and truly a privilege to be involved in this project. I will forever remember the parting words to our young men by Br Tom Walsh who organizes the volunteers at Keesera: “You will probably never truly comprehend the effect you have had on the children at this school, but be assured that your presence, work, smiles and kindness will live with them for a very long time.”

Mrs Christine Thompson From 2nd to 16th July this year, De La Salle families hosted 17 students from La Salle Green Hills, Manila. Many of our visitors stayed with De La Salle boys who had visited them the previous year in the Philippines. Our visitors were treated to classes at De La Salle, an Outdoor Education experience at Philip Island, visits to St James and St Bede’s schools and various excursions within and around Melbourne. A very special treat was feeding wallabies at Healesville Sanctuary! The boys from Manila found Melbourne to be a beautiful city, and their host families were extremely generous providing a variety of snapshots of Australian life with many boys returning home passionate supporters of different football clubs. On their penultimate evening in Australia, the school hosted a cocktail party to celebrate the success of the exchange. It was a very enjoyable evening with many stories shared. The Filipinas, donning special clothing and hats for the event, performed a traditional dance for their appreciative audience. It was a lovely chance to chat with families and see just how special their host sons had become to them. The next morning silence was shattered when the students lined up to board the bus to the airport. Hugs, promises to keep in touch and laughter were the order of the day, and the excited chatter on the bus about all the things that had been seen and done during their visit indicated the success of the exchange. With bulging bags the students and teachers lined up to board the plane, and with thanks, smiles and hugs, I waved goodbye to some very special young men. Their exchange would not have been such a success without the help of many people including Mr Peter Riordan, Mrs Carmel Dwyer, Mr Andrew Wozencroft, and Ms Jan Martin for taking our guests to different places, and Mrs Trish Woodman for all her help and advice in organising host families and helping the party be a success. A very big thank you also goes to Mr David Alexander and Mr David Ferguson who ran the Outdoor Education excursion to Philip Island. Finally, I would like to thank the families who made the boys welcome in their homes for those two weeks in May. This was a trip that our guests from the Philippines will remember always and I thank the students and families of De La Salle for their generosity.

Ms Liz O’Connell

Vale Marty Mahy

Our colleague and mate has gone. His guitar and song are silenced until his album is played. His long fight against a remorseless disease is lost. We have mourned for him as his strength waned. Many colleagues have commented on his courage and his inspirational fight against the illness which he called “Jimmy Dancer”. Marty came to De La Salle in 1996 as a physics teacher to replace the renowned Valdy Gravis. Physics was his main subject area until he was asked to take on Philosophy in Years 11 and 12 in 2007. He continued being an assessor for the Physics and GAT exams for a number of years. At heart, Marty was an enthusiastic and dedicated teacher who rose early in the mornings to do his corrections. He taught his students with passion, not only about the course work but also about the important issues facing our world and got them thinking deeply. He was innovative in his pedagogy and engaged his students though film and debate. If he was unconventional in his approach at times, this served to make his lessons all the more memorable. He promoted his ideas about Physics and Philosophy through lecturing, letter writing and membership on committees such as the Victorian Branch of the Australian Institute of Physics. At the Annual Conference for Physics teachers last year he conducted a workshop in which he argued that Physics had begun as Natural Philosophy but its exploration of the Big Questions had been asphyxiated by a heavy blanket of facts, formulas and technology. He went on to state that his students enjoyed grappling with the ideas behind the laws of Physics and proposed an inter-disciplinary marriage of Physics and Philosophy. Not unexpectedly he designed an alternative to the mainstream Physics for Year 11 which explored a wide range of topics dealing with those Big Questions and generated much interest as he covered the quirky and the mysterious. Outside the classroom he was a dedicated chess player and ran the lunchtime chess club throughout much of his time at the school, with students competing in the ACC annual tournaments. The Senior Tennis team was also a great love and he coached with success winning the 1999 ACC premiership. Marty was prepared to act on environmental issues where others simply indulged in the talk fest. He not only spoke about the plight of our planet faced by global warming but installed solar panels at home and wrote letters to the newspapers on pollution and overpopulation. His proposal to replace petrol driven cars with a network of buses powered by hydrogen, was broadcast by Radio National several years ago and was fluently presented. While Marty showed definite signs of exhibitionism in a comic sense, he was at heart a humble man with a self-deprecating sense of humour. This secured lasting friendships in spite of ideological differences. He referred to himself as Mad Marty, an indication of his irreverent sense of fun and his preparedness to stick his neck out. He called his gigs Mayhem concerts and raised money for both Lasallian projects and more latterly for Anti Cancer research. Marty, as a teacher of Philosophy, spent much time discussing the good Life and what it entailed. It is one of the ironies of life that Marty, who so loved life and was so active through teaching, projects, art, films, reading, riding, chess, golf and tennis has been cut down, at a comparatively young age, by the inexplicable randomness of his cancer. But, like the Stoics, he never questioned the unfairness of it all – he simply shared with us his acceptance of his situation and his determination to fight it every inch of the way. What is the measure of a man as complex and as talented and as dogged and as genuinely good as Marty was? He’ll be there in spirit reminding us of those invisible wires and the connectivity of life. One cannot imagine Marty remaining inactive in Eternity. We owe it to him to make our own contribution to the Good Life and to the welfare of our Planet as passionately as he did. Vale Marty, colleague and mate, a final farewell.

Mr Graeme Lawler