9 minute read
Connection to Place
Connection to
Our Loreto Normanhurst community boasts connections with boarders from rural towns, alumnae living interstate, and Loreto sisters living out Mary Ward’s vision overseas, just to name a few. Despite distance, diversity and even recent periods of remote learning, we share a close relationship to these grounds and its people, and have done so for nearly 125 years since our 1897 foundation. Members of our community reflect on their connection to the special place of Loreto Normanhurst from their unique perspectives.
Connection to
PLACE
Acknowledgement of Country
EACH YEAR, LORETO NORMANHURST DEVELOPS IN OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE CULTURAL AND SPIRITUAL CONNECTIONS FIRST NATIONS PEOPLES HAVE TO COUNTRY, AND LEARNS MORE ABOUT THE RICHNESS AND TRUTHS OF THE LAND ON WHICH OUR SCHOOL IS SITUATED. IN 2021, WE UPDATED OUR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY IN CONSULTATION WITH INDIGENOUS ELDERS OF THE GURINGAI LAND AND OTHER IMPORTANT MEMBERS OF OUR COMMUNITY.
We pay our respect to this ancient Land that breathed life 300 million years ago. A Land that extends from the ridgeline of the Blue Mountains across the soft sandstone plateau to the coast into the ocean. These ridgelines are the water catchment areas. It’s where the rain hits first and flows down into our rivers and creeks, rejuvenating the earth and filling waterholes and hanging swamps. A Land kissed by rainbows and home to the tall Blue Gums. We acknowledge this Land as mother to possums, lyrebirds, the laughing kookaburra, the tawny frogmouth and brush turkey. We recognise the deep cultural and spiritual connection of this Land to the peoples of this Country. We honour Elders, those past, present and emerging. We pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within our community.
ELIZABETH HEILMAN
YEAR 10 BOARDER
To work hard and play hard is to be a Normo boarder. To scream ‘Dancing Queen’ down the M2 is to be a Normo boarder. To support your mates through thick and thin is to be a Normo boarder. There’s nothing else like it. It is the people; it is the place.
It was at the end of Term 4, when the Year 10 boarding cohort was doing ‘Just Dance’ in the Mary Ward Centre with the widest smiles and loudest laughs, that I knew I was home.
Once you join the Loreto community, you’re loved without judgement, you’re supported with compassion and you’re valued like a sister. Excitement and energy fill the Loreto grounds, the school and the dorms. The girls and staff make this place so special; a place where you can reach your full potential and thrive with joy and compassion in your heart.
So, when they say it’s a home away from home, it’s true - it truly is home, just with an extra 180 sisters.
The Loreto Boarder
The Archivist
For 124 years, Normo girls have walked through our heritage gates, sat together on the Oak Tree Lawn and gathered in the Reception Room. The enduring features of our grounds and buildings provide a beautiful connection between our past, present and future.
We know that Normo represents a ‘home away from home’ for our boarders. In the early decades when most students were boarders, girls returned home only once each year across the summer break. Other holidays were spent exploring the bush and caves, picnicking, sending postcards and playing tennis and basketball on the courts. For the Loreto Sisters, this was the place where they lived and worked; the small cemetery in the Normanhurst bush was established for sisters who passed away while serving our School.
For our girls, this school is a place of triumph and challenge, of felicity and resilience, where friendships are forged and enduring interests and talents are developed. The sense of belonging and the memories forged here are potent and lifelong, as our alumnae can attest. A simple visit to the Chapel, the art rooms or the Deirdre Rofe Centre is enough to trigger a myriad of stories and nostalgia for their time at Loreto Normanhurst.
We know we are blessed to care for this land that has been so lovingly handed down to us. Boarders and day girls still eat, play and learn in many of the same spaces as decades of alumnae did. Our School will continue to preserve and enhance our grounds and buildings so that future generations can belong to this place as we do.
MS RACHEL VAUGHAN
RECORDS MANAGER
Loreto Normanhurst has always been a special place for me. Although I have friends all over the world and from many parts of my life, I am still very close to friends I made in Year 7 and there is nothing like that conversational shorthand that goes back to childhood.
I remember the art rooms especially. We took the ‘studio’ system of teaching for granted at the time, but looking back I realise this was the source of the unique, relaxed and creative atmosphere. ‘Private art’ on Thursday nights was an outstanding memory for me, when we worked after school in studio groups of a range of ages – this was a collegiate form of learning, but it didn’t feel deliberate or heavy handed.
The Loreto Normanhurst community is so important to me that I trusted it with my precious 12 year old daughter, all the way from Hong Kong! That day we left her and flew back home was momentous, but hearing Dr. Leoni Degenhardt [LN Principal 1994-2008] left me feeling very confident and this was borne out every step of the way for the next 6 years. And it was the whole community who supported us; living overseas, we relied on day parents and other boarders and when we came back, we were able to return some of that hospitality and care for their daughters.
It was particularly memorable to leave campus after my daughter had packed up her room in Mary Ward Wing for the last time and we said our goodbyes. I was hit by a palpable ‘circle of life’ feeling – it was the end of that generation for me at Loreto.
CATRIONA QUINN
CLASS OF 1982
The Alumna and Former Parent
The Loreto Sister
After 124 years, the Loreto Sisters are no longer resident at Normanhurst, but the connection is by no means severed. The tradition, spirituality and service of generations of Loreto sisters, their colleagues and friends are embedded in the very fabric of Loreto Normanhurst.
In a few words, what can one say about a school, an educational vision and a community so full of life and energy?
It is impossible to imagine Normanhurst without the boarders, arriving from distant parts of NSW and making up a significant community within the school. The Indigenous boarders giving the gift of their culture and experience. Boarders, sometimes homesick or overwhelmed, receiving solace and comfort from Sr Kevin Maye who served in the Boarders’ Dining Room for over 50 years. And that care being replicated today by the wonderful Boarding School staff.
Music and Art – from the earliest days to the present HSC students represented in ARTEXPRESS and ENCORE – have been central to the life of the school. Generations of students were inspired by Mother Evangeline who was still teaching art into her 80s. Who can forget the memorable music festivals, or the concerts, following a tradition hallowed by Mother Lua and Sr Deirdre Browne? Where else would you find a school where every girl sings and the choir competition is as important as any sporting event? Perhaps what stands out above all is the commitment to a gospel-based faith grounded in those singular Mary Ward values of freedom, justice, sincerity, verity and felicity. The response is often found in a compassionate, intelligent spirit of social justice. A spirit not just characterised by the fun and money-raising activities of Loreto Day, but by the everyday reminders of what it is to be of service to others and why this is necessary.
The dedicated service of those Irish sisters who came to Normanhurst 124 years ago is replicated time and time again by equally dedicated staff and by the engagement of students in caring for the earth, advocating for asylum seekers, and asking the hard questions about life as it is lived.
In a time of much suffering, a great deal of social unease and change, such a school cannot do anything other than inspire hope for the future.
SR LIBBY ROGERSON IBVM
CLASS OF 1961
A place is always imbued with the spirits and stories of those who have walked its corridors. The grounds of Loreto Normanhurst boast almost 125 years’ worth of this history and tradition.
But a place can also envision the future. There are many generations of Loreto girls who are yet to play sport on the oval, gather in the chapel, learn in the classrooms and laugh in the gardens. Our Master Plan 2047 envisions Loreto Normanhurst as a place of learning and living that fosters a strong, diverse community and grows young women who are ‘compassionate warriors.’
We were delighted upon the recent approval of our State Significant Development Application and the commencement of Phase One of construction to update our spaces and surroundings.
Over the next 12 months, we will finalise preparations for our Boarding School building project. Our vision for the new Boarding School is a lively home away from home that sets the stage for the rhythms of boarding life and emphasises community.
We look forward to sharing updates about our Master Plan with you as it progresses in 2022 and beyond.
Our Master Plan 2047
ELIZABETH HEILMAN
