If you have any exciting stories to share, please reach out to Laura Maasburg, Alumni and Community Manager, or Adam Liddiard, Director of Community Relations, or call 5971 6100.

Enjoy the Semester 2, 2022 Edition of Namalata

Enjoy the Semester 1, 2022 Edition of Namalata

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Woodleigh School challenges the Adventurous Minds of students when Wugularr School and the Penbank Campus meet in Beswick

Dear Friends,

Your support of the Wugubank Partnership is immensely important to us.

This newsletter is about our recent adventure to Beswick involving Wugularr and Penbank Year 6 students. Growing from strength to strength, the Wugubank Partnership enables children to learn together.

Two-way learning at its best!

Over the years, the Wugularr mob and Penbank mob easily slip into gear when they meet. Whether it is on the Peninsula or at Beswick, it is two-way learning at its best. There is no judgement, simply so much to learn from our very diverse and amazing environments.

To see children sharing their worlds and culture, from the Bottom End to the Top End of Australia, is truly remarkable. Students explored an area known as Top Yard with Aboriginal Elder, Uncle Tango (Frankie Lane). They swam in the pure waters of the Waterhouse River system that runs through the community of Beswick and walked along its banks to see Rock Art created centuries ago by the Aboriginal people of this spectacular land. Children covered themselves in mud and danced around the rocks and the waterways. Such fun was had by all!

The Wugularr mob’s confidence has grown incredibly. At Nitmiluk the children taught the Penbank mob how to dance to prepare for a corroboree. They freely sang together and knew the songs that had been learnt in previous years. There was no shame. These were just a couple of examples that demonstrated how relationship building develops confidence and trust. It was a pleasure to see.

Education beyond and keeping connected

We are always very excited to see the Wugularr and Penbank mob get together. As students move into the secondary years, a number of them are choosing to attend school in Darwin or even in Melbourne. Recently we were very pleased to have Kenita B visit Salwyn currently living in Mt Eliza. Kenita is in Year 7 at MITS (Melbourne Indigenous Transition School) and Salwyn is past student of Woodleigh. Both Kenita and Salwyn enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with Penbank and Woodleigh friends for a Saturday BBQ.

Thank you

Special thanks are extended to David Quin for leading the Wugubank expeditions, the teachers and staff involved from both Penbank and Wugularr School, and importantly, the Beswick community for including us in their lives. It is truly a unique experience and privilege to be involved in this partnership fondly known as Wugubank!

Membership is purely casual – turn up when you can, even if it is only a few times a year. We gather for dinner at the Canadian Bay Hotel in Mount Eliza on the first Wednesday of each month at 7pm, and new faces are always welcome.

If you have any queries, please get in touch with Peta Gogan at petagogan@bigpond.com or call our Community Relations team on 5971 6100. We would love to see a few new faces there!

Peta Gogan

MOPS Coordinator

Respect for ourselves, for others and our environment.

When you give to Woodleigh, you are supporting life-changing scholarships, incredible support programs and investing in state of the art facilities across all of our campuses. School fees alone do not provide the capital needed to shape the future of Woodleigh School.

Every gift makes a genuine difference to the lives of students who attend Woodleigh School.

Woodleigh School Community Fund

Donations to the Woodleigh School Community Fund are not tax deductible. 

Woodleigh School’s Community Fund continues to promote respect, understanding and appreciation of others within our community. The Community Fund helps support Woodleigh School’s Community Programs and Partnerships including links with Wugubank, Ampilatwatja, Miwatj and the Sudanese Homework Club. These programs and partnerships provide valuable experiences for a wide range of students including those from local and remote communities across Australia. 

Woodleigh School Scholarship Fund

Donations over $2 to the Woodleigh School Scholarship Fund are tax deductible. 

Our scholarship program continues to be vitally important for all within our community. This fund provides opportunity to students who in normal circumstances would be unable to attend Woodleigh School. With your help, we can continue to make scholarships available to deserving students from across Australia who we believe will thrive in the Woodleigh environment and in turn make a significant contribution to the life of our school.

Bursaries also provide assistance to Woodleigh families who would otherwise not be able to continue to attend Woodleigh School without financial support.

Woodleigh School Building Fund

Donations over $2 to the Woodleigh School Building Fund are tax deductible.

The Woodleigh School Building Fund provides support for capital work. 

It supports the maintenance of existing buildings, the redevelopment of older buildings and construction of new buildings according to the school needs. 

Masterplans for all campuses at Woodleigh School are large scale, ambitious and long-term. We are committed to providing state of the art facilities in which to teach and learn.

To assist the Principal and the Board realise the exciting plans outlined in the Woodleigh School Masterplan at a pace not otherwise possible, we seek the generous financial and philanthropic support of our community.

For more information about how you can support Woodleigh School, please contact the Community Relations Department – communityrelations@woodleigh.vic.edu.au or phone 5971 6100.