Editorial
Welcome to the June issue of Lion. In this edition, we’re looking at some big moments in the life of our school, present and past.
Our feature On the Runway plots the development and world premiere performance of massed item The Runway, a specially commissioned work for choir and symphony orchestra at this year’s St Kilda Road Campus Music Festival. The Hamer Hall stage, stalls and balconies swelled with 450 performers bringing this unique collaboration between composer Stuart Greenbaum (OW1984) and the Music Department to life. It was a big moment.
A very big tragic moment – in fact, the largest in Australian maritime history – is covered by Philip Powell (OW1973) in his moving story on the discovery of the wreckage of the Montevideo Maru in April this year, after 80 years lost at sea.
We also look at a big moment in our school’s more recent history: it's 30 years since the introduction of the International Baccalaureate into our curriculum. Indeed, 1993 was a particularly busy year for Wesley; students were issued with laptops for the first time, and Glen Waverley’s Senior School hosted its first Year 12 cohort. Read more.
30 years… we use the decades as markers, don’t we? Passing chunks of time against which we measure our lives. Where was I – who was I – 10… 20… 30 years ago? And what has unfolded since? We asked a handful of our past Captains and Senior Prefects to look back across the decades and share their stories with us. Read more.
It’s also a ‘decade year’ for Chum Creek – regular camps started there 70 years ago. College Principal Nick Evans (OW1985) was there recently, and in a nostalgic moment found some comments he’d written as a Year 9 student in a 1982 camp diary. You can read about it in our Campus Snapshots here. It’s a small story, but it loomed large for him, as 40-odd years in his life momentarily dissolved.
The small moments can resonate just as loudly in our lives as the big ones sometimes, can’t they?
Paul Munn, Lion Editor and Features writer