Welcome to Captain’s Corner! Each fortnight, we will be sharing stories, learning and events from the perspective of the students at Holy Cross. We hope you enjoy!

Yulunga Garden

Holy Cross is a vibrant community with areas to learn, live and love. Learning — meaning in-class engagement with tasks, Live — meaning social outdoors interactions and Love — meaning education in our Catholic faith. However, Holy Cross has included all three of those elements of our school to create an outdoor experience for learning, faith and nature experiences. Yulunga Garden is a mindful area located on the far side of the Top Playground. Unfortunately, the wooden table and other parts of Yulunga had rotten over time so Mrs Duffin (and a handful of students) put their heads together to recreate the space to what it is today. Over the holidays, Yulunga was renovated into a yarning circle for reading, talking and/or reflection for classes and individuals. 

The Yulunga garden has different varieties of plants including Kangaroo Paws, Grevilleas and Adenanthos (Woolly Bush). These native Australian plants give colour, character and beauty to the yarning circle. Shade and smells from the native plants give a true Australian context for students and teachers who meet there. Native plants represent an important part of the Australian landscape that has always played a role in Aboriginal culture. The plants help it make a place where everyone has the job to look after the surroundings and reflect, chat or admire the wonders of Yulunga garden.

It’s no secret that Holy Cross’ playground can be quite the crazy, dynamic type. This is from soaring balls, impressive flips on the ropes to anything as simple as long engaging conversations. All of these are either done underneath the cola, astro turf, the grass area or the adventure playground. Thanks to the work of various teachers and back and forth suggestions from students, Holy Cross has completely reopened Yalunga garden with its inviting yarning circle as a huge new addition to the playground! The yarning circle consists of 15 sandstone rectangular prisms placed in the form of a circle. The phrase ‘yarn’ is one used by Indigenous peoples, where a collective group of people collaborate in a creative and harmonious way to preserve cultural knowledge as well as build a respectful relationship with each other. It is without doubt a beautiful place to engage in conversation and class lessons. 

Holy Cross is set on Dharawal land. In this school, everyone has been taught to acknowledge and respect Indigenous culture. This is because not only do many of our students have Indigenous heritage, but also because if it weren’t for those people before us, we wouldn’t be here today. Indigenous people have taught us many things and we must appreciate it - hence learning the Dharawal version of the first verse of our national anthem, which we sing at assemblies, accompanied by the Acknowledgement of Country. Yulunga Garden was given its name as ‘Yulunga’ means ‘welcome’ in Dharawal. We hope our newly renovated space lets us connect and reflect upon nature and the Dharawal people!

By Bella, Oliver R, Joseph and Mia G (Year 6).