Toongabbie Christian College

ADELE WAKELING (continued…)

My earliest memories of my school days at Toongabbie are from the early years of the School operating out of Toongabbie Baptist Church on the corner of Metella Rd and Octavia St. I was walking down the stairs, holding the rail we were not to slide down, meeting a couple of my friends Stephen Love and David Wiseman, who told me they were going up to eat “Nutella” Road. Miss Taylor was my Infants teacher and she taught us how to count in Italian. My world grew with the school as classrooms moved from church halls to demountables and then to the first permanent buildings on Octavia Street. I remember clearly the house fire in the first building renovated for office space and the once in a hundred year flood that came twice. While many held out for the lunchtime auction at the annual School Fete, I spent my money on home made sherbet bags and the face painting. Regular competition with other Christian Community Schools was also a highlight; from Carnivals and Cross Country to the Festival of Gifts, a trip to Old Sydney Town and the special Bicentennial celebrations. We were a small school but we were not alone. School musicals added to the soundtrack of my life with songs like What do you do on a rainy day in an Ark? And Everyone calls him Sir . To this day I cannot read the book of Daniel without recalling Johnathan Hughes as Nebuchadnezzar threatening to do terrible things to his three friends. As part of the Ministry Choir, we performed in shopping centres and retirement villages and had the enormous privilege of traveling to New Zealand. There we ate literally a pallet load of kiwi fruit and visited many schools on the North Island. At one school the entire student body entered without a word spoken among them and then lifted the roof off with the whole school participating in a Maori welcome. We brought singing, drama and dancing but I’m not sure we ever did recover Colby’s “Missing Memory”. I can’t say enough about the teachers who guided me along the way. There were those whom I idolised as a child and those I respected as a teenager. I have had the privilege of working beside some of them as a beginning teacher and to this day count a number of them friends. They were as genuine and Christ-honouring as teachers as they are real and faithful men and women today. People used to ask me what it was like having school principals for parents and I would say, “What is it like to not have a parent for a principal?” as that was the case for me for most of my schooling. For all that, I am grateful, and I know I have my parents to thank; two people who remain as committed as ever to seeing children offered excellence in Christian education. Something I will be forever, I should say eternally, thankful for. I remember a few of us praying in the sports storeroom at the Dunmore House property. God was there and touched our hearts. I remember that on every school camp God would move our hearts toward Him. Students would pray, cry, read the Bible and encourage each other. Those experiences brought us closer to God and to each other. One time, in a Year 8 Geography class, we were all bitten by the tsetse fly and fell asleep at our desks, to show Mr Clark that we had been listening during his lessons. Unfortunately, we didn’t introduce our demonstration properly and he assumed the reverse. I will always be grateful that I had the opportunity to attend a school with a purposeful focus on Jesus and God’s love for us. This remains the heart of the College today, forty years later, by the grace of God and the efforts of many. Amen.

LUKE HESTER Student 1981-1992 School Captain 1992

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