A word from the Principal
Alan Salt
Farewell from student editor Liam Heitman-Rice
During the final panicked months of year 12, leading
up to your Summer exams, you shall grasp a minor
understanding of the awesome difficulty of what is
to come. There is little that can truly
prepare you for the demands of year
13. Coursework drafts, practice essays,
hours of research and revision… I am
writing this three months from my
final exams in June, and I say without
dramatic
exaggeration
that
this
workload, combined with my glamorous
weekend job as a checkout girl, is the
most academically challenging period
of my life. I have never before been so
mentally drained, so stressed or so
regularly on the verge of tears.
But there are three things that guide me
through all of this: my iPod, swimming,
and the thought of where I will be in
August. Music is a fine remedy for stress,
to lose yourself in the temporaryuniverse
of yawning brass, rumbling piano and
singing strings; but swimming is my
escapism. The exhausting repetition of
up-over-under-over-up-breathe-stroke-
kick-breathe, striving through the crystal
soup of chlorinated water that perfumes
your fingers all day. Swimming is a saturating joy,
and in August I shall be floating in this planet’s finest
water supply: an Australian ocean. Though I sometimes
drive myself mad with the thought of it, it is Australia
that waits for me at the end of year 13 – my gap year,
roaming the land burnt red by eternal sunshine dazzling
in an acid-blue sky, melting the clouds.
Page 2
Australia is my dream, and with each passing week
I become ever closer: to walk under skies of dizzying
vastness, to clear my head with the enormity of the
scorched desert surrounding me, to
gaze up at towers of shimmering glass,
to stroll on beaches of baked white
sand, to dive and kick further beneath
the ribbon of pink gold slashed into the
surface of an ocean by the sunset. This
will be my reward.
I will hop between cities (Perth,
Melbourne, Sydney), doing bar work as
I stay in youth hostels and intoxicate
myself with thenight life, before I really
begin to see the Outback. Basically
I want to relive the adventures of
Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert – to be
stuck in a dusty bus driven through the
red endlessness of the desert. I need to
see as much of this massive country as
I can, to travel without responsibility.
No essay deadlines. No revision.
Nothing but a camera, a fountain pen, a
backpack full of books, and a thousand
kilometres of blue and red in every
direction I look. My Australian agenda
does not comprise of much, as you can
guess: with a clear head, I will explore and document my
journey with images captured both by my camera and
my computer keyboard. As well as a soothed mind, I will
be bringing back three things with me to England as I
ready myself for university in 2016: photographs, short
stories and skin stained with red dirt.
We'll really miss you, Liam ~ enjoy your gap year away!
Well, here it is – another packed
edition of the Courier.
My first reflection on looking through
the pages is always amazement at
how much is going on at KEVICC. This
is usually followed by remembering
with fondness certain events, with
the Christmas Concert and the
Addams Family being particular
stand-outs. Lastly, there comes the
realisation that what is contained in
here is only a snapshot of College life.
I do hope you enjoy reading about it
as much as we here enjoy being part
of it.
Alan Salt
Alan created by students on Creative Learning Day
