Welcome to the home stretch for 2025!

Hello Families 

We are delighted to welcome you all back to Campus this week for our final term of learning in 2025.

Though a short term of only eight weeks, Term 4 will be packed full of activities, presentations, and achievements that we look forward to sharing with you.

From the excitement of this year’s PYP Exhibition, to the culmination of our inaugural year of the Year 9 RISE Programme, and of course the graduation of our Year 12s, there are lots of great “Mercedes Moments” on the horizon.

All the best to everyone for an enjoyable and successful Term 4.

Andrew Balkwill
Principal

Campus Farewell

This morning our students and staff gathered to celebrate our graduating Class of 2025.

After enjoying a breakfast with family in the Sunken Garden, our whole Campus came out to form a Guard of Honour for our Year 12 students. As they walked to Gleeson Theatre to celebrate their final Liturgy as a group, they enjoyed the waves and applause as more than 1,000 staff and students cheered them on.

This cohort of 157 students have much to celebrate, as they look back over their schooling days - the friendships made, the memories formed, and the support from staff and families to get them to this point.

Tomorrow we will conduct our official Class of 2025 Graduation Ceremony and present our Mercy Key Awards.

Moments of Mercy

To close out Term 3, we gathered as a community for the 2025 Feast of Our Lady of Mercy Mass.

Compassion was the guiding theme from our celebrant Father John Shanahan, with prayers, dancing and hymns filling our Yitpi space.

Our choir, orchestra, bands and theme-setter dancers were all exceptional examples of our students' many talents, as were the contributions to the processions, readings, and Prayers of Intercession, given in no less than eight languages from around the globe.

At the conclusion of official proceedings, our Principal Andrew Balkwill announced our 2025 Mercy Award recipient, Old Scholar Jenny Brinkworth (Class of 1978), a journalist who shared insightful comments about her time at the College.

The 2025 Social Justice Award, given in honour of John Fanning, was bestowed upon Year 12 student Jon-Luc (Dalton). Since his arrival at Mercedes College several years ago, he has been a young man of integrity and compassion.

Thank you to everyone who helped make our Mercy Day Mass come to life so beautifully, and congratulations to Jenny and Jon-Luc on their well-deserved Awards.

A Run-on Success

The annual Mercy Fun Run, taken up by students from Reception to Year 6, sees a blur of House colours traversing a 600-metre course in an effort to contribute laps towards House points, whilst also raising money for Young Mercy Works and the local charities they support.

Collectively, our enegetic teams completed more than 4,000 laps, or over 2,400km, with our top distance runners coming out with 25 laps - or 15km each.

We've currently tallied around $4,000 in donations, with contributions still coming in until Friday 17 October. We look forward to announcing the final fundraising tally soon.

In regards to House points...

Fitzpatrick came in fourth place, with 1,000 laps
Dalton was third, with 1,029 laps
...and second and first places will be announced at next week's Junior School Assembly!

Our next colourful day of fun will be our R-6 Sports Fun Day on Wednesday 26 November (Week 7), so mark the date in your calendars and we'll see you there!

Always Home at Mercedes

During the spring school holidays, nearly 30 Foundation students returned to our Campus to celebrate a Liturgy in the Ursula Frayne Chapel of Strathspey House, before enjoying lunch in the Parlour.

Our Foundation students are those who started at Mercedes College in 1954, its first year. Many were boarders, and after lunch they enjoyed wandering through Strathspey House, entertaining staff with stories about which rooms they had slept in, where they had their sneaky midnight snacks, and how they used to sleep outside when it was hot...

It is always a delight to welcome former students back to Mercedes College, particularly those who were our very first students, just over 70 years ago.

Looking into the Future

Another season of Vacation Care is complete, and for their last day together students shared how they saw themselves in the future!

From a Bindie Irwin loving conservationist to a professional sportsman, special ops SWAT officer, teacher, doctor, or even a mad scientist, these children have big plans, and we can't wait to see them come to fruition.

The next Vacation Care programme will be split into two parts, with activities from the end of Term 4 until before Christmas, and then a new programme in 2026 ahead of Term 1. As soon as these programmes are complete, we will share them with you in The Hedge.

Making a Positive Difference

Our Year 8s have been participating in the MYP Community Project, a collaborative service-learning project that identifies a real-world need and addresses it by taking action through service.

It is designed to encourage students to take on more responsibility by becoming active citizens both locally and globally.

Students work in groups, supported by a supervisor, and work through researching possible needs, developing their goal, and taking steps to make their goal a reality.

Now in their final stages, students will soon share the learning, skills, challenges, and achievements obtained through their Community Project experience.

This year's projects feature a range of initiatives, including 'Brighton Beach Clean Up', 'Better Bandicoots', 'Kids Impact Collaboration', 'Relationships with Receptions', and 'Dog Bandanas for Charity' to name a few.

We're extremely proud of the actions our Year 8s have committed to through their projects.

Hitting Sixes with SACA

Our Open Cricket players recently benefited from an excursion to Adelaide Oval to participate in a series of activities with the South Australian Cricket Association.

They had an opportunity to observe the South Australian Men's Cricket Team in training and in the cricket nets, and meet Mercedes College parent and Australian Wicket Keeper, Alex Carey.

A guided tour of the Oval gave them insight into how playing at a premier venue might feel, plus they participated in their own training session in the high-performance indoor nets, and tried their hand at the automated bowling machine.

Rounding out the day with a Q&A with South Australian Batsman Jake Lehmann, our Cricketers returned with renewed enthusiasm for the new season.

Coming up...

• Friday 17 October | Class of 2025 Graduation Ceremony
• Thursday 23 October | Playgroup
• Tuesday 28 October | Year 7 Vaccinations
• Wednesday 29 October | PYP Exhibition
• Thursday 30 October | Playgroup
• Friday 31 October | Community Prayer
• Monday 3 to Friday 7 November | Year 6 Canberra Trip
• Wednesday 5 to Wednesday 12 November | SACE Art Show

Save the Date: 2026 Student Orientation Day | Friday 28 November

More upcoming activities can be found on the College Calendar.