This week, as a School, we observed Remembrance Day in our Senior and Junior School Assemblies and additionally at 11am on Thursday 11 November. The significance of Australians united in a collective and poignant moment, sharing an act of reflection and remembrance, serves annually as an important history lesson for young students.

Young people live in the present. They plan for and worry about the future. History, however, is the study of the past. Stories that reveal how people and societies once lived, prompt thoughts about the human experience in other times and places. Such stories allow students to test their own moral sense and hone it against the complexities and adversities we face today. Stories of ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence and mateship.

Through the study of History, and by marking historical days such as Remembrance Day, we keep alive the values, principles and hopes of those who died in war.

During Senior School Assembly this week, Year 10 History student, Phoebe Russell, shared the story of her two relatives, Arthur and Ian Russell, members of the 2/21^st Division of the Australian Army in the early 1940s. The young soldiers were sent to Ambon, a small island off the coast of Indonesia, to defend a strategic airbase, significant in the defence of Australia against the threat of invasion by the Japanese. The island was attacked and overrun by the Japanese in February, 1942.

“The Australian soldiers, all 1,100 from the 2/21st division who were still alive, were chosen at random to be killed. While it is unknown which cousin was chosen first, either Arthur or Ian was chosen. The second cousin, deciding he would rather die with his friend than force him to go alone, stepped forward and volunteered to die with him. On the 28th of February 1942, both Arthur and Ian Russell died bravely on Ambon Island. Both these men were 21 years of age. These two men willingly gave their lives to try and keep Australia safe from invasion. So today, we remember their sacrifice, and the sacrifice of the other 307 Australian soldiers from their Division. We remember the sacrifice of the Australian and Dutch soldiers who gave their lives to defend Ambon Island, and to defend Australia.”

By remembering, we keep alive the values, principles, and hopes of those who died in war — combatants and civilians, men and women. This is what is reflected in the famous lines of the English poet, Laurence Binyon’s, For the Fallen:

‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.’

During the same time, our very own Sherren House was taken over by the Australian Government. The School was required to vacate within a fortnight, to become a training base for the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force. The WAAAF was the first and largest of the wartime Australian women’s services.

St Catherine’s was one of a number of Melbourne Schools, also including Merton Hall and Melbourne Grammar, to be requisitioned for military use. On 4 March 1942, after a final Assembly in Sherren House, St Catherine’s students and staff marched down the hill past Barbreck to Heyington Station, to take a train to Warburton, where they were evacuated to its Chalet in the forests and gullies of the Dandenong Ranges (described in brochures at the time as ‘the Switzerland of Australia’).

The Air Force had been using the Warburton Chalet as a rest and recreation centre, so the evacuation was an exchange of sorts. It was a three-hour train ride for 280 students, and a long walk from Warburton Station to the Chalet, where they remained for eight months.

The walk to Heyington Station was recorded in the film above, and is kept in our archival collection, girls as young as five years of age, farewelling their parents on the station platform.

Fortunately, the girls loved being there, for the sense of normality it offered. House plays, visits by sports teams from Fintona, Lauriston, Firbank and Merton Hall, confirmations at the Warburton Anglican Church and student groups raising money for worthy causes, the students’ time at Warburton had a deep impact on everyone who was there.

The experiences of these Warburton students left a lasting effect upon the ethos of St Catherine’s as a School. With the predominantly day school, transforming overnight into a country boarding school, a sense of adventure and ‘we’re all in this together’ developed, creating a strong bond between all the Year groups (including Senior and Junior girls), as they adjusted to the new world they now lived. This deep bond has endured all these years.

Perhaps this was the genesis of the strong bonds that continue to form amongst St Catherine’s students to this day across our Year groups. Each year, the Warburton Citizenship Award is presented to a student during Speech Day in each Year level from Years 7 to 11. The Award recognises a student who has demonstrated courtesy, consideration and loyalty, and reflected high values and enthusiasm for academic work and co-curricular involvement.

Through honouring our past, we give life to our School Values, principles, and beliefs. We instil in each of our students a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves and apply the wisdom shared from those who have gone before us to best equip the young women to lead us in the future.