Penrith High Towers-Alumni

Welcome to the Term 2 edition of the Towers-Alumni Newsletter.

I write this Principal’s message off the back of a fabulous Alumni Night. On Tuesday night, we welcomed back 20 of our wonderful Alumni. This was the first time we have held Alumni Night since the COVID-19 outbreak at the end of 2019.

My sincere thanks to the Alumni who were so generous with their time and knowledge. I have had positive feedback from the current PSHS students who were able to attend.

Despite the disruptions from the train strikes and the cold snap in Penrith, we are glad we were able to welcome you back and allow those PSHS students who could attend to speak with you. We look forward to inviting many more of our Alumni back in 2023 for Alumni Night!

While we have so many successful and wonderfully talented Alumni, it would be remiss of me not to recognise former Penrith High Student, Hon Linda Burney MP, the first First Nations woman in cabinet and now Minister for Indigenous Australians - the first Aboriginal woman and second First Nations person to hold this position. I hope you enjoy reading about all the achievements of our Alumni in this edition of Towers-Alumni - there are certainly so many talents that stretch across so many fields.

We continue to invest in a number of upgrades around the school. Notably, we have several new honour boards on display in the Hall with some more to come. We have installed the Principal signage above the Principal Gallery in the front reception as well as the Hector MacGregor plaque for the school oval. Additionally, we continue to expand on the original work in the Alumni Garden with a new path from the carpark to the garden donated to the school by the 2021 Year 12 graduates.

Thank you as always for sharing these Towers-Alumni updates. If you are holding an event this year, trying to reconnect with former students or know of any news that could be added to our next edition, please email it through to the school (penrith-h.school@det.nsw.edu.au) and attention the email to our editor, Cathie Fayle.​

Warm regards,

Jaclyn Cush

Relieving Principal

Penrith High School's 70th Anniversary Reunion is to be postponed to Saturday 10th September 2022.

Tickets already purchased will be transferred to the new date. If the new date is not suitable for you, a full refund will be made.

Venue: Penrith Paceway.

Years: 1950-2010

Time: 12 noon, for lunch at 1:00 p.m.

Tickets went on sale on Monday 21st June and will continue until all sold and will cost $75 each.

Tickets are only available from Eventbrite

https://www.facebook.com/events/729113704638758

A woman of firsts! In 2003 Linda became the first Aboriginal person in NSW Parliament, in 2016 she was the first Aboriginal woman in Federal Parliament. In 2022 Linda, a Wiradjuri woman, became the Minister for Indigenous Australians. Linda was one of thirty members of Anthony Albanese's ministry, which contains a record number of women(13 to a ministerial role with a record 10 in the cabinet), who was officially sworn in by Governor-General, David Hurley, at Government House in Canberra. Mr Albanese told the ABC that "It's a significant moment in the nation's history".

Linda Burney will take the lead on enshrining a voice to parliament in Australia's constitution.

Linda says she is honoured to become the first Aboriginal woman to sit in the federal cabinet with the task ahead to establish a voice to parliament , treaty and truthtelling.

She will work alongside Pat Dodson, who was named a special envoy for reconciliation and implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Article courtesy of SBS

Congratulations Linda Burney!

NOTE

• Linda is featured in the mural in the stairwell of A Block
• Linda will be speaking at the 70th Reunion Luncheon in September - see elsewhere in the newsletter for information on getting tickets

Luke Boyes has always been a fast runner. In primary school he blitzed the Cross Country and then tackled Little Athletics to great acclaim.

However, at 13, Boyes fell out of love with athletics and decided to give cricket a go.

Throughout much of his high schooling years, he would play cricket over summer and soccer over winter. Boyes was enjoying his time between the two sports until life got tough for everyone last year when Sydney was plunged into lockdown.

Boyes needed to break his funk; he needed something to get his mind and body going again. So he turned to an old ‘friend’.

“During COVID last year, cricket wasn’t going great. I was a little bit bored, a little bit lonely, so I decided to get back into athletics,” Boyes told the Weekender.

“I got back into it with Run Crew in the Blue Mountains and I started enjoying it more and more.”

After recording a 7-second PB during a race earlier this season, Boyes quickly realised he still had it.

“I thought to myself, ‘I’m not too bad at this’,” he said.

What would happen to Boyes in the coming months is quite extraordinary.

The former Penrith High School student would go on to qualify for the Australian Track and Field Championships after claiming the NSW junior title over a strong field.

There, he would finish second by the smallest of margins in the 800m but, because his time was so fast, it was enough to send him to Columbia this August to compete at the U20 World Athletics Championships.

“I’m a bit nervous, as you would be, it’s the biggest competition that I’ve ever been to, but I’m also excited because it’s a new challenge that will hopefully come with new opportunities in the future,” he said.

“My goal is to make it into the semi-final, which I think I’m a good chance of doing.”

Article courtesy of Nathan Taylor - May 22, 2022 of the Western Weekender

Photos by Megan Dunn

NOTE

Recently Luke has been named the latest recipient of the Penrith Valley Sports Foundation Senior Sports Star Award which is sponsored by Penrith Panthers Leagues Club.

Congratulations Luke!

On graduating from Penrith high Divinia joined her family' construction company , the Eather Group, and becoming the Marketing Manager. This is the same group who worked on Penrith High's Yarning Circle.

Divinia continued with her love of Music and made an appearance on Channel 9's Today Show. "That was a really incredible experience". "They had a few of us buskers from the Tamworth Country Music Festival set up and lead in some of the segments". A small snippet can be seen below.

Divinia Jean Music (her "Music" name) ended up being one of ten buskers who was chosen to compete in the Toyota Busking Championships where she finished second. After her Tamworth success Divinia set her sights on releasing a new album.

Divinia then capped off her winning streak by being named the Young Business Person of the Year at the Hawkesbury Business Awards 2022.

Well done Divinia!

After a two year hiatus, the Western Sydney Model United Nations Assembly(MUNA) provided inspiration to all, when staged in the new assembly hall at Kingswood High School on May 27/28/29.

101 participants, in 29 teams, from 16 schools in Sydney's west, competed in the high level debating competition.

Most participants were fitted out in national dress.

The organising team from Lower Blue Mountains Rotary faced a number of challenges in re-establishing Western Sydney MUNA- last held in 2019 due to COVID 19 restrictions.

MUNA aims to provide students in 10-12 with a hands-on "United Nations experience", modelled on the UN General Assembly. It enhances international understanding and goodwill.

Participants were fortunate to have Jack Maddock(inserted) as a mentor. Jack(John) was part of the successful MUNA team in 2019, from Penrith Selective High School, which went on to win the National Competition in Canberra, before travelling to New York to participate in a MUNA at the UN building.

The Saudi Arabian team won the competition with best individual speaker, Lachlan Leith. In second place was the team from Sri Lanka. They will be sponsored to attend the National MUNA to be held in the OLD Parliament House, Canberra in August this year.

Article courtesy of the Nepean News

Well done Jack!

Heath Davis, who attended Rooty Hill High School and St Marys Senior High School, came to Penrith High School in the mid 2000s as an English Teacher with Drama thrown in, having studied Film and Journalism at the University of Western Sydney. He knew early in life that he wanted to be a Filmmaker.

This talented director - who still works as a casual teacher - has three movies to his name and has been working hard on his new movie Christmess.

Immediately finishing filming, Heath has already started writing his next movie.

Heath talks about his latest film to Garry below.

This is an excerpt from The Sydney Morning Herald by Garry Maddox May 21, 2022

“It’s a comedy but I call it a real Christmas movie,” writer-director Heath Davis says during a break in filming. “It's about the stresses, the anxieties, the tears and the laughs.”

The micro-budget film Christmess has Le Marquand playing a famous actor, fresh out of rehab, who can only get a job as a shopping centre Santa. When his estranged daughter (Nicole Pastor) turns up in line with her infant son, he realises he has to reconnect with her at Christmas.

It’s the fourth film in six years for Davis, a DIY director who grew up in Mount Druitt and Glenmore Park in Western Sydney then spent “a decade of hell” trying to make his first film in Los Angeles and Canada.

Back in Sydney and working as a casual high school English Teacher, he started writing scripts and turned to a mix of crowdfunding, community support and occasional private investment to launch his directing career.

First he shot Broke, a drama that had Le Marquand as a rugby league star with a drinking and gambling problem, in Gladstone, Queensland. It played at more than 20 festivals and won multiple awards.

He followed up with the wry comedy Book Week, with Alan Dukes as roguish English Teacher facing a crisis, in the Blue Mountains. Then he shot the thriller Locusts, with Ben Geurens and Nathaniel Dean as brothers who are targeted in an extortion scam, in Broken Hill.

Now Davis has teamed up with Macarthur area producer Daniel Fenech for a film that draws on community support in Campbelltown.

The main location, used for a halfway house that Le Marquand’s new Santa Claus shares with his rehab sponsor (Darren Gilshenan) and a free-spirited aspiring musician (Hannah Joy from indie rock band Middle Kids), has been donated for the shoot. So has the historic sandstone cottage next door for the unit base.

Davis takes into account the difficulty of raising funding when he writes his scripts, aiming for a small cast and limited locations.

“I always tell everybody, look, we’re going to have a plan A and a plan B,” he says. “Often with plan B, there are some compromises along the way but not majorly.

“And while Plan A would be great, at least we’re making something and they always turn out well.”

Davis says there are two sides to community film-making – support through crowdfunding then involving local people in the shoot.

Le Marquand says Christmess completes “a trilogy of broken men” in Davis’ films.

“The great thing about Heath is he touches on quite touchy subjects but he never lets it get sentimental,” he says. "

Congratulations, Heath, on your latest venture Christmess!

On June 28 PSHS welcomed Alumni from different years to speak to our years 10, 11 and 12 about their experiences post school and to answer questions on their particular occupation or field of expertise.

The students rotated around the Alumni in small groups in the hall and asked questions about Engineering, Medicine, Teaching, Accountancy, Cartography, Sports Management and Communications to name a few. Students even got to speak to the Alumnus, Shaun Mielekamp, who is mostly known for being the guy who signed Usain Bolt to play football.

Thank you to the students who attended(considering the train strike) and especially to the Alumni for giving back to PSHS!

The Alumni who attended were:

Ian Abbott - Class of '67

Rafi Azmol - Class of 2003

Tanya Bhatnagar - Class of 2016

Soham Desai - Class of 2019

Stephanie Doohan - Class of 2008

Divinia Eather - Class of 2019

Surin Fernando - Class of 2001

Simone Ferriera - Class of 2015

Paul Hansen - Class of '68

Keshna Jeyandrabalan - Class of 2019

Peter Mannering - Class of '64

Lachlan Mansfield - Class of 2008

Shaun Mielekamp - Class of '96'

Mark McCartney - Class of '99

Sharne Peake - Class of 2005

Garth Pearce - Class of 2000

Rafa Rahman - Class of 2015

Ivy Tseng - Class of 2008

Sally Wawn - Class of '99

Glen Williamson - Class of '87

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to share the evening with us!

Multimedia photos to come next issue.

Meanwhile enjoy these below!

On 30 June we had a surprise visit from Abraham Song, Emmanuel Thomas and Pathmesh Rajeswaran, Class of 2019.

They are all studying Medicine either at UNSW or University of Newcastle.

The Alumni were very impressed with the changes they noticed around the school and sorry they missed most of their teachers. The photo was taken in one of the discussion rooms in the library - their 'old haunt'.

They will be back soon.

Welcome any time!

Some of you might have had as your teacher our very own Mr. Gary McGinnis who played professional football in the 80s and 90s and when he was just starting off in his professional career, he also played for the Scotland U-18 national team in the 1982 European Championship finals, held in Finland. To get to the finals, Scotland knocked out England over 2 matches. They went on to win their group, by beating Albania 3-0, Turkey 2-0, and drawing with Netherlands 1-1. They needed at least a draw in that final group match to qualify for the semifinal and, after a certain Marco van Basten scored for the Netherlands, Mr. Gary McGinnis scored a wonderful equaliser to send Scotland through. Scotland's opponents in the semifinal were Poland, whom they beat 2-0, and after a hard-fought match against Czechoslovakia in the final, they ran out 3-1 winners, with Mr Gary McGinnis playing no small part in all the matches. The 40-year anniversary was on May 30 this year, and it is the only time Scotland has ever won a major international championship, so a big shout out and congratulations to Mr Gary McGinnis!

PS It's true he still plays football every week. It's just a bit easier to 'meg' him these days, with those bandy legs!

Mr McGovern

Head Teacher TAS

"SES crews rescued Simone Baluch, from her family home in Chipping Norton, with her dog and a litter of kittens in tow, when waters rose unexpectedly quickly as she tried to move household items upstairs. It’s the third time in four weeks the home where she lives with her mother, stepfather, sister and niece – plus pets – has been subject to evacuation orders.

Before this year, the house her grandparents bought in the 1970s had only been evacuated twice: in 2020 and 1989. In 2020, Ms Baluch said, nearly the entire first floor of the house went under. So far, she is relieved “that hasn’t been replicated”.

But the stress of such frequent evacuations is “exhausting”, she said."

Excerpt from Jenny Noyes the Sydney Morning Herald April 2022

Photo by Brook Mitchell

*Simone Baluch taught LOTE at PSHS mid 2010s

We are proud to announce that the first edition of the school's Captains Book is now available for purchase. Please follow the instructions below to order your copy now.

Price: $40 - Please pay on the website under Make a Payment (in the top right of the home page)

Note- you will need to fill out the questions marked in an asterisk *

Keep a record of your payment

Postage within Australia will be free. Contact the school with proof of purchase and mailing address.

For overseas mail, you will need to contact the school and emails/calls can be directed to Lisa Howarth in the Accounts Office.

Nonetheless, we would still like to hear further from the Captains that are not in edition one.

The servicemen and woman shown are a few whose names have been recognised or are on the list to be updated.

If you are interested please email the school on: penrith-h.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Attention Cathie in the library for further details

NOTE: the school was not established until 1950 so bear this in mind

In addition, if the Alumni listed below could also reach out to update some details:

Harry Grimes

Jason Peterson

Stephen Thompson

Brian Carney

Alan Ormerod

David Stevens

Ian Dickens

Email: penrith-h.school@det.nsw.edu.au
Website: http://penrith-h.schools.nsw.gov.au
Location: 158-240 High St, Penrith NSW, Australia
Phone: 02 4721 0529
Facebook: facebook.com/penrithselectivehighschool