Dear families, friends, and curious passers-by — welcome. Whether you arrive at our Pacific Highway gates for the first time, or return after a long summer to find the staff carpark slightly rearranged, you are welcome here. This is, and has always been, a school.
Some one hundred and thirty-six years ago, a clergyman in a guest house in Kurrajong Heights set about teaching five boys what he believed they needed to know. Today, twenty-five kilometres east and one scarlet-fever epidemic later, we continue that work in Hornsby, on a campus that has grown paddock by paddock, capital campaign by capital campaign, into the institution before you.
A great deal has been written about what makes a school a school. I will not add to that literature today, except to observe that it generally involves bells.
Our community is shaped by a few enduring commitments. We commit to the rigorous pursuit of academic excellence, in the broadest sense of the word "rigorous" and the strictest sense of the word "academic". We commit to the holistic formation of every student, with the implicit caveat that some students are, by their nature, less holistic than others. And we commit to ensuring that the rowers receive the attention they so plainly require.
To those of you joining us in Year 7 — you are about to discover algebra, the canteen pricing structure, and the curious phenomenon by which eight minutes is always available between two classes that are precisely fourteen minutes apart. Embrace it. The school will, with patience, embrace you back.
To our Year 12 cohort — we are with you. You will, in the coming months, be asked to explain the Industrial Revolution, the conventions of pastoral poetry, and at least two methods for finding the derivative of a function. You will succeed, in some combination of these. We have faith.
A note on the markets. Recent press has been made of certain trial co-curricular prediction schemes being conducted, in pilot form, in Term 3. The school is observing these developments with an open and genuinely curious posture. As I am fond of saying — to those who would venture, fortune favours the well-informed. Place your bets.
In nomine vibe,
The Bookmaster
Definitely Not Barker College
The Bookmaster is a fictional figure. Any resemblance to actual persons living, dead, or in governance is satirical. See the legal page.