I had the honour of being a part of the 2024 college production ‘One Man Two Guvnors’
After auditions, I got one of the characters that I wanted, one of the leads ‘Alan’. Alan, in the play, is one of many comedic reliefs. As the play itself takes roots from the acting style of commedia dell’arte (‘the art of comedy), Allan is based on the archetypes of: ‘the lovers’, and ‘Il Capitano’, all bark, no bite. He “wants to be an actor” but unfortunately he’s not very good at it, and it’s a touch embarrassing when you live life like you’re reading a Shakespeare monologue, good thing he doesn’t seem to mind. Due to a series of identity shenanigans, misfortunes and misunderstandings, the likes of which unseen since ‘As You Like It’ and ‘Midsummer’s Night Dream’, he gets into a fight, defending his young love, but as with all good plays, everything comes neatly together at the end, love is restored, confusions cleared up, and weddings scheduled.
The rehearsal process was amazing, a blur of stunning costumes, great music, 12-hour school days and west-end grade sets, but, we managed to pull something together at the end, and with all productions, it was over far to soon. It was beyond fun to play the character and sing in the show, I was even able to score tickets to closing night. Thank you to Ms Parker, Ms Wellington, Geoff and Adrian, Ms Heggarty, Ms Elscot and Shelly, and all the other staff and cast who made the experience unforgettable.
And another thanks to Eva for doing my makeup every performance, I will never forgive you for doing that to me <3 (it looked amazing). My only hope is that the stage lights did their job, and toned down some of the contour.
In the christman of 2023, just following the year 10 camp, my brother Ryan and I embarked as part of the YOUTH EXPLORER program, where we spent 7 days, aboard the ship. I was put in a group (not with my brother) and that group became my family for the duration of the voyage.
On the first day, we motored just out of Fremantle and learnt the ropes (so to speak). It was the second morning when we started our adventure, we killed the engines and started hauling, for the rest of the trip would be navigated by sail and wind power, the sails being changed by the wonderful deck hands (us) and led under the watchful eyes of our ‘watch leaders’. I was in Red Watch (the best one) and had two amazing watch leaders, Reagan and Tim. They helped us through the experience and were our motivators, keeping up the energy so that there wasn’t one glum moment, whether we were mustering for lunch, cleaning the bathrooms or getting up at 3 in the morning, with massive swell, ready to start your 3 hour night shift. During the voyage, I made friends I keep in touch with today, climbed a 33m mast, furled and unfurled sails, learnt how to coil, call, ease and hall the lines and even had a go leading my watch. I even had my first couple of driving lessons steering the boat (albeit in a slightly different environment to a traditional car. After an amazing trip of 10-meter swells, serving sea sickness (and not vomiting unlike my twin), a beach dar on Rotness and weirdly good food (including a Christmas dinner), the group was lucky enough to all be given a certificate of achievements, and I was given qualifications to come back (should I like to) as a Bosun’s mate (maintaining the ship’s health), a cooks mate (helping in the kitchen) or even as a trainee watch leader. All in all, it was a life-changing experience, that despite my initial apprehensions, I loved
The Bstreetsmart event is an exhibition run by the RAC, it was made to show students (years 10-12) the effects of responsible driving, via acting out a crash with actors and real emergence services. we left school in the morning and drove to the arena where it was being held, we arrived there along with a bunch of other schools and took our seats. Following some videos to provide context the real event started and the lights came on to reveal a crash, following the reveal of real medical and police personnel came on to the scene and attended to the ‘patients’ (actors). We got to see a fire engine, the jaws of life as well as a medical tool, it was incredibly interesting to watch the procedures and priorities of the emergency response team.
the main things that I learnt at the Bstreetsmart exp were; not to distract others, not to drive when unfit to (eg drunk, fatigued ext.) and to be sensible and safe on the road. Distractions can cause a huge amount of crashes. Not paying attention is reported to be the root of ~30% of all fatal car crashes, and 45% of those leading to serious injury, even if you yourself are not looking at your phone, or are drunk, if your passengers are, then that can pose a serious risk. One of the key methods to avoiding distraction as proposed by Road Sayefty Education (https://rse.org.au/) is to be vocal to passengers if they are becoming a distraction, and also for other passengers to make sure everyone is being safe. Similarly, just be smart and sensible, you can get into a crash even if you aren’t doing a single thing wrong, but being extra cautious could never hurt.
overall the event was amazing and it was both informative and just a really good way to spend a day, not only was it very interactive and not too information-heavy, but they also made sure to give warnings before the more gory bits, and the guests speakers whilst holding very tragic stories to tell us were very effective in re-iterating the dangers posed from not being safe on the road
Pledge:
I pledge to uphold road safety laws while driving, to be cautious and respectful in any vehicle, no matter whether as a passenger or driver and to follow traffic laws and driving suggestions/road warnings.
PHOTOS
!PLEASE NOTE THAT ANY GRAPHIC IMAGE IS SIMPLY SPECIAL EFFECTS PERFORMED BY A MAKEUP ARTIST AND THAT NO ACTORS WERE INJURED DURING THE PERFORMANCE. IN ADDITION, NOT ALL PHOTOS MAY BE FROM THE 2023 PERTH BSTREETSMART, AND HAVE BEEN TAKEN OFF THE INTERNET FROM OTHER PERFORMANCES OF THis EVENT, DUE TO A LACK OF PHOTOS FROM MY ONE!
CLOSE UP OF PROSTHETICS BEFORE THE EVENTCLOSE UP OF THE PROSTHETICS BEFORE THE EVENTONE OF OUR GUEST SPEAKERSA PHOTO OF THE WHOLE SET (I BELIVE THIS IS ACTUALLY THE ONE I ATTENED)
Our task was to build a structure that withstands an earthquake simulated by shaking the structure on a board. This structure must be 60cm tall as a minimum and the base has to be a maximum of 30cm squared. To make this structure it must cost less than $60 with 1 piece of spaghetti costing $1 and 1g of blue tack costing $1. One of the reasons this project was so important is because it can help us to be more prepared for earthquakes and cause less damage when an earthquake hits if we make all buildings earthquake safe, as well as to improve our appreciation for all the work it takes into designing actual earthquake-proof structures. Though it may not be very on our minds in Australia as we are lucky to have very little systemic activity, however, to our neighbours in New Zealand, whether a structure is Earthquake resistant is a major concern due to their increased seismic activity, so it s important to understand the process and engineering that goes behind it.
We started by bouncing around a few ideas about our project, and how we could brace it. Although nearly none of these ideas made it in their entirety, many of them were adapted and rethought for the final model, for example, although we did not build that structure on the right, we noticed that the base was very strong so we adapted the base to be built tested and tapered to a point, another idea that we completely scrapped was to put the entire tower on tracks, so it could slide around and move with the earthquake however we canned the concept due to the problem of the tower sliding off, or falling over.
We devised this design to build, and we had hoped to stay perfectly true to it however a lot of complications arose (namely the tower falling over once every five minutes) so we had to adapt. The main problem we realised was that the top of the tower was too heavy, and due to a few uneven pieces of pasta, all the weight got centred around one area on the base, and because we didn’t make the base strong enough it kept on pushing the pasta through the blue-tack, as well as snapping it. This, unfortunately, ate through the majority of our budget as we kept replacing materials and we were only left with three dollars by the end (spending 41 dollars on pasta and 16 on blue tack).
In the future, we would 100 per cent put more effort into supporting the base structure, and making sure all of the pieces of pasta were even as it was both the weight distribution and the even strut lengths that caused our tower to snap so frequently.
Here is a video of some changes we had to make during the building process, unfortunately, due to file size I had to upload it in three parts, however, it still works.
Part 1Part 2part 3
The final step in our process was to test it, needless to say, Ella and I (as our other group members were away sick) were very worried, it had gotten to the point where I would have to attempt to fix our fallen tower every time I walked in the classroom, however on the day of our final test I had Ella to help me so we just got it stable enough to pass all the test before I had to remove the top half, for fear of it splintering, otherwise, the project was a great success and I learnt a lot about designing structurally integral buildings, even if it was mostly learning from my own groups’ failures.
This is our group, formal and final test, though the success might be slightly questionable, we got it ok’d by Ms Fairhead so we’ll take the win.
The first thing we learnt in MUIR was archery, at least once a week (usually Mondays, Thursdays and sometimes Tuesdays doubles) we would go to the oval and get taught by an archery instructor (Mary). We first started with the basics, learning how to hold, shoot and load the bow, even though I missed the first few lessons I’m happy to say that I caught up quickly. Each week Mary would put the targets back from the shooting line than the week before, to slowly increase the difficulty. This was the case most weeks, however, some weeks we did an extra challenge such as the ‘siege’ game in which the target was flat on the ground, so we had to shoot up and over relatively straight on. In the last class, we did we played games and there were prizes. Archery was the main reason I chose to do Muir, and it made me very happy I did. I learnt an enormous amount and I hope to do it outside of school in the future. One of the main capabilities I used during archery was resilience, I started out being really bad, I could barely load my bow and I couldn’t hold it the right way, but with each lesson, I fixed another little problem until my form started to look good. I think my primary motivation for this was that I wanted to get better at archery, so even though I kept getting it wrong, I really wanted to improve. I think in the future I will try and apply this mindset to more things whether I enjoy doing the ‘thing’ or not.
Orienteering
We learnt orienteering at the same time as we learnt archery. We first learnt how to read and orientate a compass, along with its different uses depending on whether we are making, following, or checking a bearing. Following this, we did simple activities (mainly on Tuesday’s double) like walking to different, lettered cones. Following this we spent a few lessons, doing map reading and doing courses spread out throughout the whole school. We went on two excursions one to ‘Manning Park’ and the latter to ‘Piney Lakes’, these days were very informative as we had to navigate in a place where we didn’t already know the terrain and locations of everything. The term concluded with a big excursion to Jorgensen National Park. We spent the day completing courses in the huge park, I, unfortunately, couldn’t go in a group with my friends. Still, it might have been a blessing in disguise as being in a group with more athletic and active people allowed me to push myself and test my knowledge of the unit more. In the end, my group managed to finish three courses in the day ranging from a difficulty intermediate to hard. Initially, I wasn’t too sure if I would enjoy orienteering, but it ended up providing some of my favourite memories from this class. Orienteering actually turned out to be quite difficult in some cases, reading the map and figuring out where you were. Especially at Manning park and piney lakes, my group got turned around a lot after hitting dead ends. We used problem-solving to trace our steps and figure out what we did wrong and where we had to go to fix our problem. Sometimes it took us a few seconds sometimes it took us up to 10 minutes but I’m really happy to say that in the end, no matter how long it took, we managed to figure out what we did wrong and correct it. I’m not the best at problem-solving and I relied heavily on my group when these situations arise, in future I hope to get to a stage where I can apply this problem-solving to other aspects of my life.
Snorkelling
We started off the unit doing learning the basics in the aquatics centre, learning the proper way to clear and clean our snorkel and how we should dive and swim. We had a few lessons in class, to learn some more safety info including this acronym-
Safety
Accidents
First aide
Emergency
Sun
Nutrition
Ocean
Reef
Keep safe
Environment
Leave no trace
(s.a.f.e. s.n.o.r.k.e.l.)
-In week 2 of term three we went to Coogee Beach to practice for Rottnest. The water was cold and the conditions weren’t great, it was very ‘wavey’ and murky, still, it was great practice our camp in week 4 of term 4 (31 of October).
We left for camp on the 31st of October. We arrived at 7:30 in the morning and left on the bus at around 8 in our class groups, these would be the groups we would be tenting and snorkelling in. After we arrived at Rottnest (the ferry was about half an hour) we took a quick break and then ideally started walking to our first snorkelling site. I loved the walks, it was on the walks where I had my favourite moments like singing every musical I knew with Shoshana and it was nice to be away from everything and just be walking in the outdoors. The first swim on the first day was probably my favourite time getting in the water. Not only was the scenery beautiful but we also got to swim through this really cool tunnel filled with fish and plants. After swimming around in the first site, we finished our game of beach cricket, packed up and started walking to base camp. Once there we put up our tents, changed into some warmer clothes and went to do the amazing race.
I personally didn’t really like the Amazing Race (mainly because I got lost 😅) but It was really interesting to see more of the island, especially since it was my first time being there. After the Amazing Race, we chilled at camp and then had dinner (which was delicious). I have to say this was probably my best camp experience in terms of dinner, it was nice that we didn’t have to spend two hours cooking and cleaning our own supplies and we could just sit and eat, (this was possible thanks to all our amazing teachers who cooked for us so a big thanks to them.) We had a quick group meeting and then got ready for bed.
The next day we got up nice and early, packed up our tents and had some breakfast. I failed miserably at attempting to pour some milk into my cereal bowl so I opted to have a leftover hotdog from dinner. We finished getting ready and relaxed at camp until it was time to go. We had another really pleasant walk to our next and final swimming ground ‘The Basin’.
It was very windy so we didn’t get to do as much as we wanted because of the danger from the waves pushing us into the reef, however, it still was an amazing experience and the sheer quantity of reef and the depth of the water made swimming through the area feel magical.
Our final task of the trip was to buy lunch in town, I had a cinnamon roll, some chips and an ice cream, it wasn’t exactly the most nutritious lunch but it was delicious all the same.
Leave no trace
Now so much in archery, but in orienteering and snorkelling ‘leave no trace’ has been a big focus in the units. In orienteering it was important to stay on the pats provided so we didn’t spread any diseases out from the bushland to the rest of the parks, this is obviously very important in preserving the wildlife and livelihood of native species so it was an important point to remember (some parks even had shoe ashing stations wich my group used most of the time when entering or exiting an area of plant life that could have a disease). Another point in orienteering where we had to be mindful of what we were doing was on the end-of-term excursion to Jorgensens National Park where there are large areas of diseased trees and undergrowths that we can’t go into otherwise we could spread it to the rest of the park, however, this was much more simple as we simply didn’t go near those areas and the majority of them had been fenced off.
Another big part of leave no trace was when we went on our overnight camp to Rotto. We did several checks of the campsite areas after we had packed up tents, as well as had rules saying not to touch any reef, animals or other wildlife. A big reason for this is preservation, we want to ensure that these areas are clean and available for the next people to use not only because it would be the right thing to do, but so we as a school and the larger public wouldn’t lose the privilege of access to these areas.
underwater shot from day oneme in the waterme and Elizathe gangThe Quokka
Australia’s legal system is built on a series of rules/regulations called the principles of justice, these principles are designed to ensure all people are treated equally in the courtroom. These are important to ensure that the values on which our legal system runs are always protected. One such law is an independent and impartial judiciary. This principle has two main ‘clauses’ the first is that the legal system must always be independent of the government so that they can never be influenced by parliament. The second ‘clause’ is that the court system must remain impartial to all people on trial, this is done in a variety of ways like; the jury must not know anything about the person’s trial, all parties get the same amount of time to present their case, that both parties must receive the same amount of court resources and that all members of the court system (being judge, lawyers or jury) cannot have any connection to the people on trial. Another principle of justice is the presumption of innocence. Presumption of innocence (commonly associated with the phrase innocent until proven guilty) means exactly what it says, in the eyes of the law everyone is innocent until proven that they committed the crime and therefore must be treated as such. The presumption of innocence is often split into two parts, the law system (court) and law enforcement (police). Law enforcement must presume all suspects innocent, investigate multiple sources, and narrow down suspects rather than presume someone guilty and then prove it. Presumption of innocents in court means that you (the jury) must be sure beyond a reasonable doubt (98% confident) that they are guilty. Another very important principle of justice is the right to high-quality evidence. This means that all evidence must be, factual, true, of high quality and leaves little up to debate. One final principle of justice pertinent to our case is the right to remain silent. This means that any person being interrogated has the right to say nothing under Australian law, this is so you don’t reveal anything incriminating as ‘anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. These principles are the pillars on which our legal system rests and without them, it would be monumentally more difficult to infer justice.
The presumption of innocence is split into two ‘parts’, Law enforcement and court law. Law enforcement must presume all suspects innocent, investigate multiple sources, and narrow down suspects rather than presume someone guilty and then prove it. Presumption of innocents in court means that you (the jury) must be sure beyond a reasonable doubt (98% confident) that they (the accused) are guilty, the Andrew mallard case demonstrates some wild violations of this right. Withholding evidence, police brutality and tampering with evidence. When Pamela Lawrence was killed, police got a witness description of the offender and then amassed a series of suspects based on that. Despite Andrew mallard looking nothing like the description of the offender police honed in on him and proclaimed him a prime suspect despite having no evidence tieing him to the scene of the crime. Police then looked (without avail) for evidence proving that Andrew was guilty, the exact opposite of what police are supposed to do. Conducted several highly unprofessional interviews with Mr Mallard despite him being mentally unfit to be interrogated. These interviews contained alleged beatings and threats from the detectives, extracting confessions to justify their actions. They ended altering witness, (such as the initial murder description) reports fitting Andrews’s description, ‘proving’ his guilt. These examples demonstrate the massive miscarriage of Andrew’s Presumption of Innocence.
Another element of Andrew mallards case is the principle of ‘High-quality evidence’. Meaning that all evidence must be true, relevant, factual and clear (eg. If you presented evidence of someone being drunk and you just had pictures of them sleeping, you cannot actually infer whether they were under the influence). High-quality evidence is crucial in a court case and police investigation if our evidence needed to be true and high quality, then it would be physically impossible to have a fair trial and unlikely that they would ever get the right culprit on any matter, from speeding to armed robbery. The case of Andrew Mallard is a particularly bad example of this principle as it has no quality evidence at all. The first red flag in the case was his first interview. Andrew at this time had recently been admitted to a physiatric care facility for numerous disorders such as depression and bipolar. Despite him not being in a stable mental state, Andrew was admitted to Interrogation without a nurse or guardian to watch over him. The other times he was interrogated Andrew misunderstood the questions, whilst Andrew was spinning theories on how he thought the killer would have done it, police took this information and attempted to label it as a confession, however, after each theory (much to the detective’s frustration) Andrew would re-iterate that he was not confessing but rather speculating, though, the police did not come out empty-handed. This is because Andrew had told them the 15 things only the killer would know. He identified what Ms Pamela Lawrance was wearing when she was killed, what the doors looked like, which was they swung, the colour and make of a particular car outside the shop at the time from which a witness had seen the murderer and what the murder weapon was (a large sitcom wrench which Andrew had drawn a picture of, after allegedly being stripped and beaten). The only problem with this was that they failed to mention to the jury that the very fact Andrew had known was wrong. Forensics conducted a test of a sitcom wrench on a skull and concluded that there was zero possibility that she was killed with one, still, police kept this information from the jury and made Andrew’s knowledge of the ‘murder weapon’ a key part in the trial. These examples barely scratch the surface of the horrific violation of one of the most basic principles of justice.
The principal’ Right to remain silent was violated in the case of Andrew Mallard. The Right to remain silent is so that you do not reveal anything incriminating about yourself that can be used against you in a court of law. Andrew Mallard at many points during his investigation was given this luxury, whether it is in the form of abuse, or being coerced by officers to reveal information. The first example was the case of Andrew mallard did not uphold this right when we were taken out of Graylands Psychiatric Hospital for questioning. Andrew mallard was in an unstable mental state and not fit to be out in public much less be interrogated. He did not have any medical staff to watch over him during the interview. This inhibition in his mental state might not have allowed making decisions about revealing information or partaking in questioning. This only gets worse later, when on the second occasion he was interviewed police allegedly stripped him naked and beat him until he gave information, not only is this illegal but it is also unethical and appalling police work. The alegged beating happened during an 8-hour (and largely un-recorded) detective interview. It is in this interview where Andrew made most of his ‘confessions’. The police started beating him when he didn’t want to draw a picture of the Sitcrome wrench the police said was the murder weapon. The police’s retaliation to this was to strip Andrew naked and assault him until he decided to draw the wrench. The police had also sent an undercover cop to investigate Andrew, the cop then supplied him with a bong (and possibly cannabis) just barely two days from Andrews’s next interview. Andrew, the police officer and several other bystanders at a club proceeded to get high for the entirety of the night. Though we do not know if Andrew was still impaired from the cannabis at the time of his interview, the possibility of it should have made them reschedule the meeting (or at the very least not have given him a pound of weed right before an interview). The example is the appalling way in which Andrew Mallard was treated by police and how he did not get the get given the right to be silent.
I love cats, drawing characters and fantastical creatures, it is a hobby I enjoy exercising and will continue into the future. I love performing in the circus and love watching/reading anything fantasy. I value creativity, kindness, respect and empathy significantly as they were the primary values I was taught in life. I have blue eyes and reddish-brown hair and I have been told I talk a lot 🙂
My learning style
I learn best through a combination of audio/visual. I learn best when the teacher explains the concept, it helps if I understand why things are happening especially in maths when we are doing equations when I understand why the equation works I find it really easy to memorise large numbers of them.
My Learning:
I don’t have any favourite subjects I like all classes for some different, for the same reasons I don’t have the least favourite class. I am an auditory/visual learner. I learn best when i see and hear the teacher explaining the topic. In later life, I went home to go into animation, writing or medicine (pediatric or psychiatry).
psychiatrists get an average weekly pay of $2514.02 psychiatry as a study gives a wide variety of professional options from working in mental health in a clinic or hospital to age care, to analytical trends in corporations. the top three knowledge areas of a psychiatrist are counselling and therapy, psychology and medicine.
our task was to create a business and products within the boundaries of 30 dollars. we started by taking a survey of different age category’s of things like what do they want for Christmas, what is Christmas and was does it mean to people, from there we brainstormed and devised a product. Our ideas ranged from Christmas cards to nativity scene pieces.
a picture of one of our hands
unfortunately because they were made o plaster the hands had a high ‘fatality’ rate, meaning that unless we did it right the fingers tended to brake off, despite this huge setback we ended up decorating the fingers and selling them. they were not a huge seller but they still contributed to our profit.
finally, we settled on the idea of plaster hand models, creating them from a plaster of Paris mixture poured into a latex glove, then spray painted. we got most of our materials from Bunnings, and we made the creation chamber from an old wine box and a wireframe.
