Geelong Grammar School

We've been at Geelong Grammar School since Sunday morning, mostly without wifi until now. This place is Hogwarts on steroids, a posh private school where HRH Prince Charles came as a teenager and where it costs nearly $100,000 a year to send your child. The location is beautiful, a wide green campus sitting on the Limeburners Bay, and the Bellarmine Peninsula.


The Bay is a significant wetlands area and habitat for migrating birds. There are walking and bike trails that stretch for miles along the Bay, and I walked for an hour out there early this morning. Gorgeous! There was a big flock of black swans, and so many other lovely birds.


There is a formality to the towering brick buildings that you can imagine enforces good behavior just by the way the structures are made. Upright. Hemmed in by a labyrinth of walkways. Sparsely ornamented without being Spartan. Very English prep school. At the same time, it is very deluxe. There is a world-class fitness center and pool complex, and huge sports grounds and arenas. A hug sailing club on the Bay seems to encompass a fleet of small sailboats. The dormitories where we are staying are warm and comfortable, with huge lounges, kitchens, and a laundry room too - hurray! At the same time, our small student beds, separated by a partition, are so narrow and small that they just about guarantee a celibate life for all these young future leaders of Australia. Students here wear uniforms, very starched and formal. Right now they are on Spring Break, except for a few who are here training for a triathlon. They are kept busy all day long.



Daniella is teaching a five-day encaustic class here in a woodworking studio big and grand enough to be a small airport! We, too are kept busy all day long.



Meals are communal in the grand formal dining hall, where the portraits of former Headmasters line the walls. There is a Head Table for the teachers, and the huge oak chairs at that table have small brass plaques commemorating all the teachers who have used those chairs over the years. More tomorrow!







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Location:Tower Road,Corio,Australia