Echoes from Home: Celebrating Boarding Week at Santa Maria College
Home is a funny thing when you are a boarder. It is the place you left, the place you carry with you, and somehow, over time, the place you have built here too. This year’s National Boarding Week theme was Echoes from Home, and across five days, our boarding community showed exactly what that means.
National Boarding Week runs from Sunday 10 May to Saturday 16 May, but Santa Maria celebrated a week early, with our boarders taking centre stage from Monday 28 April. And they made the most of every day.
A Yellow Ribbon and a Town Top
Every boarder wore a yellow ribbon in her hair each day. Simple, visible, and quietly powerful. On Monday and Thursday, they went one step further, arriving in their town tops. Some wore old school jerseys. Some wore footy colours. Some wore the kind of top that people in their town just wear, because that is what you do there.
Staff were encouraged to ask about the origin of each top. The conversations that followed were windows into places most of us have never been, into lives shaped by distance, by seasons, by wide open skies.
Staff who were former boarders or had grown up in regional communities were also invited to wear their own town tops. It was a small gesture, but it said something important: you are not the only one who knows what it is like to be a long way from home.
Where We Come From
This week, we heard from boarders Mackenzie (Year 7) from Three Springs, and sisters Grace (Year 11) and Clare (Year 9) from De Grey Station. Their stories offer a glimpse into lives shaped by distance and communities that most city families will never see up close.
De Grey Station. Three Springs. These are not just names on a map. They are communities, identities, and entire ways of life. We are grateful to each of these girls for sharing something so personal.
The Assembly That Said Everything
Thursday’s College Assembly was handed over to the boarders. And they delivered something memorable.
Alice (Year 12) and Sophie (Year 12) led an interactive segment asking where everyone was from and what made their community different, and the same. Amelia (Year 12) introduced a spotlight on Corrigin. Macey (Year 8) spoke about technology on farms, including the drone crop sprayers now used in Corrigin. Emerson (Year 8) performed an original poem about Corrigin.
Boarding sisters Alice and Bronagh(Year 12) then spoke about life in Esperance, about harvest, and what it actually looks like to grow up on a farm in a rural and remote community. Director of Boarding Jane Murray spoke about the fun of boarding life, and Sophie and Bronagh closed with why they love it.
The Boarding Band performed live throughout, opening and closing with Wide Open Spaces, and weaving together a mash-up of Milky Way, Great Southern Land, and Big City Life to accompany a dance performance about the night sky, bonfires, and what the girls back home call bush TV.
Words from our Head Boarder, Bronagh
Boarding Week is arguably the best week in the school year because it’s when we get to show off our unique connection. The team spirt we get to present in front of the whole school in the Boarders vs Day girls’ volleyball is incredibly uplifting. Boarding Week allows us to show the wider school community a bit more about what is outside the city. Not just ‘down south’, or in Exmouth, but the heartbeat within regional WA. It is a time where we show our values, not values we are taught in school but the values we were raised in, the importance of teamwork and supporting one and other and giving back. I think Boarding Week has something that everyone can take away from it, no matter who they are.
Friendly Competition and Bragging Rites
Lunchtime on Friday brought the Boarders vs Day Girls Year 12 volleyball match. It is always a great watch. The players are competitive. The spectators are more so.
The result? In a fitting end to the Boarding Week, the boarders took out the win by just two points!
What Boarding Actually Gives Her
Boarding life asks something of a young girl. She is a long way from her family, her dog, her town, and everything familiar.
And in return? She grows. Not in the vague, generic sense that schools like to claim, but in specific, visible ways. She learns to live alongside people who are nothing like her, and to find the common ground anyway. She develops independence, not because someone told her to, but because the situation required it. She builds friendships that hold across distance, because distance is something she already understands.
Our boarders are leaders, learners, and loyal friends. They bring something to this community that no curriculum can manufacture: a perspective earned from actually living differently.
Thank You, Boarders
To every Santa Maria boarder, we say thank you. Your strength, your humour, and your willingness to share your lives with us adds something genuinely irreplaceable to Santa Maria. You chose the opportunity. And this community is better for it.
A heartfelt thank you also to our boarding staff, who show up every day in the truest sense of the phrase. They are the ones who make sure this place feels like home when home is six hours away. Their care, their patience, and their genuine investment in these girls does not go unnoticed.
Echoes from Home. It is a theme that works in both directions. These girls carry their homes with them when they arrive at Santa Maria, and when they eventually leave, they carry this place with them too. That is what boarding does. It does not replace where you come from. It adds to it.
- boarding life Western Australia, Catholic Girls School Perth, Featured, girls boarding school Perth, independent boarding school, National Boarding Week, regional students WA, Santa Maria College boarders, school community stories
Author: Santa Maria College
Santa Maria College is a vibrant girls school with a growing local presence and reputation. Our Mission is to educate young Mercy women who act with courage and compassion to enrich our world. Santa Maria College is located in Attadale in Western Australia, 16 km from the Perth CBD. We offer a Catholic education for girls in Years 5 – 12 and have 1300 students, including 152 boarders.
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