SHGC 60th Anniversary ebook Final Issue | Page 18

Past Student Reflection

Donna Hellier's memories of Sacred Heart College in the 1970s. Donna attended Sacred Heart from 1970 - 1973.

"Looking back over my school years, I am certain that the happiest days were those spent at Sacred Heart Oakleigh, and I don’t think that is just a rose-coloured glass view. Certainly the memories are important, and often better in hindsight, but having attended the recent 60th Anniversary event and met up with the dearest of friends I met at the College, the feeling seems to be almost universal, as you clearly know from the large turnout of students from all decades, and the din of excited schoolgirl chatter that prevailed throughout the day.

There was always something special about Sacred Heart, and no one was more aware of that than my parents, who opted to send me there, as did my best friend Jane Samers’ parents. The two of us had been best friends at St Peter’s Primary School, where sadly the majority of the girls went on to Sacred Heart Bentleigh – which was simply closer I expect. Jane and I had each other as we headed off to the very much better equipped Sacred Heart Oakleigh, which had everything going for it then, except possibly that dreadful brown and fawn nylon school uniform, which I must admit was something of a problem, especially in the hot summer months! All the girls who came to your reunion were, dare I say, green with envy seeing the current uniform, as worn by the polite and pleasant girls who took us on tours of the school earlier this year. And, if the summer and winter uniforms were bad, the Phys Ed uniform was positively embarrassing. Let’s not talk about it except to say LARGE BROWN BLOOMERS!!

We were a group of five who started secondary school at Sacred Heart in the very first year of the brand new decade of the 1970s, and we seemed to form a natural gang of close buddies, known as the “fab five” for some reason lost in the mists of time. The fab five consisted of Jane Samers, Anne Kirk, Diane Gibney, Bernadette MacNamara and myself. I do recall that at one point we were called “The Mixtures”, a name we chose for ourselves when asked by our delightful English teacher, Miss Ada Biagi, to choose the name of a current popular singing group so we could work together as a team . The “cool” kids were quick to snaffle the names of the early 70s icons, but, not being into musical groups at that time, and being a bit daggy, we finally came up with “The Mixtures”, who were popular at that time for the “Bicycle Song” – Jane, who was always very musical, probably got us out of that one!

Miss Biagi was a very talented teacher and set the bar high for all of us. One of her “group projects” was to write a book, chapter by chapter, about anything we wanted. Being aware of our limitations, “The Mixtures” decided to write a book about girls in a boarding school – very “out there”, eh? We loved writing this book so much we even used to work on it at lunchtimes, and believe it or not I still have it somewhere after all the moves I have made in my life.

Jane was in the rather splendid choir at Sacred Heart and had a great voice."