last day of school

[Michele]  Yesterday was the last day of school for the year at Mission Beach State School and they had a special parade on Friday afternoon. Parade is what they call the school assembly -- I'm not sure if this is a Mission Beach thing or an Queensland thing or what.  This special parade marked the end of the academic year and graduation for the 7th year students.  School is now out for the summer and won't resume until Feb.  I should also mention that on the last day of school the kids didn't have to wear their uniforms.

First the students sang the national anthem - -they do that for every parade. Then there were some announcements.  Will was in a selected group of 6th years that spoke about the on-going wetlands revitalization project going on next to the school.  His American accent sounded a little odd amongst all the Aussies but he did a great job delivering his 'speech'.

Will discusses the wetland maintenance at the final parade of the year.

There were songs and dances, including some special performances by the graduating 7th year students. The 7th years with help from Robin's teacher Ms. Willis also made an awesome wall panel of breaking waves made from washed up pumice bits -- it is beautiful.  Also, I'm an idiot for not getting a picture of the panels!

This is the second graduation from elementary/primary school that Robin gets to have.  She graduated from 6th grade at Wildwood last June.   Like the ceremony at Wildwood, the ceremony at Mission Beach also involved singing and dancing but was more informal and thankfully much shorter.

Each 7th year was called to the stage, which meant that Robin AnDERsen was first. Yeah, they will never get her name right.  Then they had the younger grades make a long 'tunnel' for the graduating students to pass through.  It was hysterical to see some quite tall 7th year students, like Robin, crawling between the tunnel of preps (kindergardeners).

Everyone crawling under the wee preppies

The tunnel wound around the courtyard outside

Robin emerges from the end of the tunnel.

The event was lots of fun and marked a poignant end to our time in Mission Beach.

As I type this blog entry on Saturday evening, we have packed up and moved out of our house. We are staying in Cairns tonight and leave for New Zealand tomorrow.   We don't quite feel ready for the next phase of our adventure but I know that we will have a blast once we get going.

Since New Zealand is also 'down under' we will continue to blog about our adventures over the coming weeks. You can look forward to stories of life in small campervan for 2 weeks and whiny posts about the never-ending rain.