In 1887 Mother Gonzaga Barry wrote to her students encouraging them to “Leave behind you a something upon which others may build,” words we know and hold dear. However, less commonly quoted is the continuation of her sentence, which goes on to say, “..and so rise higher still…” This second part of her words has inspired the creation of our Perspex Box.

During 2024 we celebrated the centenary of Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak. Over the last 100 years our School has changed so much, and yet it retains the beautiful grounds and stunning Victorian era mansion that were so striking to the first students and families of 1924. Today our school is an intelligent and thoughtful mix of the old and the new; history and heritage is protected so that the present and future can grow.

As part of our Centenary year, we welcomed 60, 000 new employees to Loreto Toorak…..that is, 60 000 bees! These bees reflect our commitment to ecological sustainability and an embracing of the ideals of Laudato Si. They will work to pollinate and create, to bring life to and from our incredible gardens. It is these bees that form the centrepiece of our Perspex box, which has been a collaboration between students and staff from our junior and senior schools.

The bees have been a special learning focus for our Prep and Year One students the youngest in our School; those so important to the educational approach of Mother Gonzaga herself. Their questions and wonderings prompted them to create their own hive, drawing pictures of our school bees and the flowers in our gardens that surround them. We built their hexagons into our box, reaching higher with every tile.

Our Year 7 students created our golden bees, fashioning them from clay. Each bee is unique, representing the individuality of each one within the larger hive. The bees were transformed into golden creatures, surrounded by what could be precious golden pearls (or planets), and now they shimmer in the light, reflecting their divine spark, in the mirrored floor of the box. Our Prep and Year One students reflected that bees are a lot like Loreto girls. They told us how both are like a family; that when bees and Loreto girls work together they can fly high, they have a lot more fun and they achieve more; and that when both bees and Loreto girls are surrounded by the beauty of nature it is much more inspiring for them to learn and make new things…including honey!

Like the hives that we build, and from the educational legacy we leave, we want our students to ‘rise higher still;’ to view things from new perspectives, to dream big, to soar, to fly. When they look up and out and see the expanse of the sky above us and the scale of our extraordinary planet, we hope they will stretch their hearts to take it all in…..and back here on the ground, as they and we buzz around our daily lives, we know we will see the difference their education and formation, decisions and discernments, ways of seeing and being will have on the common good of our common home.

Like Gonzaga Barry’s commitment to teaching our earliest Loreto students about the planets, and her desire that they reach for new horizons in their learning, we hope our Loreto Toorak students can also take those leaps to rise higher still…….leaps of the heart and mind, that will transform their own lives and ultimately the lives of others, recognising their role as co-creators of a future built on justice and peace; one grounded in a foundation, in the words of Mother Gonzaga from the same 1887 letter, that is “so firm that all the waves of the world's sea cannot shake it, and on which God can raise a superstructure to last for all eternity.”