Banksia Secondary College: Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia

G'day from Down Under!

Banksia Secondary College is located in Heidelberg, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. It serves a diverse and geographically dispersed community which includes a wide variety of socio-economic areas.

The College possesses unique facilities, the result of a refurbishment of the former Heidelberg High School at the cost of almost 6 million dollars. Specialist areas from engineering to instrumental music are well served with the facilities and the equipment. Other facilities include two full sized basketball stadiums, a new 300 square metre canteen, three synthetic grass tennis courts, a horticulture centre and a 203 seat theatre.

The student body of around 430 consists of students from the local area, students from the Preston/Coburg area and students who have been attracted from afar for the Vocational Education Programs offered in Years 10 to 12, the Deaf Facility Program and our widely known Integration Program. The West Heidelberg population has under gone a huge shift in the last couple of years with the arrival of refugee families, in particular of Somali origin, along with Vietnamese and Lebanese.

For further information on our school and its community, you can visit our homepage at http://netspace.net.au/~bansec

Our Year 8 Science classes have been involved in areas of study that have encouraged them to be environmentally conscious. In particular we have been actively involved with Stream Watch and this has required us to go down to the Darebin Creek and monitor the water quality. We have measured the physical properties of the water such as; pH, turbidity, nitrates, phosphates, temperature, dissolved oxygen, but the most exciting was looking for both macro and micro invertebrates, of which we found many. This links in very well with a global environment study such as the SWOOPE FALL '97 acid rain study.

Regards,
Hannah and Linda

Banksia Secondary College
http://netspace.net.au/~bansec
37'45.95 S, 145'02.57 E