John Pirie Secondary School

The Hon. G.G. BROCK (Stuart) (15:26): Today I would like to talk about the recent John Pirie Secondary School Awards and in particular the Minister for Education awards, which are offered as part of Children's Week celebrations for students who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in any endeavour, including academic, community service, sports, arts and personal challenge. Two awards are given to secondary students across all of the state from those nominated. This year Bella Veal was one of the two recipients awarded for the whole state.

The path to winning began several weeks ago when on a Saturday morning the Urumbula team hosted a tour for a group of adults who had in the past won a Churchill Fellowship to study overseas. The group were highly engaged learning about Aboriginal plants and also bestowed many compliments to the student tour guides, of which Bella was one.

Just to explain, this area is an Aboriginal flourishing garden with significant cultural areas which uses traditional methods of growing indigenous plants. This garden was established in 2018 by a teacher at the time, Bruce Mules. He worked with Aboriginal students transforming a bare piece of land to flourish with Indigenous culture and plants. It has become a peaceful bush-like garden with a yarning circle, a fire pit and a connections mural, which was painted by the Aboriginal students some years ago.

While gathered in the yarning circle, the school treated the guests at the time to several short talks. One of those was from Bella herself who spoke about her struggle with autism and how important Urumbula had been for her finding her voice, her culture, her confidence and positive self-belief. Some of the key points Bella made were that Urumbula was her true safe place and that she thrived at the chance to learn more about the Adnyamathanha language, customs and her family connections. She spoke of her work experience at Wilpena Pound and how she learnt more about the Flinders Ranges' plants from family elders—knowledge which has since been shared with the garden team and our visitors. Sharing knowledge was an important part of the mentoring role she was chosen to provide this year on Operation Flinders.

Her story also included being part of the SAASTA program and giving a public speaking address. In the local Army cadets she was a company commander responsible for training and her role modelling for other cadets. Bella was able to very personally and passionately describe how the stress and the anxiety did not go away and the pain and struggle she still endures. After she completed her talk several of the guests present were so moved that they became emotional. One suggested that we nominate her for the award because of her ability to overcome personal challenges and because of her remarkable achievements.

Bruce Mules, who has been retired for some time but is still involved in this project, was delighted when he got the news that she had won, and he was lucky enough to be alongside her parents to see her presented with the award by the Minister for Education in Adelaide recently.

Sometimes it is easy to overlook the struggles that students face. Bella's award is recognition that there are many ways in which you can strive for excellence and achieve it. I had the great privilege, as I mentioned earlier, of being at the awards that night and to personally congratulate Bella on her journey and her honesty with others who may have the same challenges but are too scared to show their emotions or fears.

This program has been going for many years. It acts as a class project and it has been able to allow lots of students who have great challenges in sitting in a classroom for a long period of time to be able to actually achieve their goal and to actually pass some of the courses.

The garden, which is visible from the main road, Mary Elie Street, is maintained by not only the students but also the groundsperson there. It has Indigenous plants and a lot of history there. It not only teaches the Aboriginal people about their culture and their traditions but also teaches the non-Indigenous people about the cultures. I have been there many a time, and it is very peaceful and relaxing.

It is heartwarming to actually understand how students themselves can come out of their shells. I congratulate Bella tremendously on having the courage to be able to explain and make public her challenges with autism and other things. I am very privileged to have been able to be at that awards event last week.