Champion of the everyday

May 23, 2012 by Brenton Stacey

Young alumna’s challenge: cherish the days and the seasons

Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

Avondale’s Young Alumna of the Year finds meaning in the routine of the everyday despite a burgeoning career as an artist and speaker.

Joanna Darby is Avondale Alumni Association’s Young Alumna of the Year. Credit: Ashleigh Wrankmore.

Since graduating in 2006, Joanna Darby has worked as a teacher and as a lecturer, become a mother, presented exhibitions and spoken at camps, churches, conferences and conventions. Receiving the Gabe Reynaud Award at the Manifest Creative Arts Festival in 2011 recognised excellence in using the creative arts for ministry. “But I keep trying to figure out where I am and what exactly it is that I do,” she told staff members and students attending the Alumni and Graduation Forum on the Lake Macquarie campus, Wednesday (May 16).

Avondale Alumni Association president Pr Des Hills announced Joanna as the recipient of the award, presented to a member of the association aged 30 and under on the sixth anniversary of their graduation. It recognises commitment to Christian service and dedication to achieving personal goals.

Joanna adapted the biblical account of creation to illustrate how the everyday can obscure these goals. Let there be washing, Facebook, nappy changes and a cuppa with a friend, said Joanna. Let there be holidays, burnt toast, showers and sunscreen, and there was evening and morning. “It’s easy to look somewhere else, sometime else or at someone else,” said Joanna. “We just want to be on our way, but perhaps all this is the way.”

The message: God is in every day and God is in the everyday. “He doesn’t mind repetition,” said Joanna, referring to days and seasons. “He created it, and it was good.” The challenge: “When we fail to acknowledge the spiritual and the significant and the incredible in the everyday, we risk a sort of death, a death by boredom.”

Cherishing the everyday gives life meaning, said Joanna. “The ordinary. The conventional. The grind. The small places. The daily spaces. The evening. The morning. It all belongs to God and it’s all a gift from God.”

Earlier, Avondale College of Higher Education president Dr Ray Roennfeldt announced the graduation class officers for 2012. Co-presidents are Bachelor of Nursing student Jonathan Funes and Bachelor of Business/Bachelor of Teaching student Emma Hanna.

 

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Planet party

May 23, 2012 by Brenton Stacey

School’s Venus Transit Festival a once in a lifetime event

They are calling it a Venus Transit Festival, and it is the only one you have the opportunity of attending in your lifetime.

A few hours of midnight photography, some nifty GIMP work and a bit of Hugin magic culminated in this photograph of a lunar eclipse over Bethel Hall. The next is due in April 2014. Credit: Lachlan Rogers.

The School of Science and Mathematics will, weather permitting, host the festival on the morning of June 6 when the planet Venus will come directly between earth and the sun. “We’ll be able to see it as a black dot on the disk of the sun,” says associate lecturer Lachlan Rogers, “but don’t look directly at the sun. We’ll project images of the transit from our telescope.”

The event is of more than just scientific significance: it is tied with Australian history. In 1766, the Royal Society sent English navigator Captain James Cook to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus. Cook viewed the transit from Tahiti then sailed to New Zealand and to Australia, becoming the first European to explore and map its east coast.

“Humans have always been fascinated by the night sky,” says Lachlan. “Looking into it through a telescope reveals even more of the beauty and wonder of our universe. Astronomy provides an awesome and humbling perspective on even the grandest our human activities.”

The next transit of Venus: 2117. “So, this year’s is not one to miss,” says Lachlan.

Contact Lachlan (lachlan.rogers@avondale.edu.au) to receive notification of astronomy events or follow the Science@Avondale page on Google+.

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Giving takes you back

May 16, 2012 by Brenton Stacey

Annual Appeal to restore historic music buildings

Josh Dye
Public relations intern
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

 

Donations to Avondale’s Annual Appeal will help restore Music and Greer Halls. Credit: Brittany Lynn.

Music has been an intrinsic part of the heritage of Avondale College of Higher Education since its founding in 1897. From the orchestral ensembles of the 1910s to choral works like Messiah to the interstate and overseas tours, music is ingrained in Avondale’s culture.

It formed part of the curriculum from the beginning. Herbert Lacey served as the inaugural music teacher, offering private tuition in piano, organ and voice for £1 1s per quarter.

Music Hall

As the popularity of music increased, so did the need for a designated building. That building, Music Hall, opened in 1925, the first on campus to be built of brick.

The music program continued to grow. George Greer, head of music from 1947 to 1952, transformed the image of music at Avondale. He organised a 70-member a cappella choir, which toured extensively. Greer also expanded the program, lobbying for students to use music electives to satisfy degree requirements in other programs. By 1949, the music program enrolled 200 students. By the time Greer left in 1952, the choir had gained national recognition for excellence.

Alan Thrift

Alan Thrift, called to head the then Music Department in 1957, says this recognition has been a major form of public relations. “From the 1970s, the concert tours, radio broadcasts and TV appearances of the Avondale Symphonic Choir and later the Avondale Singers were what the college was best known for,” says Alan, whose tenure lasted 41 years. These performances not only formed an image of Avondale, but they also solidified the role of music as part of the Avondale experience.

“Music has been central to our ethos,” says the new lecturer in music, Aleta King. “So many people—Greer, Clapham, Thrift, Clark—have been through those Music Hall doors.”

Annual Appeal

The Annual Appeal acknowledges this heritage. The money you give will help restore Music Hall and Greer Hall. The historic buildings need a facelift.

Alan urges those with a heart for music to donate. “The academic opportunities are of high standard but the facilities are located in old and inadequate buildings in urgent need of upgrading.”

Some of the restoration work planned for later this year includes: re-coating roofs; repainting exteriors and interiors; replacing broken windows, guttering and rotten timber beams; repointing mortar between bricks; and re-plastering ceilings. “It will enhance the learning and teaching spaces for students and staff members,” says director of advancement Colin Crabtree.

Aleta concludes: “Music is able to transcend the normality of life—to take us to a place closer to God. You may not remember the classes you sat in, but you remember the amazing concerts you were a part of. They’re the experiences that captivated you.”

Thank you for helping improve the Avondale experience for today’s music students.

Give to the Avondale College of Higher Education Offering in Seventh-day Adventist churches on June 2 or online at www.avondale.edu.au/annualappeal.

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Legacy lives

May 16, 2012 by Brenton Stacey

Concert raises 4K for children in India

Josh Dye
Public relations intern
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

The Contemporary Choir closed the Change Is Coming concert, which COSMOS dedicated to longtime supporter Charles Pointon. Credit: Kimberley Hodgkin.

Student mission club COSMOS called its fundraising concert Change Is Coming. The generous response means change is a little bit closer for the girls boarding at Tonea School in India.

The concert, held in Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church on Saturday (May 12), raised almost $4000. The money will help build a new girls’ dormitory. International poverty and development studies major Karli Borresen knows the difference it will make. “I visited Tonea last year and saw girls sleeping on the floor or sharing a bed with three others.”

Fourteen artists, including Francine Bell, Contemporary Choir, Melissa Otto, The Promise and Victory Street Gospel Choir, performed. The bill made it one of the biggest events COSMOS has organised, reports leader Krissie Hopkins.

COSMOS dedicated the concert to its longtime supporter, the late Charles Pointon. A newly framed painting of Charles will be displayed at Avondale in memory of his service to the college and the community.

Asian Aid Australia, which partners with Tonea, thanks COSMOS for giving hope to the children at Tonea. “Charles would have been proud of not only the money raised but also of the dedication and passion of young adults with a heart for mission and service,” says chief executive officer Richard Greenwell. “It’s good to see Charles’ legacy—of being a friend of children—lives on.”

 

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E-book for aeroplane

May 10, 2012 by Brenton Stacey

Will help fund restoration of Andrew Stewart

Linden Chuang
Communications assistant
Adventist Media Network
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

The Adventist Heritage Centre is adding to the six chapters in Balus Belong 7 Day. Customers who buy the e-book will automatically receive the revised version on its release. Credit: Bradley Marshall.

The launch of an e-book about a Seventh-day Adventist mission aeroplane will help raise money for its refurbishment and relocation for permanent display.

Balus Belong 7 Day, published by the Adventist Heritage Centre and launched at Avondale Library on May 1, tells the story of the Andrew Stewart. The aeroplane is the first to be operated by any division of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Author Dr Lester Devine (centre) has dedicated an e-book about the Andrew Stewart to the aeroplane’s first pilots Pastors Len Barnard (left) and Colin Winch (right). Credit: Kaitlyn Betts.

Author Dr Lester Devine dedicated the book to retired ministers Pastors Len Barnard and Colin Winch, who received the first copies. The “father of Adventist mission aviation in the South Pacific” and the church’s former chief pilot were the first to fly the aeroplane. Lester, director emeritus of the Ellen G White Seventh-day Adventist Research Centre, describes himself as an “aviation buff.” “That comes from Len,” he says. “He used to come from furlough into our community and regale me with stories of flying and missions.”

The president of the church in the South Pacific, Dr Barry Oliver, also honours Len and Colin for their “vision and foresight to make a radical change in the way we operated. It took unflinching determination to enthuse those who hesitated and to gather the considerable financial resources needed to launch the aviation program,” he writes in the foreword of the book. “It takes the same kind of determination to keep it going today.”

The church in the South Pacific bought the Cessna 180-B four times and sold it three times. Dedicated at Bankstown Airport in Sydney in June 1964, the aeroplane—its initials are VH-SDA—honours pioneer missionary Pastor Andrew Stewart. It flew 5000 hours without a single accident or insurance claim during its service, mostly in remote areas of Papua New Guinea. The Andrew Stewart became a static display in November 1987, mounted on a pedestal at the South Sea Islands Museum in Cooranbong.

The Adventist Heritage Centre brought the aeroplane down from its pedestal in July 2008 to begin restoration. “Every cent raised [by the sale of the book] will go towards restoration,” says curator Rose-lee Power. “Any extra money will go towards funding a hangar.”

The Adventist Heritage Centre hopes to complete the $60,000 project by June 2014, the 50th anniversary of the Andrew Stewart’s first flight.—with Brenton Stacey, public relations officer, Avondale College of Higher Education

Balus Belong 7 Day is available from Amazon.com, the iTunes Store and other online booksellers.

 

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