Scotch College

It is great to be home!

It is great to be home!

Stepping off the 'plane onto the tarmac of Mackay airport, the tropical conditions of intense heat and oppressive humidity, lead me to ponder, 'What have I done?'

As Deputy Head at Scotch, it seemed only natural in aspiring to leading colleagues in your own school and in 1994 the opportunity arose for me to do so when the Whitsunday Anglican School invited me to join their staff.

WA is a co-educational school, with an enrolment of 640,240 of whom were in the Junior School and this was to be home for the next twenty-one months. This was a school that had achieved a marvellous academic reputation in a few short years of existence and had quickly established itself as one of the leading schools north of Brisbane.

However, the tropical conditions proved too much and in 1996 I was fortunate to have been appointed as Master of Junior School at Somerset College situated on the Gold Coast. Somerest has an enrolment of just over 1100 children, 510 of whom were in the Junior School, making it at the time, the largest non-catholic independent primary school in Queensland. With magnificent facilities, an extremely talented staff, the school also developed a fine academic reputation in both the primary and secondary schools.

Somerset is considered to be one of the two or three leading schools in Queensland.

Being away from family for over four years was a great attraction in returning to Melbourne, however, there was only one school to which I desired to return.

For it is not until you move away from Scotch that you fully appreciate the impact the community has on your life - it gets in your blood and almost becomes as important as your own family.

I am honoured and consider it a privilege that Scotch has extended its confidence to me, by inviting me to take over from Mr Nowacki as Head of the Junior School. Along with my family, Joanne, Caitlin and Bradley, I look forward with great anticipation to the many challenges that leading the Junior School into the new millennium will bring.

It is great to be home!

Mr Guy Mason