Lucy Berrell, of Walgett, NSW, is the fifth generation of her family to attend Presbyterian Ladies College in Sydney.
Story Ken Eastwood
It’s difficult to believe an Australian school could have been running that long, but 15-year-old Lucy Berrell is the fifth generation of her family to attend Presbyterian Ladies College (PLC) in Sydney. Her great-great aunts went there, her great-grandmother went there, as did her grandmother and mother. It’s a long association that very few other families have with the Croydon school, which was established in 1888. And, incredibly, Lucy and her family don’t live anywhere near the school – they live on an 11,000-hectare sheep and cropping property between Walgett and Collarenebri, some 700 kilometres to the north-west.
Lucy says that when she began boarding there in 2015 she was nervous, coming from a primary school in Walgett with 150 students, but she settled in quickly. “She’s the youngest of three, with two older brothers, so she took to it like a duck to water,” her mum, Annie, says. “She just loved going into a house full of girls.”
There are just 65 boarders at the 1300-student school, and of the eight boarders in Lucy’s year, five are from rural areas. “We’re the wild ones in the boarding house,” Lucy says, with an impish grin. “There’s a few of us who just love getting into trouble.”
This story excerpt is from Issue #116
Outback Magazine: December/January 2018
