Next Week @ TC

31/10/2025

• Cup Eve arrangements – alternate program to run on Monday 3 November 

• Graduation Certificates 

• Semester 2 Dance Showcase – Friday 7 November 

• VM project – seeking donations of old clothes 

• TC Community Working Bee – 9 November 

• FareShare sign ups - places still available

• TC Market - applications for stall holders now open

• Visual Arts and Technologies show

• TC News - Halloween

A reminder about our Cup Eve arrangements, as posted to Compass during the week.  

Many families take the opportunity over the Cup weekend to have a four-day weekend to spend time together as a family and enjoy a short break. This has meant that running a normal school program is very difficult on the Monday of Melbourne Cup weekend.  

🗓️On Monday 3 November TC will run an alternate program at all levels joining/merging classes for those students who attend. This will ensure students are supervised by teachers to continue with independent study. The normal classes will not run, thus attendance data will not be impacted and no new material will be covered in the alternate program.   

Daryl Bennett
Acting Principal  

🎓For Grads who have not received their Graduation Certificate, they will be posted out next week📬

Alternatively, if students are attending TC for exams or study they are welcome to pick theirs up from the front office🏫

Our dancers bring to life the glamour of Hollywood 🌟, beloved films 🎬, iconic landmarks from around the world 🌍, and the legends who inspire us through music 🎶, art 🎨and history 📖.

Every student is thrilled to step into the spotlight ✨ and share the passion, creativity, and hard work that has gone into each performance.

Join our Dance Elective and TC Elite Dancers as they showcase their Semester 2 work.

📅 Friday 7 November
🚪 Doors open 6.00pm
🎭 Performance starts promptly at 6.30pm
🎟️ Pre-purchase your tickets to avoid missing out

As part of a VM class project, we're collecting gently used clothes 👕👖of all kinds—jackets, sweaters, pants, socks, gloves, shoes, and more—to help support people in need in our community💛  

📦 Donation boxes will be in: 

• S Wing outside CET offices

• Front Office 

• The Hub. 

🧺Please make sure anything you donate is clean and in good condition. All donated clothes will be given to: the Avalon Centre 🤝

Even one item can make a big difference to someone in need! Thank you so much for your support and generosity🙏   

Feel free to message any of us if you have any questions💬 

Zara Georgiou, Narin Dehghan, Miwa Kato
and Naira Mohammad 
VM students 

🧤 Grab your gloves and join our TC Community Working Bee on Sunday 9 November! It’s a great chance to get involved and spend time with other TC families helping improve our permaculture garden🌱

There are still places left for our FareShare excursions (FLE2+). Come and help us prepare meals for homeless. 

• Green/Red Community Monday 10 Nov 10 places left 

• Blue/Gold Community Monday 17 Nov 9 places left 

• Excursion runs⏰8:15am–1:30pm
  💲 Cost $10

  💚Come and GIVE BACK! 🙌

Message Meg Bailey or put your name on the sign-up sheets in S-Wing. 

🛍️Complete this form if you wish to hold a stall or run an activity at the TC market, which will be running in conjunction with the Art Show on Monday 17 Nov, 3:30-6:30pm. https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/c6NnKZPLFJ 

🗓️Applications close Wednesday 12 November.

Every October, neighbourhoods across Australia begin to be ornamented with extravagant skeletal decorations 💀 and prop tombstones. Kids in bedazzled witch hats 🧙‍♀️ race down driveways, and parents linger behind with torches 🔦 and snack bags 🍬. But here’s the fun fact: Halloween didn’t actually start here. In fact, for a long time, Aussies thought it was an American thing 🇺🇸.

So, where does Halloween originate? 👻

Long before fake cobwebs and lolly specials, there was Samhain (pronounced sow-in), a Celtic festival from over 2,000 years ago. It marked the end of the harvest 🌾 and the beginning of winter; the dark, spooky season 🌙 when the boundary between the living and the dead was said to fade in many cultures across the globe.

People lit bonfires 🔥, wore costumes made from animal skins, and left out offerings to keep spirits happy. When Christianity later spread through Europe, the Church tried to rebrand it as All Hallows’ Eve, which you may have heard of before. This eventually became Halloween. But the mysterious traditions never really left; they just evolved.

In the 1800s, Irish immigrants ☘️ took their ghost stories and Halloween traditions with them when they travelled to the United States. Pumpkins replaced turnips 🎃, and trick-or-treating was born out of old customs like “souling”, where people went door-to-door offering prayers for the dead in exchange for food. Over time, America made Halloween loud, candy-fuelled 🍭, and cinematic 🎬, and thanks to Hollywood movies, the rest of the world eventually got curious.

So, when Did Australia Get Involved?

For decades, Halloween in Australia was mostly something we watched in movies 📺, or on TV. Most Australians saw it as “too American,” and you’d rarely see a pumpkin on a front porch. But by the late 1990s and early 2000s, things started to shift. A mix of global pop culture, social media, and our love of any excuse for a costume party 🧛‍♀️ meant Halloween slowly started to catch on. Supermarkets began stocking decorations, kids wanted to dress up like characters from their favourite cartoons, and parents realised it was actually kind of fun.

Of course, we’ve given Halloween our own spin. Pumpkins are often swapped for plastic ones, and spiderwebs get tangled in gum trees 🌳resembling snow wedged between the gangly branches alongside the cockatoos and galahs 🦜

While it might not have grown from ancient Australian roots, the spirit of Halloween fits right in with original Australian storytelling. Whether you’re out trick-or-treating 🍬 or binging horror movies 😱, you’re taking part in something that started with ancient bonfires 🔥 on the other side of the world.

🎃 Happy Halloween to all who celebrate! 👻

Mietta Palmer
TC Journalist