It is a very special privilege to stand here today, in this place, to mark a moment in our history that began exactly one hundred years ago.
A hundred years.
It is an extraordinary length of time when we think about it.
I think that is the special quality about schools that while the world changes, the deepest purpose of a school endures.
No one embodied that enduring spirit more beautifully than the woman whose vision brought us here: Sister Alice.
She was the person who first originated the idea of moving the school away from Skinner Street. She could see that the school needed space. She understood that if St Mary’s was going to grow, it needed room to grow into its future.
When the land was purchased, Sister Alice gave this bare stretch of ground a name that has remained with us ever since:
The Promised Land. -She was looking at what this place could become.
On 22 September 1926, the foundation stone was laid by Her Royal Highness Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, the wife of the Governor-General of South Africa.
We are very different from the St Mary’s of 1926.
We should be.
The world has changed dramatically. The opportunities available to our girls have changed. Our classrooms, our curriculum, our technology and our understanding of education have all evolved.
Beneath all of that change, there is something that has remained remarkably constant.
Our purpose.
We are still here to educate young women of courage and integrity.
We are still here to prepare young women to go out into the world and make a positive difference.
We are united by a title that matters far more.
Filiae Regis.
Daughters of a King.
As we mark one hundred years since this foundation stone was laid, may we remember Sister Alice's courage to dream beyond what others thought possible.
May we have the same courage to imagine what St Mary’s can become in the next hundred years.
May we honour the generations who have built before us.
May we preserve the stories that have shaped us.
May we never forget that the greatest monument to any school is not its buildings, however beautiful they may be.
It is the people.
It is the lives changed.
It is the young women who leave here and carry something of St Mary’s into the world.
One hundred years ago, Sister Alice looked at a bare stretch of ground and called it The Promised Land.
Today, we stand upon the fulfilment of that promise.
Now, it is our turn to dream.
It is our turn to build.
It is our turn to add our chapter.
One day, another generation will stand here, perhaps a hundred years from now, looking back at us and wondering what we were brave enough to imagine.
May we give them a story worth remembering.
Thank you.
