Today I’m chatting with Simon Murphy, Principal of Blackheath and Thornburgh College in Charters Towers.
Charters Towers is around an hour and a half from Townsville in far North Queensland. It’s a sizeable country town with around 12,000 people and there’s a cluster of boarding schools there – quite unique for a country town of that size. Simon mentions there’s three which employ over 550 staff and account for a combined 400 boarders. It must have a noticeable positive impact on the community I’m sure.
We speak about their boarders, and their involvement in the town around them and the effect the schools’ commitment toward cultural change from within is having, not only on their own school community but the community at large.
There’s 160 boarders at BTC – 80 boys and 80 girls and Simon and I talk about the clear differences between the way the girl boarding students engage with their surroundings compared with the boys. He’s got a great insight into this.
Our real purpose here though is to explore BTC’s long history and association with remote families – since inception in fact back in 1919 they’ve been educating kids from the most far flung corners of Australia and that hasn’t changed.
Simon and his boarding team, led by Andy Thorne will be joining us in Mount Isa for our Popup expo event on the 2nd of December – it’s their 2nd visit with us and we’re looking forward to introducing them to more great families from the north west.
Here’s my chat with Simon Murphy.