On Tuesday 25 th March the six of us were lucky enough to attend the Halogen Young Leaders Day in Sydney. We represented our school and came away totally inspired by amazing speakers from all walks of life.
The first speaker was Catherine Laga'aia. She spoke about how hard it was to be one of the youngest actors in the live-action Moana. She shared how she accidentally punched Dwyanne Jonhson also known as “the Rock” while filming the song “Your Welcome”. Many people from the crowd had a big laugh at the many jokes she made. What we took away from Catherine was;
‘Not everyone is perfect but deserves to be treated the way you want to be treated whether you are a woman or a man.’
We are all human and there is nothing wrong with being unique or different.
We had an amazing time and were so very lucky to hear from Catherine.
After Catherine Laga’aia we had a little brain break with Dean, from Dance Curriculum. He is a hip hop dancer who taught us a dance called Hip Hop Hoedown. It was tricky at first but we got there by the end.. (We’re doubly excited because Dance Curriculum are coming to our school later in the year to teach the whole school some dances. We just can’t wait for everyone else to see how cool they are and learn some dances.
The second speaker was Thomas “Duncan” Watt. He spoke about how he created another version of one of the episodes of Star Trek with one of his good friends in his garage. He also talked about his love of writing stories and being an author of some of the books that we read today. One of Thomas' sayings was
“ Every master was once a disaster” and that tells us that no one is perfect!
Thomas talked about how he published his new book, Tomb of the Zombie King. One of his other sayings was
“Keep trying no matter what”. He never gave up when things didn’t go his way and he just kept pushing through.
The third speaker was Emma Mckeon. She spoke all about her swimming and how she started when she was 5 years old. She showed us a photo of her trying to do a lap of butterfly when she was 5 years old. She told us that she gave up swimming once because she wasn’t enjoying it and she hopped out of the pool crying almost every week. Whenever she got to her race she was hoping it got cancelled but as soon as she got on the blocks and swam she said she felt fine.
She said never to rely on doing it when you feel motivated because it’s not always going to be there to help you. That there will be parts of EVERYTHING you do that you don’t enjoy, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it. Another great thing she said that we wanted to remember was that failure can be your greatest teacher, the key to progress is consistency.
After Emma Mckeon we lined up for a photo and when we got back, we saw 10 different leaders on the stage. There was music and Dean, from Dance Curriculum said “Show us what you’ve got!!” They were entertaining, some of us wished we’d been able to get up there too.
The fourth speaker who spoke was Harries from Bondi Rescue. Harries was very entertaining speaking about his job for 30 years at Bondi. Some stories were sad, and some were really funny. Harry’s son Billy and his best friend Bailey were even in our year and went on stage to show us CPR on themselves. His most favourite episode of Bondi Rescue is when he proposed to his wife Emily and now has two kids Billy and Leo. Our favourite take-away from Harries was;
Take the T away from CAN’T and you CAN!
We learnt a lot from the speakers and were lucky to get a photo with Emma Mckeon, because the line was massive so we were very grateful, excited and proud to have a photo with her.
It was definitely worth the long drive all the way to Sydney. We want to thank our parents for helping us to have this experience the six of us will always remember.
By Hadley, Marlie, Amity, Kate, Annabelle and Belle.