Timbertop offers students an environment that champions kindness, honesty and effort, above all else.
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Lucy Spinks calls Kyalite, in southern NSW, home.
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Having grown up in a rural setting, Lucy said her year at Timbertop, Geelong Grammar School’s Year 9 campus near Mansfield, felt like familiar territory in some ways. But it pushed her further than she expected.
‘’Timbertop allowed me to realise strengths I didn’t know I had, both physically and mentally,’’ she said.
‘’There were many hard moments where I wanted to give up. And that’s Timbertop for you.’’
Established in 1953, Timbertop is one of Australia’s most distinctive educational programs.
Students spend an entire year living and learning together in a full boarding residential community, immersed in the natural environment of the Victorian high country.
The rigorous academic program runs five days a week, while weekends are dedicated to hiking, camping and skiing.
Students live in rustic units, chop wood for hot water and leave their digital devices behind entirely.
It is an environment that champions kindness, honesty and effort, above all else.
For Lucy, the hardest adjustment was not the physical demands or the steep learning curve of an unfamiliar place; it was the distance from home, and the knowledge that the only way to reach family was through a letter.
The rigorous academic program runs five days a week, while weekends are dedicated to hiking, camping and skiing.
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"Not being a phone call away from Mum and Dad was really difficult. But it made me discover an independence I didn’t know I was capable of,’’ she said.
That independence is quietly central to everything the program asks of its students.
Living alongside students from entirely different backgrounds, Lucy learned to contribute, to collaborate and to hold her own in a community built on mutual respect.
"Whether it’s completing your weekly jobs, arriving to meals on time or just being a kind face around campus, effort is something you can’t do Timbertop without,’’ she said.
The agriculture and land management elective subject was a natural fit for Lucy.
Timbertop's 325-hectare property, around 200 hectares of which is working farmland, gives students hands-on experience with Murray grey beef cattle, a prime lamb enterprise and the full seasonal rhythm of a working farm.
The curriculum covers pasture and land management, animal husbandry, reproduction and sustainable agriculture practices.
"It was great to be around like-minded people and feel a bit closer to home,’’ she said.
Lucy started at Geelong Grammar as a boarder in Year 7, and her younger brother is making his own way through the Timbertop program.
Now a senior school boarder in Year 11, Lucy still finds herself reminiscing with friends over their shared experience.
“We all wish to have another year of it,” she said.
For families considering the journey, her reflection was simple.
“It is an incredible year of growth and development,” she said.
“What I learned has set me up with life skills I’ll carry for ever, and the friendships I made are a bonus.”
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