Mercy News
Speech Night
30 November 2020
A year of Covid-19 imposed isolation was relaxed just in time to enable parents, staff and students along with distinguished guests to celebrate the fact that despite all, it has been a great year for our College.
While students were the centre of attention, the highlights of the night included staff choir, address by our Special Guest Speaker Mayor Greg Williamson, a highly entertaining student choir and Strings Ensemble, along with nervous College Captains delivering outstanding addresses. It was great to see our Federal Member for Dawson Mr George Christensen attending this special evening. Congratulations to all of our student awardees.
Special Awardees :
- The Long Tan Leadership & Teamwork Award - Natan Gooch
- The P & F Cathy Quinn Award - Grace Druery
- Mercy Award - Grace Brown & Brodie Hocking
- Christian Brothers Award - Jackson Ziekenheiner
- Indigenous Achievement Award - Eva Neilson
- Caltex All-Rounder Award - Logan Watt
- College Dux - Jann Carlo Macatangay & Imogen Bennett
Future Anything: Activate
28 November 2020
Activate is an immersive, in-curriculum program designed to inspire and empower young people. The program sees students identify and explore problems that matter to them whilst using design thinking to ideate, develop and pitch their own innovative, scalable and sustainable enterprise solutions that make the world a better place. The Semester 1 Year 9 cohort of students developed and pitched a variety of inspiring and unique business solutions to some very mature social issues affecting the local and wider community.
Mercy College was well represented in the finals this year with not one but two teams making it to the pointy end of the competition! Congratulations to Peter Ford, Anna Zhang and Sophie Westcott.
Buy Smart Competition
23 November 2020
An Office of Fair Trading initiative, students were invited to create an innovative and engaging way to generate buzz about consumer issues. They were asked to think outside the box and create a resource which unpacked the concept of opportunity cost and its relevance to consumers in the marketplace.
The following teams of students were awarded Certificates of Distinction, placing them in the top 15% of the state. Meghan Connolly, Isabella Sammut, Kassidy Refalo, Madeline Pace and Hayley Sullivan designed a board game with each space requiring the player to make a decision while James Galea and Thomas Jorgensen created an entertaining animation explaining the concept by referencing donuts – yum!
Desmos Design Challenge
20 November 2020This Semester our Year 10 Methods classes extended their knowledge of graphs by graphing their names on a graphing program called Desmos. This will be a valuable skill next year at St Patrick's College. What we didn't expect was the amazing artwork that would be created. Keep in mind that every line and curve was created with an equation, graphed on a cartesian plane. These are just a small sample of the submissions.

Red Suitcase Project
12 November 2020
As a culmination of the Year 10 Love of Literature classes Red Suitcase Project, we were invited by the residents of 17 Penn Street, Rob and Lynne Robson, to visit their property during our lesson on Monday afternoon, 9 November. This was the setting chosen for the class novel that we have written and it was a wonderful opportunity for us to see the house that we have been imagining our characters interacting with.
Each of us were commissioned to write a chapter for the novel using stimulus found inside a red suitcase. The chapters explored the lives of different characters who had at some time lived or visited the house at 17 Penn Street. The stories were then woven together through a modern-day protagonist who finds the suitcase and must uncover the links between the artefacts. We all worked with enough zeal to produce 12 full-length chapters, giving our novel almost 400 pages.
The novel is currently at the publishers and we will all receive our own copy once it is ready in a couple of weeks. We would like to thank the Mr and Mrs Robson for being so gracious in allowing us to visit their home and have the opportunity to, just for the afternoon, live vicariously in the environment of our characters.
Archived News
Sports Awards
11 November 2020Justice @ Mercy
09 November 2020Beach Clean Up
01 November 2020And the Winners Are
28 October 2020Interfaith Banquet
26 October 2020Epic Readers
25 October 2020Book Week Dressup
23 October 2020Vicki Wilson Cup
20 October 2020HPV Race Weekend
12 October 2020Cultural Performances
08 October 2020Mercy in Action Award
01 October 2020Cross Country
01 October 2020Year 10 Cowboys Challenge
29 September 2020Year 9 Takes Social Action
18 September 2020Cape Hillsborough Trip
17 September 2020Junior Robotics Competition
16 September 2020Reef Trip
15 September 2020Money Challenge
14 September 2020Open Night
04 September 2020Bikeathon
02 September 2020Work Experience
01 September 2020Robotics at Mercy
29 August 2020I Shutter the Thought
21 August 2020Year 10 League
18 August 2020Homeroom Door Challenge
17 August 2020Whitsunday Futsal
16 August 2020Ready, Set, Go!
04 August 2020Congratulations Principal Ford
03 August 2020Open Night 2020
01 August 2020Pyjama Day
24 July 2020Wind Tunnel Testing
20 July 2020Naidoc Week
26 June 2020Running Club
25 June 2020The Leader in Me
22 June 2020Environmental Committee
18 June 2020SolarBuddy
10 June 2020
SolarBuddy is an organisation that provides an alternative to a sustainable light source. Each night, more than 800 million people are plunged into complete darkness since they don't have equal access to clean energy.
Year 10 Geography students recently built SolarBuddy solar lights to give to those less fortunate in least developed countries. Below are students’ reflections on this activity.
Ryan – I felt privileged to help out the people who are less fortunate and we were really changing a less fortunate person’s life.
Kyra - Knowing that those lights are now going to people who are able to study and learn better, makes me want to help more and I feel we should do this more in school.