Update/more messages from no-shows :)

Hi folks, we now have 98 people paid up to attend, so it will be a good crowd. Still time to come along; pay $40 at the door! Here are a few more notes from people who sadly can't make it:

Hello Everyone,
Will be thinking of all of you this coming Saturday night. It's hard to believe that 30 years ago we were all dancing under the stars out on the jetty of Walton's Seaplane Base, and getting royally chastised for it (By Mr Walton himself!!!)!!!!
I was SO hoping to make it back to Sydney for the night but unfortunately work commitments didn't enable me to do so but I know that it will be one hell of a crazy evening.
As much as I have spent many of my post school years overseas, those years and the friends I made at Barrenjoey High still hold such strong, wonderful and life-changing memories for me.... and I wouldn't have changed one moment of it for anything.
It would have been wonderful to catch up with all of you, and hope to see many more familiar faces in Avalon when I return from New York to live on the Northern Beaches in the next year !!
I can't wait!
Have a great time Guys,
Di Sheppard

Hi all
I remember being terrified when I came to Barrenjoey in year 11 from Mater Maria. A good Catholic girl, I'd been told to expect drugs, sex etc. How wrong that all was - well most of it.
I remember laughing a lot with Sue Shearing and Louise Michelsen in French; sitting next to the sweet and kind Josefina Vergara in Miss Lynch's geography class; the fervent and passionate Di Armstrong trying to teach us about revolutionaries, and the hilariously dyslexic Mr Lowe in Biology who referred to the 'Specific Ocean'.
After year 12, I got to know Meredith, Nada, Louise and Julie pretty well, and Julie and I shared flats for many years. I spent time in Italy with Julie, and met up and traveled with Lisa Wells in France back in the 80s. Oh yeah, ran into Luke Menson when he came to inspect a house we were selling in Alexandria back in 1994!
I've been living in Melbourne for 11 years now with husband Kent and kids Nick 18, Oliver 16 and Chloe almost 14. We're having a 16th birthday party for 50+ kids on the night of the reunion so I need to be here at home. I hope you all have a great time, reminiscing about school life by the beach in the 70s. How lucky were we?? We'll toast good health to all of you at
the 'rissole' on the night. Mary-Anne Stuart (Vanderkley)

Will miss this event with real regret. There have been few times in my life as influential as the three years I spent at Barrenjoey. I arrived with a slight American accent and mild depression after doing early-adolescence in the US. The friendships and freedoms that I discovered at Barrenjoey changed everything. I wish I could be there with you all to remember who we were and share stories of who we've become.
My story, in brief, is that over the past ten years I finally finished a PhD project from which I emerged an anthropologist instead of a television producer. The nights of dancing with pure abandon of our teenage years now stand me in good stead in the Aboriginal ceremonies and basket-ball court discos I frequent these days as an anthropologist-videomaker in the Northern Territory. The date of the reunion unfortunately clashes with a prior project involving sitting in Arnhem Land for a month or two waiting for film a certain special pre-monsoonal cloud formation to appear as part of a film project about the joys and melancholy of Yolngu Christmas.
Have fun. I send my love. Jen Deger

Hello All,
With much regret due to work commitments I will not able to attend such an occasion which I know will be a memorable one. If you so choose you can email me at kblatch@bigpond.net.au .... I would love to hear from you.
Have a wonderful evening of catching up and a good time of laughter.
Greg Blatch
P.S. A big hello to Grant Goozee, Craig Finniss, Michael Ravenscroft, Peter Calleja and Jonathan Perrett