Our new Davis Centre at Hobart has been designed to support diverse student cohorts and approaches to learning, and meaningfully contribute to the school’s reconciliation action plan.

The new building has three distinct zones: a zone for quiet work or reflection, a storytelling zone, and a space for gathering and collaboration. We hope for each of these zones to have a distinct identity and signal GYC’s commitment to furthering processes of reconciliation and decolonisation.

​​​​​While we are still at the early stages of our journey, the native cherry tree – which once grew in abundance on the site of our Hobart campus – is becoming a symbol of reflection for us as a school. Dr. Nick Brodie’s research into the early Catholic Church in Tasmania has revealed that the site on which Guilford Young College stands in Hobart was known as a place where Tasmanian Aboriginal people gathered. It was reported in The Mercury in 1873 (see link to article on the left) that Father Connolly, an early member of the Catholic Church would join Aboriginal people on the hill, where he would chat by their fires and share in the eating of native cherries, or 'lintalumala,' (see newspaper article from Trove below). For those of us at the school with some emerging knowledge of this history - particularly Craig Deayton and Kristin Leeds, who have been at at the forefront of sharing this knowledge with the GYC community - the native cherry tree has become a source of inspiration and a symbol of reflection; prompting us to think more deeply about palawa custodianship, lost natural environments, and the histories of cross-cultural interaction which have been formative on this site.

We are keen for the rest of the school to also reflect upon these place-based stories and histories, and hope for this to be promoted via the naming The Davis Centre's Gallery, which we have had formal approval from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre to name, the lintalumala Gallery. We are anticipating that this space will be the heart of the new Davis Centre building at Hobart and that the Gallery will host our growing First Nations library and art collection and provide culturally-safe and welcoming area for not only GYC students and staff but also guests to the college. Over the years, there has been much interest in the significance of the native cherry tree and how it featured in interactions at the site of the school, we hope that through this process of naming we can bring these dialogues back to the foreground and inspire cultural change within the school and the community beyond.​​​​​​​

Mercury Newspaper 1873

The Tasmanian Native Cherry