Dear Mudgeeraba Special School Families,

Renée Zhu

Principal

This week we conducted interviews to determine our School Captains for 2025. The students did an awesome job presenting themselves in front of a panel with representatives from our school, our P&C and one of our community partners (Kelly from the Mudgeeraba Show Society). They should all be very proud of their efforts. The captains will be announced at an assembly later in the year.

“There was a clunk and a crunch then the car stopped moving.” These were the first words my wife spoke to me after she sent me an emergency message. The car was up on the nature strip in front of the Q Supercentre just across from the ambulance station. Apparently after the car had stopped moving and caused a traffic jam at that set of traffic lights. My wife had been able to get the assistance of another passing driver to push the car onto the side of the road so that it would not cause any traffic delays for other vehicles. 

I took the keys from my wife, then I removed one of the camping chairs out of the back of the car and sat   under a tree, then began the wait. During that waiting period my wife came and we had a lovely picnic under that big old tree. She then went home and I continued to wait, in all I waited around five hours before the tow truck finally arrived.  The truck driver took my car to a mechanics and then dropped me off at Helensvale station, I was planning to catch a train from there to my home station of Varsity and then a bus to get home. Unfortunately, as it is when you’re having one of those days, the trains were not running that day so I had to wait and catch a bus all the way from Helensvale station to Varsity station. Then, finally I caught the bus from there to home. In all after leaving home at 8:30 in the morning, it was 6:30 in the evening when I eventually arrived back home.

I waited the next day in nervous expectation. Then finally I got the call from my mechanic telling me that the transmission in my car had permanent broken down. The cost to replace the transmission was much more than we had put aside for an emergency. I had no idea where to turn or what to do to solve the problem.

Thankfully I had a group of people who came around me to support me through this time. My wife and family were an abundance of support and my work colleagues actually offered me a car to use until I decided whether to repair or replace my car.

I was very thankful for the support of my family and work colleagues as I worked my way through this situation. There's going be times when things happen that we have no control over and there seems like there's no answers, to often at these times we try to do it alone, but this is often a mistake. Instead why not allow those around us to support us. Often we may find that when we allow people to come in by our side, though it is by no means easy we can make it through the toughest times that this life throws at us and possibly see small moments of joy along the way.