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School Reception: Monday-Friday, 8am-4pm
Phone: (03) 8099 6000
Email:info@sfcc.vic.edu.au
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PO Box 530, Melton, VIC, 3337Melton Campus: 109-141 Bulmans Rd, Melton West, VIC 3337
Cobblebank Campus: 456 Bridge Rd, Cobblebank, VIC 3338
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PortalEurope Trip 2025
Students from the Melton Campus travelled to Europe at the end of the 2025 school year. The trip offers students the opportunity to experience different cultures and spend time as tourists in diverse locations across Europe.
Beginning in the home of St Francis, Assisi is a medieval town situated on top of a hill in Tuscany. Students visited the churches and holy relics of St Francis and St Clare, attended mass at St Francis’ Basilica and took in the sweeping views of the lush Valle Umbra.
From Assisi, the group travelled north to Verona, via the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Verona is a UNESCO World Heritage city with world-famous Christmas markets. It also served as a base for visiting the canals of Venice and doing some shopping. Students also left the main thoroughfare to take in the memorials of the Venice Ghetto.
Flight schedules necessitated a single night in Milan. A dash through the city to see the Last Supper, il Duomo, do some shopping and an Italian cooking class, with a lot of singing thrown in, completed the short stay.
Ciao to Italy meant guten tag to Germany and its enigmatic capital – Berlin.
A miscommunication in the booking at the Altes Museum resulted in the museum’s curator taking the group around the treasures of Ancient Rome. The only known portrait of an imperial family and the largest surviving Ancient Roman treasure hoard were the tour's highlights.
From there (via schnitzels in Berlin’s oldest market), it was a trip underground to Berlin’s World War II and Cold War bunkers – and the revelation that they are not really relics of the past but maintained and functional parts of Berlin’s civil defence network.
The top of the Bundestag, the Jewish Museum, foreign public transport, shopping, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, medieval-themed Christmas markets, kebabs, and the entrance to the Führerbunker rounded out the visit. Berlin is bustling and frenetic. It has a style all of its own.
Berlin
On to Krakow
It was obvious the temperature was dropping as we looked out the train windows en route to Krakow. Snow thickly covered the ground between Germany and Poland. The Old Town in Krakow is like something out of a fairy tale - the medieval cloth hall in the centre of the main square, huge Christmas markets on one side and a Christmas tree on the other.
Horses draw carriages of tourists around the square. To get oriented with the city, we had a ghost tour at night to hear about Krakow’s serial killer, the vampires and why the pigeons are so friendly. There was a poignant visit to Oskar Schindler’s factory to learn about Krakow's wartime history, and we rode e-scooters to see the castle, the dragon, and other famous sites.
When the students visited Auschwitz, they were exceptional. They displayed maturity and consideration as they moved through the various displays and listened to the stories of the camp’s function. Auschwitz is a learning experience like no other, but it is challenging.
After nearly three weeks away it was home to a warm Christmas in Australia. A huge thanks to the staff who attended – Jessica Attard and Mikaela Hurst – who worked very hard to look after the students a long way from home and a long time away from their own families.
A special thanks to the families of the students who placed their trust in the school to look after their children for such an extended period.
Information about the 2027 Europe Trip – for students currently in Years 9 and 10 at both Cobblebank and Melton campuses - will be presented in Term 2, 2026.
Next week: more on our visit to Auschwitz.
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