During the first lockdown, 5 September 2020 came and went and unfortunately, no one was really here at Kilbreda to dig up the time capsule, which had been buried near the Colonnade 23 years before. When September 2021 came around, we were once more in lockdown. So, finally, last year, the time capsule and its contents finally surfaced!

The only salvageable thing from that capsule, buried in 1997 by student and later staff member Joelle Rigg, was a folder containing various items of interest. The first, the Daily Bulletin of Friday September 5 1997, tells us a number of things including that current staff members, Carole Downie, Jenny Gamble, Sue Grima, Trish Moloney, Sue Dempster and Tony Grosso had duty that day! It was the day of the Lipsync final, so the Mary Dalton Hall would’ve been ‘chockers’! Another notice tells me that I was not there that day, travelling instead to the ‘All Victorian Finals’ of the Table Tennis with Jenelle Morton and Sam Darcy. It was Brigidine Day and Mass was to be celebrated first thing. There was an interesting article, “What it is like to be the School Captain” by the wonderful Michelle Collins, who is now a Librarian at Kingston’s Parkdale branch.

Of most interest to me are various predictions of what life would be like in the far off Year 2020! Carly McKerral in Year 8 posed the questions: Will we be looking into a computer the size of a coin? Going to school with robots or aliens? Living on the moon? And will scientists have discovered a formula which will cure all diseases?

Sadly, that has shown not to be the case. However, some of the students’ predictions have been eerily accurate even if, for the wrong reasons. Who, among them would’ve predicted a global pandemic? Carly Bongiorno predicted that, as she went out the front door, she wouldn’t see children playing. Instead, they would be inside on the computer, or phone or watching TV. Rebecca Lukas foresaw that “Everything we use in the year 2020 will have some sort of contact with computers.  Computers will be worn on the wrist and even worse they’ll rule the universe”. Not far off, Rebecca!

Jess Smith, who, incidentally, recently bought my sister-in law’s house, eerily predicted that “children would have the choice of whether they want to attend school or learn from listening, working and talking with a teacher through the computer”.

Many predicted outlandish and not so outlandish notions of holidays to Mars and flying cars, robots doing everything and nutrient balls which contained our daily food intake. But sadly, many predicted increases in pollution, devastation of forests and even “the end of the human race”. One that I loved was: “All you’d need to do is press buttons and your clothes will come out of the wardrobe or your dinner will be made for you”. The biggest problem, according to Michelle Quinn, whom I taught on a number of occasions, “It’s computers. Tapping away at those things all day, only communicating with each other through the keys, no voice. While half the world is hypnotized by these things the other half is watching the environment crumble”. Tammy Vieyra predicted “a chubbier generation because robots will be doing all the work!” Bronwyn Kinsey suggested that we’d be buying things from catalogues on the internet and they would be delivered, as another student wrote of food, to our doors.

But, I will finish with the prediction of Danielle Buck, who was such a clever girl, that “every person would have a mobile phone”. Sorry, Danielle, but I don’t and I’m proud of the fact!

The older image shows maintenance chief Klaas Van Leusen and Joelle burying the time capsule on Brigidine Day 1997.

Damian Smith
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