Fahan Presbyterian Church

Jesus is Lord - Romans 10: 9

Fahan School, Australia

Two women with progressive ideas on education founded Fahan School in 1935.

Miss Isobel Travers and Miss Audrey Morphett bravely decided to start a school in the midst of an economic depression, during a time of ferment in the world of philosophy, government and schooling. They chose to call the School Fahan, after a small village in Co. Donegal, Ireland, in honour of Miss Morphett's Irish heritage of which she was proud.

They decided that the new school should be just outside the city in a semi-rural area on a hill. This would allow it to have space, tranquility and vistas - aspects of Fahan that we cherish today and aspects of a school that they felt were vital.

They decided too that the girls at Fahan should study Science and Drama and a wide range of other subjects that were not usually in the curriculum of all-girl schools. There was a reason for this. The founders wanted to provide an education that allowed graduates of Fahan to be known for what they had achieved not "who they were married to."

Miss Travers and Miss Morphett also had the foresight to integrate into the curriculum a sense of duty to others. In other words, Fahan stands tall as an exemplar of education for young women because it has always required of girls that they show real independence of thought and spirit and the ability to rise above shallow everyday issues. That is why we have been successful for 75 years and that is why our girls must not only understand our Fahan heritage but must also live up to and beyond it.

Miss Travers and Miss Morphett were right to believe that young women could achieve anything they wanted to. Fahan women can achieve more.