Cracking Codes and Claiming Victory: St Peter’s Girls Triumph at SACLO 2025
On 23 October, four teams represented St Peter’s Girls at the 2025 South Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad or SACLO, held annually at PAC. The night was split into two parts, a warmup round where teams composed of students from different schools had to solve two problems in a short amount of time, and the competition paper. In this second part, teams had one hour to work through a paper with three problems that targeted problem-solving skills and pattern recognition to answer questions related to unfamiliar languages.
Our team started Linguistics in Year 9, first competing in the national round (OzCLO), and then the state round (SACLO). SACLO has always been something we looked forward to, as the competition is less stressful and more fun. Linguistics has challenged our problem-solving, critical thinking and teamwork skills. This challenge has proved to be helpful as it gets us to think outside of the box as well as lets us rely on our teammates for help. As a team, we solved problems together, strengthening our teamwork and communication with each other, proving to be a major benefit.
The languages we tackled included questions on phonetic translation, determining word order, and translating a syllabary text. While these were challenging questions, they forced us to work together to analyse and problem-solve using logic, making it a great opportunity to test our creative-thinking skills. During the practice round, we were able to associate with students from other schools and make new friends while solving problems together.
Overall, our final year of competing in SACLO was nothing if not a challenging one. Time seemed to move quickly as we were tested to our limits with the hardest paper we had yet to complete. Through our efforts however, we were able to fully complete the 1st and 3rd questions, which allowed us to come away with a very unexpected win. This competition truly tested our teamwork and resilience as we pushed through the difficulties of the paper and came out strong at the finish, creating memories and learning new skills.
Peyton Doan, Beverly Hii, Olivia Ng, and Valerie Ng
(Year 11 students)
Our Young Composers are Winning Awards!
The Young Composer Award is an annual competition run by the Australian Society for Music Education. This year, Eliza Brill Reed has been awarded a South Australian Young Composer Award for her original music composition and lyrics. Eliza, now 16, first received this award when she was 11 in the Junior School category, so we are thrilled she has been acknowledged in the Senior School category this year. Her song, “Don’t Miss You”, was written and sung as part of her year 11 Music Experience subject, and she was encouraged by her music teacher, Ms Habel, to enter the competition. Congratulations Eliza!
Voices with an EDGE: Celebrating Empowering Women in Poetry
We hope you enjoy reading EDGE student poems and reflections from their Term 3 work this year. We had a critical literacy focus on positive, empowering female poets and songwriters from local, national, and international artists over time. All EDGE students created outstanding poems that were character sketches of a female role model with a direct quote included in the poems themselves. I have included a selection of six stand out poems from across the school, and three of the students also wrote short reflections on the writing process es and meanings involved in their poems.
Bonnie Qu from Year 8 poetry writing reflection on “My Grandma’s Hands”
Writing My Grandma’s Hands was a way for me to honour my grandma and the love she shows through quiet acts of care. I focused on how her hands hold the history of her life and the warmth of her character. The process involved reflecting on the way touch can carry emotion and memory. Through this poem, I wanted to show that love can be expressed through simple gestures that connect people across generations. I hope readers can feel the tenderness and gratitude that inspired these words.
“My Grandma’s Hands” by Bonnie Qu
Her hands are a map of years,
adorned with life’s etchings,
each wrinkle a story of laughter.
Strong and steady,
warm with the weight of seventy years,
her hands are windows to her heart,
showing tenderness without words.
Her palms smell faintly of lavender and flour,
scents that drift up when she cups my cheek or smooths a blanket.
The soft rustle of her skin against fabric echoes the quiet rhythm of
brushing hair, turning pages, and kneading bread,
each movement a gentle song of love.
The taste of salt lingers on her fingertips,
a trace of shared meals and tears wiped away.
She measures more than my height with her fragile hands.
“You’ve grown taller!” she exclaims,
her fingers stretch alongside mine,
the record of time pressed softly into my palm.
Her hands carry memory in their touch,
the smoothness of a newborn’s skin,
the roughness of garden soil,
the cool glass of a windowpane.
Her hands are my heart’s anchor,
a reminder that love and life are held in a simple press of a palm,
a stretch of finger,
a pinky promise.
Sunny Sun from Year 9 poetry writing reflection on “Rose and Stardust to Hedy Lamarr”
Hello everyone! I’m Sunny Sun, and I’m honoured that my poem was selected. Thank you to all the students and Ms. Napier for supporting my work.
Writing this poem became a journey of self-exploration and a tribute to women’s power. Being in an all-girls school that values independence and excellence has shaped my thinking and inspired this piece.
Inspiration: A Woman of Dual Identity
Hedy Lamarr’s life immediately fascinated me. She was praised as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” her image “sealed in celluloid,” yet privately she was a brilliant inventor. During World War II she chose science over glamour and co-created “frequency-hopping spread spectrum,” the foundation of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. A woman dismissed as a “pretty face” quietly changed the world.
Structure and Imagery
My poem creates a dialogue between the “Rose” and the “Stardust” in her identity.
- Rose and Thorns: The Rose represents outward beauty and the limits others placed on her—“the cage the world gave me.” Yet she used “wisdom as the lockpick,” pushing past her “thorned crown.”
- Escape and Arrival: Lines like “tearing through the cocoon of gowns and jewels” show not just escape but transformation. “Some are for more magnificent arrivals.”
- Dual Frequencies: “You tuned two frequencies simultaneously” captures her blend of artistic radiance and scientific brilliance. Her real “anti-ageing formula” was ambition.
Lamarr’s story and the poem’s themes speak strongly to our school community.
- Breaking Stereotypes: Society reduces women to simple labels. Lamarr shows we can define ourselves and embrace “contradictory traits”—loving literature and science, fashion and service.
- Interdisciplinary Creativity: Her invention shows how major breakthroughs come from blending fields.
- Vision and Ambition: Though unrecognised in her time, her work proved that true value isn’t lost—it “arrives” later.
I hope this poem helps readers reflect on their own “Rose” and “Stardust.” May we use our wisdom to create new possibilities and, like Lamarr, become “pioneers charting humankind’s cosmos,” not just “roses mistaken for decoration.” Thank you!
“Rose and Stardust to Hedy Lamarr” by Sunny Sun
They sealed your silhouette in celluloid
A specimen Labelled “peerless beauty”
Yet in the intervals between each scene change.
You traced constellations with your lipstick on the mirror.
Like a thorned crown
Beauty is the cage the world gave me.
I shall make wisdom the lockpick
The Czech forests of 1933 witnessed
You tearing through the cocoon of gowns and jewels
Moonlight your sole accomplice
Embroidering equations into the lining of your skirt
Not every escape means fleeing.
Some are for more magnificent arrivals
By Hollywood’s champagne-filled pools
You tuned two frequencies simultaneously:
One made film glow with iridescence
One let radio waves pierce through smoke of war.
When reporters asked your secret to youth,
you smiled, unfolding your palm filled with equations:
“The true anti-ageing formula
is an ever-growing ambition.”
Through sixty springs of silence
Your frequencies wandered through space.
Until the day all phones chimed in unison,
playing the future overture you composed.
They finally saw not just a fleeting screen vision but a pioneer charting humankind’s
cosmos. “We mistook roses for decoration
, forgetting they are thinking thorns.”
When you trace your contours in the mirror
Remember how a rose once bloomed: never reject the stage that beauty gives.
I am both the butterfly dancing through war
And the star navigating the dark night
All seemingly contradictory traits
Are life’s most fertile soil
Behold—
the finest revolution isn’t tearing down walls
But making flowers bloom upon that belong to the entire spring
Kiera Bartlett from Year 3 poetry writing reflection on “Strong”
When my teacher asked me to write a poem about a woman who was inspiring I sat down and thought about who I should choose, and the first woman I thought of was my grandmother.
As soon as I had chosen my grandmother I set to work. It took a lot of planning but eventually I started to get into the feeling of going with the flow. As soon as I had finished my poem I did a lot of editing on it until I was ready to show it to my teacher. I have not yet shown it to my grandmother, but when I do I’m sure she’ll be very surprised and happy. I’m very proud of my work.
“Strong” by Kiera Bartlett
Lots of ballons in one bunch but they all popped except for one,
One floats out into the moonlight.
Lost, alone, can’t find its way, starting to deflate,
Landing softly in a frozen lake looking into its reflection and sees
One balloon just one more ballon then 5 more.
She whispered to herself “Girls should never be afraid to be smart”
Another bunch landed without a sound into the frozen lake and they
All floated up to the never-ending sky together.
“A Giving Soul” by Luna Dou in Year 9
Back in the kitchen, the air hums with warmth
With Shanghai – a past life.
Unami fish soup, sweet abalone,
Each boil, each swirl, each fragrant taste of home.
She wakes before dawn, laying our world:
Washing, wiping, watering our home.
Mum and Dad on faraway missions, she held the house,
Held me too, on her lap of laughter.
One dark bedroom, endless stories’ wonder;
Her chuckles blossom in the dark of night.
I’d beg her to linger for another minute,
another night.
We sit at the Mahjong table, moving jade green tiles.
Her voice always a guide to clever moves.
And when I won the round, she smiled,
Pride wrapped in her quiet, ordinary way.
‘Your Grandma carries the house on her back,’ she says,
A truth, spoken with laughter.
I grow under her gentle eyes,
Sees a soul so benign, endlessly giving.
“My Nana” by Elizabeth Sinclair in Year 6
In the quiet of a cozy hearth, she sits,
her presence a gentle warmth that seeps into lonely souls,
Her hands, like glowing embers, cradle stories and secrets,
offering comfort in every touch.
Her voice, soft as crackling firewood,
speaks of love, patience, and quiet strength,
filling the room with a tender glow.
She pours her joy into every smile,
Every laugh,
Every hug,
Her love is endless, like a garden in constant bloom.
She is the steady flame in our lives,
the glow that sustains us when the world feels cold,
a refuge built from years of kindness and sacrifice.
“I will always be there for you.”
In her warmth, we find our home—
a place where every heart can rest,
where love burns bright and steadfast,
like a comforting hearth that never truly goes out.
“My mum” by Faith Kim in Year 2
My mum does washing
Clothes, cooking,
play with me, doing
homework with me,
solve and work out problems
and helps baking food
so I’m not starving all my
lives. She says “Have a
strong heart when you go
to school”
She always teaches me to do
the right thing. I am very
grateful for my mum that
does everything for me I
love my mum forever.
Thank you for reading our students’ work. This was a wonderful time of learning for all.
Rebecca Napier
EDGE Key Teacher – Reception to Year 12