Raising young men

Like many rural families, the Carolans, who live near Wee Waa, NSW, have a long history of attending St Joseph’s College Hunters Hill.

Story Ken Eastwood  Photo St Joseph's College

With four children and a busy life mixed cropping on a 6,500ha property 40km west of Wee Waa, in western NSW, Amelia and Steve Carolan could certainly have been forgiven for just assuming their boys would board at St Joseph’s College Hunters Hill. After all, Steve and his brother had gone there, like their father before them, and Amelia also had relatives who went there. Such a story is not unusual at Joeys, Australia’s largest boys’ boarding school, where rural families often have a multigenerational legacy of attending the college.

But Steve and Amelia wanted to check that Joeys would be right for their boys. “A family legacy wasn’t the be-all and end-all,” Steve says. “It was definitely a lead of where we wanted to go, but it was never a guarantee. If it wasn’t right for them, it wasn’t going to happen.”

So, they chatted to other families with boys boarding there, confirming they were happy and confident that it was still a great boarding experience. And a few years down the track, they are delighted with the care and experience that Sam, in year 9, and Edward, year 7, are receiving. “We feel that Joeys do a great job at boarding – everything from logistics of getting kids to sport, academia, to how to deal with raising boys and young men,” Steve says.