Band Tour 2026 was a roaring success! In Week 10 of Term 2, fifty-one students took part in the biannual WSHS Band Tour where they travelled to Central-West New South Wales, and over the course of the week performed seven concerts, two workshops, and visited five local attractions.
The tour band’s journey started in the wee hours of Sunday 21 June and after a twelve-hour bus ride, we were in the regional city of Dubbo. Excitement had set in once settled in our accommodation, and everyone got a good night’s sleep ready for the day ahead. On day one we performed at two schools in Dubbo and had a picnic lunch at Dubbo’s Japanese Botanic Garden. On day two the band tour visited Narromine, Peak Hill for performances at the local schools and in the evening the WSHS Big Band students combined with the Mac Con Big Band for a workshop and rehearsal at Macquarie Conservatorium of Music, and on day three travelled to the town of Warren to perform at both schools in town. The final full day of tour the students performed a ripper final show at Dubbo South Public School!
Band Tour wasn’t all performances and workshops, however! Each day off tour we visited local attractions such as the Royal Flying Doctors Visitor Experience, CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope, Wungunja Cultural Centre in the town of Trangie, Old Dubbo Gaol and of course, Western Plains Zoo (Mr Cosic’s favourite were the otters). We were lucky enough to have a great setup at our accommodation for watching movies on a projected screen, so the night before our visit to the Parkes Radio Telescope it was movie night and we all watched The Dish. One of our night activities was the traditional band tour trivia night, organised and hosted by our wonderful Year 12 students. The teachers’ favourite round was ‘Guess the baby photo’ where we were given multiple choice of whose photo it was – so much fun!
Our final night we had a dinner out at Club Dubbo, the bowls club near our accommodation, where we had a function room to ourselves. After we had a nice meal and then the dancing began! Our final day involved a return journey back to Wynnum, where we all went off to share our adventures with our families (teachers included).
The weeklong trip to Dubbo was only possible with the amazing help of the other teachers. Mr Cosic and Mrs Anderson would like to thank Miss O’Brien, Mrs Hodgess and Mrs Lumsdale for giving up their week to accompany the band tour on our adventures – we couldn’t have done it without you!