Friday 29 July

The World Harmony Run was on the agenda of the Victoria Park Primary School assembly, which was also attended by the Mayor of Victoria Park. The runners told the enthralled students about the event, and taught them the song - while a small group of selected children entertained their teachers and classmates with a small torch relay. As the students became more familiar with the song, it was sung faster and faster - and as this happened, the relay also increased speed, causing mirth among the audience.

At Trinity College in East Perth, we met a group of Year 7 boys. Would these boys prove as enthusiastic as the (slightly older) girls from Mercedes College, two days earlier? Like Mercedes, it is a Roman Catholic school, which already includes the values of harmony in its curriculum. The students had composed some poems for the occasion, even decorating them with coloured paper and photos downloaded from the World Harmony Run website. One of the poems is below…

As many people cannot see

That there has never been world harmony,

If we always be kind of one another

There will be no one who will not bother.

Helping and caring is the best

And we shall be running, East and West!

Don’t be mean, always share

To show others that we care.

So always remember to be peaceful

So that Earth will be useful.

As with many of the other schools, the boys then ran with the World Harmony Torch… sort of. But as they all wanted to run with the Torch at the same time, the resulting exercise resembled a football scrum more than a jog around the oval. It was clear that they were enjoying themselves the way that only boys can. It was quite a different experience to Mercedes College!

Dalkeith Primary School is another candidate for the “most enthusiastic school” award. After enjoying the hospitality of the deputy principal, Glen McAdam, the team found themselves performing to a very excited group of children. The piece de resistance was a run around the school grounds, in which some of the runners were joined by selected children. Very fast children, as we discovered. As their pace left more than one World Harmony Runner exhausted, their classmates loudly cheered them on. The runners were met with a sea of palms, lined up against the building, which they dutifully high-fived until their hands ached. A great time was had by all!

The final school of the day, the week, and the Perth World Harmony Run, was North Fremantle Primary School, a small and friendly school lined with surfboards. (The older children had spent the morning at surfing class.) A hundred students crammed cosily into the modestly sized school library, where the acoustics of the World Harmony Run theme song circulated as if in a recording studio.

The students then went to the oval, to run (of course) and in some cases, have a sneak peek at the World Harmony Run’s new study book, Australia’s Heroes . It was an enjoyable finale to a week of festivities in Perth.

On the way home, however, we stopped to visit Merry-Go-Round in Wembley , a children’s recycling boutique. The boutique’s owner, Maggie Woolfe, has been more than generous in her donations of toys for The Oneness-Heart-Tears and Smiles , which have been sent to children in less fortunate regions of the world. The runners held the Torch with Maggie, thanking her for her kindness.

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