This year, O-Week at Burg was entitled ‘Once upon a Burg’, with events themed around childhood nostalgia, Disney, and 2000s pop culture. Burg’s newest and returning ressies were kept busy with a packed schedule, running from Saturday February 14 to Friday February 21.
Dr Matilda House opened O-Week once again this year with a beautiful Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony, putting into perspective the ongoing significance of the land we will walk on this year.
For the opening event, ‘childhood icons’, ressies walked down Le Chat’s on red carpet sporting the 2000s stars, singer, actors and greats that shaped their childhood. On Monday night we held a Mad-Hatters Tea Party; an “Alice in Wonderful”-esque event on the front lawn. We enjoyed a college wide barbeque dinner and performances from two ressie bands; “Girl Band” and “Milk Before Bed”. Both bands were amazing; I am always amazed at the talent that is living amongst us. Vice Presidents Gretel and Caity hosted a “Heroes and Villains” event on Tuesday night, where residents were assigned a specific hero and villain at random. The amazing 2025 BNO band and our very own Burg resident DJs performed, which alongside the bounce castle and face painting, made this a super fun night. Finally, we held “Angels after Dark” on Thursday night. A personal highlight from this event was seeing Burg get around a number of Burg resident DJs from all years who got behind the decks. This was our “self-expression” night, and outfits excelled all expectations.
The “Burg Olympics” was one of many daytime events, hosting a slip and slide, water guns, ice bath trivia, plus three legged and egg and spoon races on the back lawn. This event initially pitted Homer wing against Barassi wing, however the indiscriminate use of water guns turned every man for themselves. Scav hunt was brought back again this year: a floor vs floor competition to complete a list of tasks at Burg, on campus and around Canberra. With competitive efforts all around, 2H took the win, even including a trip to 2024 IB endpoint!
We had a number of other events hosted by members of the Burg leadership team. Notably, Ola held a very successful International Trivia event. We had a sports mixer with Wright Hall, run by our sports reps, and our arts reps, Killian and Lucy hosted an awesome open mic night on the back lawn.
I truly hope that the week was a lot of fun for all residents and created opportunities to make friends and feel like Burg is their home and a vibrant community.
I want to thank my incredible committee Eliza, Tom, Suki, Campbell and Cate who worked tirelessly over the break and during the week with me. I definitely couldn’t have done it without them!
Article by 2026 Resident O-Week Chair, Estelle Morgan.
