Most schools celebrate Harmony Day with a poster competition. Hillside Public School, in rural New South Wales, celebrated it on 21 March 2025 with a harvest.
In the weeks leading up to it, students had been tending a pumpkin patch in the school’s vegetable garden. By the time Harmony Day arrived, there were enough pumpkins to send one home with every family. One household turned theirs into a salad and documented the whole process — from patch to plate, as the school put it — in a photo series that circulated through the parent community.
The day itself centred on a shared lunch. Students brought dishes from home, tracking the school’s cultural mix. Hillside is small and draws from a wide area; families who might not otherwise cross paths end up sitting together over rice dishes and stews and dumplings once a year.
The school has been leaning more heavily into its rural location in recent years, building a kitchen garden to thread environmental education into the regular curriculum. On 21 March, that garden fed the community — literally.
