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The festival occurs very early on in the students first semester at Trinity. There is a staff band playing, free food and drinks, students dancing, mingling, laughing and greeting old friends or making new ones. 

Around the open area where students walk, eating and chatting, stands a semi-circle of small tents, a small village almost. Each tent hosts one or two clubs or activities that the students can join. There is a meditation club, a soccer club, the dance crew, a debating club and many, many more. The clubs are run by academics, by admin staff, by students past and present and organised through the wonderful Student Services Department at Trinity.

The clubs are a fundamental part of student life at Trinity. Joining a club provides new students with chances to make new friends, enjoy new experiences, meet new staff to interact with. The clubs help the students unwind from their studies, discuss thoughts or lessons while planting a herb or catching a tram to sightsee around Melbourne. The informality of the clubs compliment the formal lessons students undertake at Trinity. The clubs provide relief from the stress or a way of getting out and about rather than finding themselves ‘stuck” in their rooms. They take the students away from their “screens” and engage them in real face to face conversations and physical activities that help them remain fit and healthy.

At Trinity, we take a student’s wellbeing very seriously (and with a smiling face). Fair Dinkum (and the associated clubs) is one of the many activities Trinity runs to assist in a student’s wellbeing because we know that a happy student is more likely to be a successful student. 

It also prepares students for the larger clubs and activities they will encounter when they move on to the University of Melbourne (UoM). In many respects Fair Dinkum is another step for the students in their lives at Trinity as they prepare themselves for life at UoM.