From the Editor

From the Editor

In the first issue of The Old Cranbrookian Magazine in 1962, the Editor, Rex Morgan (OC 1954), suggested that the publication of this periodical would cut administrative costs, increase connectivity with all Old Cranbrookians and provide them with items of general interest. I would like to emphasise that over the 50-plus years I have been associated with Cranbrook School there have been solid connections among the Old Cranbrookian community, from the men who play Old Cranbrookian cricket (OCCC) to the many reunions I have attended and the events that were connected to the school’s recent centenary celebrations.

I have been immensely impressed by the ways that you keep in touch. I applaud the deep affection and love of friends, former school-mates and school that you exhibit. The warmth shown to each other and to me and other members of the teaching staff has been palpable.

As Rex Morgan also encouraged and I do the same now: please provide us with materials that will continue to enrich your magazine and please send us comments, favourable or otherwise, with regards to this and future editions.

We are at the cusp of exciting times for the school with the completion of Masterplan 2 on the horizon and the possibility of a co-educational environment for the first time in the senior school’s history. I am honoured to have been asked to assume the editorship of your magazine and in the tradition of Rex Morgan, Ken Felton and Harry Nicolson, I encourage you to be in touch and maintain the essence of Esse Quam Videri.

Dr David Thomas
OCA Magazine Editor, Hone Housemaster and History Teacher


From the OCA President

From the OCA President

Newly appointed OCA President, Joe Karsay (OC 1998), talks about 2022 and his own vision for the Old Cranbrookians’ Association.


Before I get into the OCA’s agenda for 2022, I want to introduce myself. I have been the President of the OCA since our AGM last December. I started at Cranbrook at St Michael’s in Vaucluse and graduated in 1998 as Deputy Head Prefect of Cranbrook. My mother was also a member of staff up until last year, meaning that my family has enjoyed an unbroken connection to Cranbrook for nearly 40 years. The School has provided me some of my very best years and friends and it is an institution I remain very fond of and passionate about.

I took over the role from Jason Graham-Nye who had done the role for the previous three years. Jason remains on our Committee and has been a huge source of support to me through the transition. I would also like to recognise our new Honorary Treasurer Martin Cayzer and Honorary Secretary Ed Strong, each of whom do an incredible job with little recognition.

As a committee we are lucky to be refreshed each year with some of the best and brightest from the recent leaving years of the school and this year we have welcomed onto the Committee Tom Findlay, Asher Learmonth and Charles Kekovich, all from the Class of 2021.


A great initiative for this year is our new OCA Mentor Network – a best in class mobile and web-based mentoring platform. We’re aiming for new and improved avenues of connection.

Joe Karsay

After the COVID years which saw many of our events postponed, we have been planning a very exciting new event in the OCA calendar. The OCA Sports Day where the David Thomas Cup will be presented to the aggregate winner in nine OCA v the School sporting competitions, which will take place on September 11, 2022. The vision for this event was to bring together what had been a disparate set of OCA v the School events into a single gala day. The silver lining to the COVID cloud is that this event will now be able to showcase the new Main Campus facilities. Following the sporting events, we will have a gathering on the top terrace of the Vicars Centenary Building and we will be unveiling our ongoing connection to that Terrace during a naming ceremony.

Our other initiative is the OCA Mentor Network – a best in class mobile and web-based mentoring platform that will be used for a range of 1:1 and group mentoring initiatives. We have already onboarded a group of recent leaver mentees and alumni mentors in their twenties, who will be able to help that group (under the guidance of the School Chaplain) transition into life after Cranbrook. We are also in the process of finalising the launch group of alumni vocational mentors, each leaders in their respective fields. We will subsequently be opening the platform up to mentees, who will be able to log on and request mentoring from one of these industry leaders, within the next few months.

We also continue to enjoy strong relations with the school and have been an active participant and voice on some of the big initiatives it is considering, such as co-education. I have been proud of the tone and respect with which our alumni have approached these conversations, regardless of where they stand on the issue.

The OCA aims to be a body which connects Cranbrook alumni to one another and back to the school. If you have any suggestions about how we can be doing this better or would simply like to say hello, please drop me a line on the email below.

I hope to see many of you at the OCA Sports Day in September, if not before.

Joe Karsay (OC 1998)
President, Old Cranbrookians’ Association
Joe@MasonWilhelm.com

From Our Patron

From Our Patron

In 2022, Cranbrook emerges as a school re-imagined from within, having significantly revitalised our senior school campus, and I believe this, as well as many other attributes, give Cranbrook a sense of purpose and great foundation for the future.


As a school, we look ahead with positivity, optimism, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Over the course of the past two years, we have weathered the storm of the pandemic, re-engineered the school from within, having significantly progressed the revitalisation of our senior school campus. The scope of our development within the academic sphere has seen us become an IB Continuum School, moving ever closer in our quest to become a truly world-class school.

Arundhati Roy, the celebrated human rights and environmental activist, said: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

“We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

I am acutely aware of the truth of this observation. Change inspired by challenge also brings progression and creativity. The challenges of the past two years have ensured we have sustained scholastic momentum in new and valuable ways, not only upholding the fine traditions of Cranbrook education but simultaneously inspiring an ongoing sense of purpose, excellence and vibrancy within our great school.

It is Old Cranbrookians’ continued connection with their school that not only links us with our past but shows us what can be.

Nicholas Sampson

Our Old Cranbrookians are vital to that purpose and vibrancy. It is the continued connection with their school that not only links us with our past but shows us what can be. I would personally like to extend my gratitude to Old Cranbrookians who have contacted Cranbrook directly to offer your insights, experience and expertise. If we are to continue to provide our current students with meaningful insights into the world around them, we absolutely rely on those who have walked through the Victoria Road gates before them, to help them see beyond. It is one of the most valuable gifts you can give back to your school, and we are sincerely grateful to all of you who have given your time over the past two years and used your expertise to benefit the next generation of Old Cranbrookians.

Above all, we remain ever grateful for the strength and generosity you bring to this community.

Nicholas Sampson
Headmaster, Cranbrook School


OC Voice: Luke Johnson (OC 1986)

OC Voice: Luke Johnson (OC 1986)

Luke Johnson of Architectus recalls how Cranbrook helped foster his passion for design and architecture.


I was born in Papua New Guinea and the experience of living there until I was seven-and-a-half-years-old
shaped me in ways that Cranbrook expanded upon positively. Thanks to a very creative older sister, I was
already engaged with drawing, painting and making things when I walked through the New South Head
Road gates for the first time. However, I was very fortunate that at Cranbrook there was an established
culture of teaching and learning that valued creative visual arts.

It was at Cranbrook that I experienced the excellent art teaching of Mrs Ulm in the junior school and then Mr Gregory in the senior school. Both teachers equipped me with visually creative insights and technical skills that I have drawn upon throughout my post-school life. I retain many strong memories from eleven years of schooling at Cranbrook.

One memory that comes back to me often is walking into an art class (in the now demolished Mansfield Building) and seeing my art teacher, Mr Richard Gregory, drawing a large format chalk illustration on the blackboard of a significant building from architectural history. I was struck by the three-dimensional quality of the drawing and at the same time I had a sense of inevitability that I could potentially do that kind of drawing too. That single memorable experience from Cranbrook often returns to me when I am doing a large-scale architectural drawing across a white board or digital screen.

In my current role I am a designer of complex built environments. Some people term it architecture, but
for me it more broadly encompasses architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. It is absolutely a collaborative art form, so any career highlight is intimately connected with the contributions of many others: my architectural colleagues, landscape architects, engineers, builders and clients. A recurring highlight for me is returning again and again to a favourite building that we realised together and experiencing how that building continues to get better with age. It’s like revisiting a friend.

Cranbrook’s emphasis on the creative visual arts inspired Luke Johnson when he was a student.

With completed buildings in Australia and Japan, I have these kinds of friends in some interesting places.
What motivates me in my work is creating built environments that connect with their specific place. Buildings are physically embedded in their surrounding context, so it follows that built environments are best realised when they have a positive relationship with their specific context. That is, when they intrinsically belong to their place.

Luke’s design of the Masterplan 2 Project at Cranbrook is being realised with transformational outcomes for the Bellevue Hill Campus. It will literally “unlock” the campus in multiple ways, and it establishes a new and memorable portal to the school’s surrounding community at the campus’s northern presentation.


Within the campus, one of the fundamental qualities of the new masterplan is the legible and intuitive
network of connectivity that it establishes across every level, stitching the new facilities into the many
different adjacent existing conditions.


Level 5:
On the 5th level of the Vicars Centenary Building, the highest level of the development, the masterplan forms a new horizontal surface – the Centenary Lawn – that will become a focus of social and ceremonial gathering, “bookended” by the heritage-listed Cranbrook House and the new Chapel. This level restores the visual relationship that Cranbrook House originally had with its northern harbour-scape and to the visiting ships that initially connected colonial Sydney with the rest of the world. This is an important symbolic vista to have re-established because it gives expression to the vision of Cranbrook as a school that shapes its students as globally connected citizens.


Level 4:

Opens to the south to form a new external learning space within a garden and to the north with a broad
sunny terrace that provides expansive views of Hordern Oval.


Level 3:
Engages positively with the existing “Teaching Street” drawing students into the heart of the Vicars Centenary Building and its communal Dining Commons and terrace.


Level 2:
Activates an expanded Camellia Court, forming a key pivot point in the masterplan that connects
towards the New South Head Road gates and opens out towards the oval. This will be another highly utilised open space on the campus and will perform a gathering and pre-function space for the adjacent new Packer Theatre.

Luke designed the innovative and visually stunning Masterplan 2 project.

Level 1:
Where the Centenary Building grounds itself with the new Great Hall opening out to embrace the crescent of Hordern Oval and a new pedestrian walkway that links to the facilities of the Murray Rose Aquatic and Fitness Centre beneath the restored Hordern Oval. A clear objective of the Masterplan 2 Project at Cranbrook was to create an intersection of activities, communal endeavours and built forms to nurture and foster students in their formative years, establishing the habits and culture of well-being throughout their future lives. The unlocking of the campus with this development goes a long way towards achieving that objective.

*At the time of publishing this article, Luke Johnson was honoured at the OCA Presidents’ Dinner on 15 October 2022 for his contribution to the revitalisation of the Senior School campus.

Student Voice: John Coleman (2022)

Student Voice: John Coleman (2022)

John is enjoying contributing to the many positive changes Cranbrook is making.


This year has so far been dynamic and fantastic. Though it has been trying at certain times with COVID and harsh weather, it has been an incredible start. Sport has returned in phenomenal fashion, with the return of crowds and the 1st cricketers bringing home yet another premiership. Then there was the unveiling of the Murray Rose Aquatic and Fitness Centre, which is honestly the best sports facility I have ever seen.

Every time I enter it I am still shocked by the professional level of its capacity and construction, with
a weights room which entices every boy in the school to push himself. The new pool was christened with a 1st water polo match, and a huge crowd filling the stands. It was an awesome night for the whole Cranbrook community, topped off by victory over Waverley College.

At the start of this year we launched new prefect initiatives based on pillars of community, respect and integrity. Under these principles, we as the older students have made it our imperative goal to create
real, effective cultural change in the area of respect for women and all people. This has been concretised in student-led action from Years 12 and 11, in both our words and behaviours around the younger boys.

Though we can still always improve, Cranbrook is definitely going in a positive direction, making respect a fundamental element of our entire school community. As a student, I can earnestly state that Old Cranbrookians have a profound impact and presence on our school. Whether it be hearing about past Old Boys’ rugby glory or stories, or the photos of past year groups decorating the walls of the Year 12 College, your encouraging legacy and influence still fills the school today.

Old Boys are an integral part of our Cranbrook community. Your memories, knowledge, stories, successes and advice are the foundation of what makes our school so great.

OC Reunion – Classes of 1958, 1959, 1961 and 1962

OC Reunion – Classes of 1958, 1959, 1961 and 1962

Cranbrook School believes that it is important to provide opportunities for Old Boys to meet. The first events of the year were a reunion for Old Boys with wives invited to a subsequent lunch at the school.
The events focussed on our 60th class reunions and, due to the onset of the Coronavirus, the anniversary involved Old Boys from 1958 – 1962.
The Headmaster, Nicholas Sampson, welcomed us at the reunion and after describing the school of today answered questions from curious Old Boys. Our OCA President, Joe Karsay, welcomed us at the lunch. The Head Prefect of 1958, Emeritus Professor Peter Worsley recalled vivid memories of our time at school at both the reunion and the lunch. You can read his speech here.

OC Voice: Peter Worsley (OC 1958)

OC Voice: Peter Worsley (OC 1958)

Peter Worsley (OC 1958)

A gathering of some Old Cranbrookians from the years 1958 to 1962 recently provided an opportunity to recall my time at Cranbrook. I came to Cranbrook in February 1949, when I was eight years old some seventy-three years ago now and left ten years later in December 1958 to continue my studies in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney. The welcome I received when I first arrived at the School set the tone of my life at Cranbrook. The welcome was an informal one given me by two senior boys that I remember best. My father, one day in early 1949, announced that I was to go to Cranbrook. One Saturday he decided it would be a good idea if I was to visit the school before my first term started. It was on a sunny Saturday afternoon and was to see the first eleven playing on the main oval. I have to say I took little notice of the match. What I do remember doing was wandering on to the oval and over to the unnetted practice wickets under the old Gymnasium where there were two older boys from the first eleven bowling and batting against each other. When I arrived and was watching, they invited me to join them and for a half hour I batted and bowled with them. This was a small gesture of course, but, for a young newcomer to the School, it was a friendly welcome and harbinger of friendships I was later to make as a member of the school community.

I remember my time at Cranbrook as an important period in my life, when horizons were opened on to the wider world, aspirations were formed, values were instilled and lifelong friendships were made. Certainly, my interest in cultures other than my own and their history was born in classrooms at Cranbrook. The School in those days, I remember, placed great store on what was referred to as “School Spirit”. Our headmasters spoke of the responsibilities we had to our fellows in the school community, our teachers encouraged it, and it was animated of course on the sporting field in competition with other schools. From time to time our chaplains reminded us of those beyond our nation’s boundaries for whom we also had responsibility. When speaking of the school community, I have not forgotten the unifying power of song, of three hundred voices singing English folk songs at Tuesday morning assemblies, hymns at the Thursday assembly, and on special occasions, the rousing sound of us singing the School Song. All this is not to say that I achieved all that I aspired to in those days. The values I learned at Cranbrook, however, have always been an important reminder of the kind of world in which I want to live.

Memories of my time at Cranbrook are still very vivid. I do not want to bore readers with the details of all that I remember but let me mention one or two things about the School when I was a student. My first classroom, where first Miss Putland taught us and then Miss Kingsford-Smith, was in the Old Stables, a fenced area next to the main gates across the drive from the headmaster’s house, which we shared with the school laundry and the warm steam which came from its coppers and irons. Later our class was moved up to Rona, a large two-story stone neo-gothic house with views over the harbour on the upper side of Victoria Road opposite the School’s main gate. Here the classroom we occupied also served as a boarders’ homework room, and in it, a desk I shared with one boarder’s blue tongue lizard locked inside.

Beyond the stable gates and along the red-gravel drive past the headmaster’s house on the right was Harvey House where George Woodger taught fourth and, if I am correct, fifth forms. The classrooms were on the ground floor with the library and the junior school common room at the end of the corridor. Upstairs were dormitories for boarders and where Mr. Rowland, the Junior School headmaster, had his study and flat. Further along the drive was the School’s main building, where once the Governors of New South Wales lived, with its impressive entrance into the Marble Hall, the Headmaster’s office, the senior common room, and the School kitchen and dining room. Below the parapet outside the school dining hall was the junior school playground situated on a terrace above grass tennis courts behind the Rotunda and extending along New South Head Road towards an elegant white art deco house where the Prep School was housed. Further along the driveway, past the Main Building, was the Perkins Building, where we  spent the years of our education in the Senior School. I could go on. These buildings, the classrooms, their furnishings and the views beyond their windows and the dull dark cream colour of their walls are all etched clearly in my mind as are the teachers who stood in front of classes all those years ago.

The men and women who taught us, in my memory, displayed a remarkable commitment to the School. We were aware that some, like Wally Potter who taught me in sixth form in the Junior School, W. B. Waters who taught me Latin in the Senior School, Justin O’Brien our art teacher and the headmaster at the time, Gethyn Hewan, had all seen active service during the Second World War. These teachers certainly did not regard their employment as a nine to five job. Nor was their contribution confined just to the classroom: among them were accomplished musicians, talented coaches of the School’s athletics, cricket, rowing, rugby, sailing and swimming teams. They directed school plays, mentored debating teams, and were responsible for the running of the School’s boarding houses and some joined and lead one or other professional teachers’ organization.

We remember our teachers and respect them for all sorts of reasons and not always for their hard work in the classroom or as sporting coaches. Often it is for some small quirk of character, special talent or interest they had. Jock Mackinnon, for example, who was my House Master of Davidson House and coach of the First Fifteen in 1958, the year I twice broke my collarbone and did not play a match, I remember for two reasons: for the French cars he owned, the first, a magnificent black Citroen Traction—the car the French police drove in French movies in those days—and the second, a French racing blue Peugeot 203 from about 1955. I remember also the kindness that Jock and his wife, Elizabeth, who showed when I was dealing with the frustration of being injured and unable to play rugby. I was invited to lunch with them every Saturday before every rugby match that year.

I have mentioned Gethyn Hewan, who was headmaster throughout the period I was in the Senior School. Gethyn was the topic of apocryphal stories. He is well known for the divots he left in the School’s main oval much to George Eccles’ dismay and was also reputed to have made a citizen’s arrest one night when he discovered someone trying to break into the old Gymnasium above the oval and marched the culprit to the police station across New south Head Road. Gethyn was an eloquent speaker and well-known for his sporting ability on the hockey, and cricket fields and on the golf course as well. However, it was in the classroom that he most impressed me. I was and am no mathematician. I only passed both Maths I and Maths II at the same time once in my life when I sat for the Leaving Certificate. In 1956, Gethyn arrived in the later part of the year when I was in Upper V to teach us Calculus. It was then that I discovered just how brilliant a teacher in the classroom he was. I found the clarity of his explanations quite breathtaking.

I cannot let this opportunity pass without saying a little about John Caiger. John died only recently in Canberra. He taught me history in my second year in the Senior School but it was in my final year when I took History Honours in Asian History for the Leaving Certificate that John supervised my studies. John was a quietly spoken and dedicated teacher. The range of duties he undertook was fairly typical for most of our teachers in those days. He was a tutor in Rawson House, the master in charge of the Library, the Debating Society and as an army Lieutenant was second in charge of the cadet corps at Cranbrook. Later John completed his studies in Japanese History in London and taught Japanese History in the Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University. In my final year at Cranbrook, at a time of some controversy surrounding the Prime Minister Menzies’ opening of trade relations with Japan and a time when still the Japanese treatment of Australian servicemen was fresh in Australian memories, John offered me an opportunity to meet a family from Japan. He introduced me to the son of the Japanese Consul General in Sydney who visited his parents during Japanese school holidays. I spent a number of afternoons and evenings enjoying the hospitality of the family in their apartment in Double Bay. I remember we listened to Japanese music—quite foreign to my musical experience and tastes—and I dined with them. I also recall the warm welcome my parents, who were certainly aware of the way in which Japan had treated Australian prisoners of war, gave to my Japanese friend when I invited him to eat with us. The opportunity John provided me opened my mind to not just an interest in societies and cultures other than my own but underscored for me the importance of doing so.

Justin Obrien was the Art master at Cranbrook throughout the time I was at Cranbrook. Justin built up the Art Department and mentored or influenced a number of Australia’s leading artists, John Montifiore, Martin Sharp, and George Hatsatouris among others. I was grateful to Justin for the interest he took in paintings in which I transformed the visual world about me into abstract representations. He hung them regularly on a board in the Perkins Building, once even in a national exhibition and even negotiated an offer for me to sell two of them for £1.10 one Speech Day.

Tony Brough, who did so much for the teaching of Latin and rowing at Cranbrook and who taught me Latin, ran meetings of the Greek Play Reading Society on Sunday nights and once in his September break took a week to teach a small group of enthusiasts the elements of ancient Greek.  He later became Headmaster of Christ’s College in Christchurch New Zealand. I remember too W. B. Waters who was sent triumphantly off from the School at the beginning of the Second World War and who from time to time displayed evidence of the traumatic stress disorder from which he suffered. He taught me Latin. Guy Moyes, I remember. He taught me Maths in a junior class in the Senior School and was a demanding trainer of the School athletics team when I ran half-miles for the School. He later became Head of the Junior School and retired the year I returned to Australia from the Netherlands. Cheerie Bell taught English to senior classes and, as his nickname suggests, never smiled. I remember him as the trainer of some of the School’s best rugby sides of the nineteen-fifties. He took over after Jaika Travers left. He used to stand in the corner of the field under the Rotunda during training, gave instructions to the team, sent them off to practice the manoeuvres he wanted them to perform and then without moving from where he stood clapped his hands for them to return back to his corner of the field. Peter Newell was the School Chaplain I remember best. He was the Catechist at the South Rose Bay Anglican Church where he taught my scripture class on Sunday mornings. I remember him giving us interesting and eloquent sermons. Ken “Zunny” Felton taught me English during my first year in the Senior School. He ran the stationary cupboard, the lost property office, coached School swimming teams and was reputed to swim at Bondi Beach early each morning in all seasons of the year before walking to the School. Mark Bishop who taught Chemistry, I remember turning out to coach rugby teams in those long, pocketed rugby shorts that only Englishmen wore in those days. Mark was the headmaster when I taught briefly at Cranbrook in 1963. I remember him as a great judge of character and having real concern for the wellbeing of the boys in the school. Gilbert Jones, I recall, had his classroom upstairs in Perkins House on the sunny western side of the building. In it he taught French to many generations of boys at Cranbrook. He had prints of impressionist painters hanging in his classroom, Cezanne’s “The Card Players” and one of van Gogh’s paintings of the “Bridge at L’Anglois” which exited a lifelong appreciation of impressionist painting and the visual arts more generally. It was really only in my fourth-year honours at the University of Sydney that I realised just how good a teacher of French Gilbert was. I had read no French since I left school but the thesis I was researching in Indonesian and Malay Studies at the time required that I read French. It was quite a revelation to me that Gilbert had taught me so well that I could still read French, certainly with a little help of a dictionary, but without any great difficulty. Gilbert also directed many of the School plays in the period when I was at Cranbrook. I met him quite by chance one evening not long after my return to Sydney from the Netherlands on a bus on my way home from the city. He had retired from teaching and just been awarded his PhD at Macquarie University.

I cannot finish without a mention of George Eccles, the School’s groundsman. George was a phenomenon at Cranbrook. George could be seen mowing the main oval, preparing the practice wickets and the main pitch when we arrived at eight o’clock in the morning and would later walk to Dangar oval at Rose Bay to prepare the six or seven grass wickets there in the summer and the rugby pitches in winter. George was well known in Sydney for his work as groundsman. I remember in my last year at Cranbrook, it was rumoured that George had been offered the job as groundsman at the Sydney Cricket Ground. He turned the job down to remain at the School. I remember going with him to the Cricket Ground one afternoon at the time to give the groundsman there advice on the difficulties he was having with their Bulli-soil wicket. So well-known was his wicket on the main oval at Cranbrook that visiting test teams used to come to the oval to practise. I remember with some excitement seeing members of Len Hutton’s 1953-54 English team gathered at the top of the steps down on to the oval in front of the Rotunda and bowling to Colin Cowdrey in the nets and standing in the slips next to Freddie Truman one afternoon in 1958 when Peter May’s team were in Sydney. What I remember most about George was his retreat under the old Gymnasium where often one or two boys could be found talking with George. George was no psychologist but he did provide us the opportunity to relax and sit and talk about life.

I had the good chance to spend the ten years I was at Cranbrook with a group of classmates whose company I not only enjoyed but whose achievements inspired me. I remember Tim Drysdale, Jack Thurston, Will Hagon. Michael and Peter Corlette, Bibi Alidenis, Tom Breen, Scot Jelley, Peter Welsh, Barry Staggs, Peter Moline and many more. I admired Bob Paton and envied his excellence in Maths and Physics. Gavan Thomson, I remember, for his achievements on the athletics track and rugby field and for his captaincy of a strong First Eleven in 1958. I shared the classroom with Mungo MacCallum from the age of nine. Mungo was a little eccentric even at school. He was a mathematician of great ability and his command of English was put to good use as editor of the School Magazine in 1958, his final year. In that same year he, John Gaden and Jeremy Davis won the Associated Schools debating competition. Mungo shared the stage in school plays with John Gaden and I remember him playing the role of the pie-making Mrs. Lovett alongside Blaine Hogue in the role of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street one year. But what I most remember about Mungo in his final year was his dedication to mastering the art of leg spin bowling under the influence of Richie Benaud and Johnny Martin. Then there was Martin Sharp whose talents as a painter and cartoonist were already very clear at school. His paintings were regularly hung for the school to admire. I played rugby alongside Barry McDonald in the First Fifteen in 1957 and in that same year he was picked for the Combined Associated Schools First XV. Barry was of course picked in 1957 for the Wallabies. He decided to boycott the 1971 South African Tour of Australia along with seven other members of the team. This was a proud moment in the Rugby tradition at Cranbrook. Three of the seven Wallabies who decided on the boycott the tests that year were from Cranbrook: Barry, Tony Abrahams and Paul Darveniza.

Amongst my classmates were those with whom I formed lifelong friendships. The earliest were with Brian Manning and Bill Perraton who I met in my first year at Cranbrook. Bill Perraton hooked for the First Fifteen and opened the batting for the First Eleven. After he left school Bill went on to play for the Paddington Club in Sydney in the club’s first eleven. Bill passed away a number of years ago now. Brian lives in Brisbane and still plays tennis and we talk on the phone a few times each year. Along with Bill Perraton and Brian Manning, Bill Jones and David Marlin and I were members of a group of close friends who in our final years at Cranbrook and for some years after, met on Saturday evenings to listen to jazz in pubs in Sydney, played cards till late in the morning and most memorably spent Saturday nights at Bill Perraton’s house on the beach at Collaroy to wake early on Sunday mornings to surf, lie in the sun and dine on fried chips, potato scallops and chicken legs. Bill Jones is no longer with us. We scattered his ashes in the surf at Collaroy not so long ago. David Marlin, I got to know first on the athletics track. He was a formidable middle-distance runner who won the mile at the Associated Schools carnival in the remarkably fast time for a schoolboy in those days of 4 mins 33 seconds in 1957. David was also member of the School’s Debating team in 1957. We still see each two or three times each year.

Mike Curtin was a very close friend. I met him when he came to Cranbrook in 1956. Mike was a little bit special. If he could find a way to bowl a cricket ball from some unusual grip or invent a batting stroke that was atypical, he did. Mike was a talented sportsman. He played cricket and hockey for the University of Sydney. After graduating with honours in History, he joined the diplomatic service. Our ways parted but we remained in contact. He had postings to Saigon, Beirut, and London where I saw him, and finally in Geneva at the time of his death. I remember the occasion when I was staying with Michael in Canberra at the time of his youngest daughter’s birth, visiting Mungo at his home. Mungo, at the time, was embattled by his neighbours who were objecting to the screeching of the many peacocks which Mungo kept in cages around the perimeter of his back yard. I was in Bordeaux in France when my mother rang from Sydney to tell me that Mike had passed away at far too young an age of 45.

There have been surprising renewals of friendships. My friendship with Barry Fisher began in the Junior School. Barry left for England like many Australians in the nineteen-sixties. After a couple of years rousing about working in London pubs, Barry joined the RAF, flew as navigator in Canberra bombers from a base in Germany and finished his career in the RAF in rescue helicopters. I saw him a couple of times when he visited our home while I was studying in the Netherlands. I attended his marriage in London to Françoise, who came from the south of France near Lourdes, stayed with them once more on the RAF base at an airfield at Windy Ridge on the Norfolk coast and then did not see him for another twenty-five to thirty years. On one of my stays in France I rang a telephone number in Cheshire to be greeted not by Barry or Françoise but by Barry’s mother who must have been well into her nineties when I rang. She gave me a telephone number and an address in the small village of Cote-de-Bareille in the south of France. I drove down to see Barry and Françoise at their home. Meeting again was a remarkable experience. We began our conversation as though we had met only the day before. We see each other every year when Dominique and I spend the summers in France. This kind ofexperience has been repeated only a couple of other times in my life: when I met up with Peter Corlette in Bowral when my wife Dominique discovered she was teaching Peter’s youngest son at Chevalier College, again when I met with lan Calvert when I moved to the Blue Mountains. and then again with Peter Carrol who I discovered lived just around the corner from my house in Leura. Peter and I walk regularly together, sometimes two or three times a week if the weather is good—two old blokes who reminisce, recount life’s experiences, and solve the problems of the world on long walks through the streets and bushland tracks around Leura. It is a great thing to do, and I recommend it to you all.

The world has of course changed radically since I was at Cranbrook in the 1950s and and taught there briefly in the early 1960s.  My parents were children during the First World War, survived the influenza epidemic which followed and grew to adulthood in times of depression to marry and begin family life during the Second World War. The post-war period when we were at school was one of social and economic reconstruction. These were optimistic times of full employment, industrial growth and rural prosperity, and a period of significant cultural change in Australia as an awareness of sectarian differences gave increasingly way to a recognition of cultural differences with the arrival of new immigrant communities. It was a period when we went regularly to the cinema on Saturday nights, and a time when the crooners of the forties and fifties gave way to rock and roll, Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis Presley and Beatle mania—all a prelude to the sixties and major changes in social mores. The war and recognition of the demands of social reconstruction brought with them a strong sense of unity and a patriotism largely focused on the British royal throne. All was not rosy, however. The Cold War governed international relationships and European powers were engaged in the sometimes-violent business of divesting themselves of their colonies. We lived internationally under the cloud of nuclear war, when Australian forces were called on again to go to war in Korea. We witnessed the disastrous Suez crisis of 1956, the Russian suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in that same year, and the Australian government began the slow march towards involvement in the Vietnam War and its consequences both domestically and internationally.

The educational challenges which the Cranbrook School community confronts today are different now. The headmaster, Nicolas Sampson, gave those who attended the recent gathering of Old Cranbrookians from the classes of 1958–1962 a considered and frank assessment of the challenges which the School has at the present time. He spoke in particular about the advantages for the School’s curriculum of the introduction of the International Baccalaureate, of the need to widen the intellectual, cultural and moral horizon of boys at Cranbrook and plans for a program of coeducation in years eleven and twelve, and the difficulties of recruiting and keeping good teachers who can no longer afford the costs of living close to their place of work and which many, if not most of our teachers, were able to do. We also had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the very impressive new facilities which future students will have available for them—teaching, cultural and sporting facilities which set an impressive benchmark for those that should be available for every school student in Australia. There are other wider challenges which school communities now confront—some as worrying as the ones which challenged the School when I was there. Rapid changes in the international economy have given rise to insecurities and we worry about corporations which are in some ways more powerful than nation states which have governed our lives for the past two hundred years. We have the existential threat of a rapidly deteriorating climate to deal with and the increasing likelihood of epidemics, not to forget the diplomatic and strategic consequences of renewed but ancient imperial Chinese ambitions and now the violence to which Russian hopes of re-establishing their former influence in the world has given rise. Advances in recent years in science, medicine, and technology, far reaching progress in our knowledge of the universe in which we live, and a more immediate and deeper awareness and knowledge of  the cultures of societies other than our own, all these give us reason for great optimism and innovation in the curriculum.

OC In Profile: Professor James Dale AC (OC 1967)

OC In Profile: Professor James Dale AC (OC 1967)

Leading biotechnologist Professor James Dale AC has been searching for an answer to one of the most important public health problems in the world.


For many of us, a banana is just a healthy snack. But for millions of people around the world, it’s their main source of sustenance. There are more than 500 types of bananas, and in places like East Africa, it’s the green starchy varieties that are used for carbohydrates in most meals. However, the lack of nutrients in these bananas – particularly vitamin A – results in the death of up to 700,000 children under five every year, with another 300,000 going permanently blind.

“When you go to developing countries, there are very high levels of micronutrient deficiencies. Together, they are around the third or fourth most important public health problem in the world, but it’s often known as the ‘hidden hunger’,” says James Dale (OC 1967), who is now one of Australia’s leading biotechnologists.

James leads the Banana Biotechnology Program at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and has dedicated much of his career to trying to solve this problem of micronutrient deficiencies, with a focus on Uganda where the average person eats about a kilogram of bananas every day. He has developed groundbreaking gene technology that improves the crops by adding in the essential missing nutrients such as pro-vitamin A.

While supplements and other forms of food fortification can be effective in some situations, they require ongoing funding and often don’t reach the poorest people. What makes these new genetically edited or genetically-modified plants so significant is that they will be able to be grown by anyone – even in their own backyard.

The project started in 2005, with James and his team developing the technology and doing field trials in Australia, before transferring the technology (but not the plants) to Uganda. He then worked with a local African team to do field trials there, which are about to finish and, once there’s regulatory approval, the first farmers should get these improved bananas in about a year’s time.

Professor James Dale AC at his property on the Brisbane River.

“Clinical vitamin A deficiency is running at between 15 and 30 per cent of kids under 5,” James says. “So, if we can get the farmers to grow them – and there’s every indication they will – my gut feeling is that within a decade, we’ll be able to reduce that level of vitamin A deficiency by at least 50 per cent.”


It will be an incredible achievement, saving millions of lives, and the main reason all the research has been possible is because James Dale’s project was chosen for funding support by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. James even had the opportunity to meet Bill and Melinda when they visited a field trial in 2011.


“It was surreal,” James says. “They were amazing and Bill just kept asking question after question, saying ‘James, I don’t understand this, explain this to me’, and Melinda was very interested about the social aspects and the way bananas are grown and the role of women, who do most of the work.”


Over the years, James has been honoured many times for his scientific and humanitarian endeavours. In 2004, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia and, this year, was made a Companion of the Order of Australia. In 2008, he was appointed as QUT’s second Distinguished Professor, and he was Queensland’s Senior Australian of the Year in 2019. James started his education at St Marks when he was three years old and spent his whole school life at Cranbrook, where he tells interviewer Michael Turtle (OC 1998) he didn’t “rise to any heights”, never top of the class, a prefect, or a star on field.


“Invariably my report cards said, ‘he could do better if he tried harder’ and my response was always, ‘if I haven’t tried harder, how do they know?’,” James jokes… and then, with a big laugh, adds, “but it seems they may have been correct!”

Bill Gates just kept asking question after question, saying ‘James, I don’t understand this, explain this to me’.

James Dale AC


Still, it was a very enjoyable 14 years at Cranbrook and James credits his biology teacher, Dan Massie, in particular for helping set him on this path. “There are so many fabulous things to do in the world. If you put your mind to it, you can really make a contribution,” James says. “I think I’ve still got some of the biggest things to come, and I’m 71!”


With global population growth and climate change placing huge pressure on food security over the coming years, the work James Dale is doing will only become more important. (“The estimate is that between now and 2050, we have to produce the same amount of food as we’ve produced in all of history,” he notes.) So keep an eye out for James’s next projects. Maybe he’s right, the biggest things could still be to come!


FRIENDS FOR LIFE
“I remember James Dale, “Harry” as he was known to his friends, as a good-hearted, easy-
going, young fellow, who laughed a lot. His scientific genius emerged later and one could not
but fail to be impressed by his energy and enterprise. So good to see his work acknowledged at
both a state and national level.”
Sir David Fowke Bt (OC 1967)

“Before the end of year exams in 1959, when we were both about 10, I went out on exeat
one Sunday to the Dale’s house. I noticed that James was copying out in long-hand an entire
chapter of a history book. He told me that he found it the best way to learn history. I have
never forgotten this example of dogged perseverance and patience.
Andrew Pfeiffer (OC 1967)

OC Voice: Alistair Harvey-Sutton (OC 1949)

OC Voice: Alistair Harvey-Sutton (OC 1949)

Alistair Harvey-Sutton recounts memories of his early school days, sharing stories of a time when the Second World War penetrated the lives of every Cranbrook student.

In 1938, at the age of 5, I entered the junior school at Cranbrook, which had always been an important part of my family’s life. We lived near Dangar playing fields, my two elder brothers were Cranbrook students and my father was a member of the School Council. As a medical practitioner concentrating on the new field of preventative medicine, he emphasised the importance for a growing child of a nutritious diet, regular exercise and a happy social life. He saw Cranbrook as a school which encouraged a full development of a child’s mind and body.

At that time, Cranbrook had over 300 boys, including a good number of boarders. Although only 20 years old, its development had been quite successful in view of the financial difficulties caused by the Great Depression. Its size was shown by the fact all its senior students were able to attend the daily morning assembly in the gym, which the junior school also used for teaching and activities like the band, in which most of the boys played an instrument. I played the triangle in time with the music!

While in junior school, my life was greatly affected on 3 September 1939 by the declaration of war by the British Empire against Germany. Everything changed for us and until August 1945, my days at school were dominated by the Second World War. General Iven Mackay resigned as headmaster as he was required for military duties in Egypt and the Middle East. My own family was affected. An uncle and cousin volunteered for active service and left Sydney with their unit on the Queen Mary before an audience of half a million Sydneysiders. Food, clothing, travel and petrol rationing were introduced for all in the community and many household items were not available. Wartime conditions resulted in several of the male teachers being called up for military duty. They were replaced by elderly teachers, some of whom had fought in the First World War.

The Council appointed Mr B W Hone as Headmaster, which was a masterstroke. He was a big powerful man who came at a difficult time for the school in terms of staff, finance and student numbers. He also had difficulties with discipline as many of the school leavers knew that their futures would only be in military service on leaving school, but his strong determination enabled him to deal with these problems and earnt him the nickname “The Blitz”.

In May 1942, Sydney was shelled by a Japanese submarine, and midget submarines torpedoed vessels in the harbour. That night, my family hurried down to our air raid shelter in the garage on Kent Road. I was aged 9 and found it all extremely exciting and dangerous. We were suddenly all at war, including the school, which quickly built wooden air raid shelters on the fringes of Hordern Oval and held air raid drills for the boys.

We were suddenly all at war, including the school, which built wooden air raid shelters on the fringes of Hordern Oval and held air raid drills for the boys.

Alistair Harvey-Sutton

Later, when I joined the main school in the Perkins Building, I was taught mainly by older men in their sixties who had replaced the younger teachers on military service, and I particularly remember Messrs Bell, Felton, Child and Captain Scott. They were all competent and kindly men but never friends to us. Their discipline was firm and they required a high standard in the classroom. They all tried to help us, but I felt that they were lacking in warmth, unlike the young post-War teachers such as Mark Bishop and Harry Nicolson, with whom I became a life-long friend.

Alistair Harvey-Sutton scored over 10,000 runs for the Old Cranbrookians’ Cricket Club.

Generally in those years, the teaching program in the main school was dominated by the need for success in the state examination, and there was a great deal of tension and strain for students in preparing and sitting for those examinations. But the other important obligation for students was to be a member of the Cranbrook School Cadets and do training once a week with the regular army on Hordern Oval. As the school had considerable difficulties in being able to obtain assistance for cleaning and repair of the buildings and its grounds during the War, the boarders also did a great deal of cleaning work, while the main school students were sometimes required to dig out the weeds and briars at Dangar.

I spent a lot of time in school sports, particularly cricket, rugby and athletics, and I played in the 2nd XI cricket and the 2nd XV rugby. Cranbrook sport engendered a love of cricket in me, partly due to the headmaster’s standing in the game. I well remember Mr Hone around 1949 bringing out two Test players in the great Keith Miller and the test leg spinner Bruce Dooland to Hordern Oval to play a match against the 1st XI and to practise in the nets beforehand. As well as playing for the Old Cranbrookians’ Cricket Club, I helped to run it, becoming secretary in 1953 and, over the years, assisted further as a team captain, president and player. I closed my active playing career in 1994 aged 61, once I had reached my goal of scoring 10,000 runs for the club. I have retained a close connection with the club since then and can count many of my former teammates as friends, something that’s very important to me.

In 1951, I had the opportunity to study law at Sydney University as I had been awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship and I became a resident of St Paul’s Anglican College, where the Warden, the Reverend Felix Arnott, told me that he was happy to have Old Cranbrookians as residents as they were “all-rounders’’. I was admitted as a solicitor by the Supreme Court of NSW in April 1957 and worked for several city firms and then as a sole solicitor from July 1973 until ceasing practice on 30 June 2020.

Now, at the age of 88, I am in retirement in Point Piper. I remain a supporter of the school and I feel I could be described in some ways as a “100 per cent Old Cranbrookian”. It’s a curious fact that I was born at home in Kent Road, which has an entrance to the Cranbrook School and the Dangar playing fields, and that I’m now living on Wolseley Road, which leads directly to the Hordern Oval school entrance on New South Head Road, which I pass daily. In some way it may be said that I have not really left Cranbrook.

FRIENDS FOR LIFE
“Alistair and I first met when we were about five years old. I am now 89. We started school together at Cranbrook and then at Sydney University in adjacent colleges where we played many games of table tennis and billiards. Together we discovered cricket and it was the OCCC that really cemented our friendship. I played and he organised and played. Although I have not seen him recently, we have kept in touch over the years. He is still my oldest friend.”
Dr Edward Bosch (OC 1950)


OC Voice: Anniversaries

OC Voice: Anniversaries

Class of 2012 – 10 Years Out

Matthew Thompson

At Cranbrook, I loved hanging out with mates every day during lunch, in class, house period or
weekends. You don’t miss it till it’s gone! I’m a lawyer working for the NSW DPP which is the State Prosecutor. Enjoying my free time with mates, at the beach, playing touch footy and travelling. Keen to see what everyone’s been up to at the 10 year Reunion!

Hugo Goode

Getting the call up to the 1st XV midway through the season is a great memory, only then to break my ankle two weeks later. Talk about 15 minutes of fame!
I’m currently based in Vancouver, Canada, and have been for the last 3 years with my partner. I currently work as a Macro Research Analyst at an Investment Management firm and have just completed the CFA program. During the winter here, I take advantage of the world-class ski mountains in the surrounding area (I’m still not very good though!) and during the short summer, you can find me hiking up those same mountains or biking down them. If you are ever coming through Vancouver – hit me up at hugogoode2@gmail.com!

Dylan Roos

My favourite Cranbrook memory is captaining the firsts basketball in a Friday Night Lights game. Nothing will compare to it for the rest of my life.
Currently, I empower independent young men to find their power, passion and purpose through my mentoring program Prince To King.

Nicholas Bucci

My favourite Cranbrook memory has to be enduring our first week of downpour on Year 10 CITF, the fever pitch of the crowd at our final CAS athletics carnival, and celebrating the end of HSC exams together in the summer heat at Watsons Bay all stand out.
I spent the first few years after the HSC reconnecting with my more creative interests, pursuing a Bachelor of Architectural Studies at UNSW as a start. I discovered a wonderful community in architecture and have developed a real passion for design and the built environment that I have been fascinated by and exploring ever since! Since then I have completed a Masters of Architecture at USYD and been lucky to have opportunities to work and study in Sydney, and abroad in Italy and Denmark. Today I work with a fantastic small practice in Redfern, lead public walking tours of the city on weekends, and spend time involved with a number of mentorship programs for students in my free time. I’ve kept in touch with a number of close friends from school, who I still catch up with and speak to regularly, and been fortunate to make many new ones through university and work over the years. Like many others I have also made the move away from the east and now enjoy life in the friendly neighbourhoods of Sydney’s Inner West!

Thomas Berry

Being an Aboriginal person coming from Nowra on the NSW South Coast, it was a massive change to come to Cranbrook, for not only myself but my family. I made a lot of good mates while I was at Cranbrook but my favourite memory would be being able to spend time with my mates and have a good laugh. Graduating Year 12 was a massive achievement in my life. I’m currently working at the South Coast Medical Service Aboriginal Corporation where I manage the Tackling Indigenous Smoking Program. I cover from Nowra down to the Victoria border.
I am married to my wife Laura and have three kids Havana (8) Oden (5) and Hudson (1). I have a very busy life with work, kids and sports.

Bill McKay

My memories of Cranbrook are meeting good friends and a wide range of people, sleeping on the balconies during my time in Rawson, and commencing rugby refereeing. I was lucky enough to show my late Grandfather around the Rawson boarding house in 2012 (he left Cranbrook in 1948), which was very special for both of us. The Cranbrook community as a whole was very good to my family when I attended – there weren’t any other kids from the bush when I started in 2007 in my year, and a lot of city families looked after me, whom we are still friends with today.
I currently work in Sydney for a commercial building company and still referee rugby. Hopefully in the next few years, I’ll be back on the farm in Coonamble and away from the chaos!!

Roderick (Roddy) Middlehurst

When identifying a favourite memory, It’s hard to go past the 2011 Kenya trip. Connecting with the boys, reaching the peak of Mt. Kenya and lending a hand in remote Kenyan communities were meaningful and unforgettable experiences. I have also recently thought a lot about the careful and considerate guidance and mentorship provided by my house grade Tutor Mr. Phillip Barden.
After graduating from Charles Sturt University with a Bachelor of Social Science (Criminal Justice) I spent a few years ski instructing in Utah, USA. I came back to Australia in 2020 and started a career in social work. I’ve worked to prevent homelessness among young people leaving out of home care across Western NSW at an NGO called Veritas House. Recently I’ve returned to Sydney and currently work with Veterans experiencing homelessness in a program called Homes for Heroes at RSL Lifecare.


Class of 1997 – 25 Years Out

Hamish Thomson

“A defining memory of my time at Cranbrook was Year 7 Outward Bound in Myall Lakes. It was seriously challenging at the time, but when I look back at the skills gained and friendships formed during those 9 days and nights, I am forever thankful for the experience.”
After a recent career change, Hamish now leads the Australian business development activities for SOURCE Global, which manufactures the SOURCE Hydropanel, a completely off grid solution which makes drinking water from nothing more than sunlight and air.
“I feel a huge sense of pride to be working for a company whose technology improves the environment and people’s lives.”
Recently, Hamish has been running educational sessions for primary school children in Orange, NSW, where Hydropanels have been installed.
These sessions discuss the technology and its applications in remote worksites, towns and communities where access to good quality water can be a challenge.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Panavy Pookaiyaudom

Favourite Memory of Cranbrook: Weekend activities with Street house, early morning training for rowing as well as Design and Technology/Woodwork classes.
I gained a PhD in Analogue Integrated Circuit Design from Imperial College, UK and I am now the President of Mahanakorn University of Technology, Thailand.
Cranbrook helped me build the essential soft skills needed in my life.

Peter Willis

My favourite Cranbrook memory is standing on the art block and looking over Hordern Oval.
I am currently running my own business and attempting to raise two girls!


Class of 1972 – 50 Years Out

Philip James Thomas Stroud

I cannot believe it has been 50 years since I finished at Cranbrook! For 46 of those years, I was a lawyer on the Central Coast. I married, had twin daughters, and have been blessed with a grandson who has livened up my recent retirement.
I think the best part of my time at Cranbrook was the introduction to music. In Remove, as it then was, Charles Colman played one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in a music class. The following weekend
I travelled to Grace Bros. Bondi Junction and purchased the LP which I still have. I also reflect fondly on the friends I made at school and the dedicated teachers. I came across Harry Nicolson in the early 2000’s. He had moved to Gosford and I enjoyed many meals and discussions with him until his passing last year. As a result I developed an interest in Philosophy.
My interest in music had been dormant until the last few years and I now play clarinet in Central Coast Concert Band and Central Coast Symphony Orchestra which takes up a large part of my time.

John Alfred Blair

Favourite Memory of Cranbrook: Several extraordinary teachers (Harry Nicolson, Graham Blazey, Dr. Gauld, Dave Stone spring to mind). And good friends – including Peter Vogel (OC 1972) and Kim Ryrie (OC 1970) who got me into electronics, a foundation of a career and a lifelong interest.
I left Australia in 1988 after I sold my software company. Lived a long time in California (Silicon Valley) and now split my time between California and New York. Started a company over here with a few others in 2010 (Berkeley Research Group, www. thinkbrg.com) and it’s keeping me busy.
Married for over 20 years now to Michelle, and with a son and a daughter both to be married this year. Life is good.


Class of 1962 – 60 Years Out

Stephen Newton Carroll

I remember fondly Street House with its 280 degree views of Sydney Harbour and the camaraderie of my fellow students, sailing on Rose Bay with the Sailing Club.
After repeating the Leaving Certificate in 1963, I started a degree in Rural Science at New England University, but later changed to Veterinary Science at Sydney.
After graduation, I worked as a large animal veterinarian, mainly with cattle, at Narrabri in northern NSW and then mainly with sheep on the Southern Tablelands at Yass. I then joined the NSW Department of Agriculture as District Veterinary Officer Wagga Wagga, later becoming Regional Director of Veterinary Services with responsibility for animal health and fisheries activities in the Riverina from Jindabyne in the east to the South Australian Border. I oversaw a multi-million dollar redevelopment of the Warm Water Fisheries Research Station at Narrandera.
In 1985, I moved to Sydney as Director of Animal Health Services with the Department and then left government to become the inaugural General Manager of AUS-MEAT, a livestock industry organisation involved with product description and quality standards. After five years I became Chief Executive Officer of the Meat and Allied Trades Federation (the employer organisation for the meat industry) where I oversaw the implementation of the recommendations of the Industrial Relations Commission Full Bench Decision on the Meat Industry. This followed the enquiry conducted after the Mudginberri dispute in the mid-1980s. I was a Foundation Board Member of the Australian Quality Council and Chairman of the Trustee Board of the Australian Meat Industry Superannuation Trust Fund.
I was also a Board member of the Sydney University Veterinary Science Foundation, a Fellow of the Institute of Company Directors and a Member of the Agribusiness Association of Australia.
I was the Independent Chairman of the NSW Poultry Meat Industry Committee from 2004 to 2014, when the poultry meat industry was deregulated.
Now I fill my days with art, handyman work (I am an active member of St Ives Community Shed) and travelling.

Michael David Steiner

I started at Cranbrook in Transition with Miss Hind as Headmistress of the Prep School.
My favourite memory is of the Headmaster, Gethyn Hewan at a school assembly saying, “Pointed toe shoes, these are not part of the school uniform and are not to be worn; full stop!”
Occasionally if we forgot to bring or order lunch we could get permission to go to the Pier, to Charlie’s to buy hot chips – a real treat to be done only very occasionally.
I’ve been an Ophthalmologist for over 45 years and have been involved with many medical organisations.

Peter Meares

I was a boarder for all but my last year and always seemed to be hungry. A favourite memory of those Rawson House years was sneaking out, with a couple of mates, to Charlie’s fish shop at the Rose Bay Pier for a dozen potato scallops AFTER dinner!
My wife and I are now living at Mount Coolum on the Sunshine Coast. I’m virtually retired, after 50 years covering sport on Radio and TV. I now write books and have had 6 non-fiction works published on sport. My first novel, a murder/mystery with a cricket theme, is due out this year. It’s called “The Long Shot”, and Cranbrook gets a mention.
I loved my school days and am very proud of Cranbrook. I was down in Sydney for a reunion a couple of years ago and watched a First XV rugby match against Aloysius. I was pleasantly surprised when the Cranbrook boys in the crowd sang “Schola Nostra” – I loved hearing it as war-cry. It was very moving.

Richard Francis Brady

My memories of Cranbrook are numerous. I am forever grateful for the support and inspiration I received from Justin O’Brien and Frank Tebbutt (my Art and Geology teachers). And Jim Connolly (my Geography teacher and Housemaster of Davidson), who, while coaching cricket, introduced me to wicketkeeping, which I pursued well into my 40’s.
I was a day student living at Wollstonecraft. My school days were therefore long. In Winter I would arrive home in the dark after football practice, having used 2-3 forms of public transport. Saturday sport to all parts of Sydney, also by public transport, was also challenging. And character building!
I initially pursued a career in accountancy before graduating in Arts (majoring in Political Science) at NSW University.
I retired in 1995, aged 50, after a working life mostly in real estate as a self employed valuer specialising in the liquor, accommodation and tourist sectors of the economy. I also lectured in real estate practice at the University of Western Sydney. I then returned to full time post graduate studies in Visual Arts (photography) at NSW University and Sydney University. The last 20 years have been devoted to travelling regularly around the world with my wife of 53 years in search of exotic experiences (like Antarctica, Easter Island, Siberia and the Trobriand Islands off New Guinea). And, at the same time, researching my family history since early settlement in Australia.

Ian Rose

After gaining a Bachelor of Science (Chemistry) and a Diploma of Education from the University of Sydney, I joined the Department of Education. I have enjoyed a long teaching career and have taught at Mosman High, Peel High in Tamworth, James Ruse Agricultural before becoming the Head of Science at Pittwater High. I am now retired and am living in Avalon in a great retirement village.



OC in Profile: Dave Allen (OC 1996)

OC in Profile: Dave Allen (OC 1996)

When Dave Allen’s professional rugby career was cut short by injury, he threw himself into
finance, earning a PhD at Cambridge that has influenced billions of dollars of assets and led to a new sustainable investment fund back in Australia.

After school, I studied at Sydney University and did a commerce degree but at the same time I was playing rugby at Easts through the Colts then three years of first grade, where I was part of the team that won 15 consecutive matches in 2000, which is still a record over the 122 years of the club.

In 2001, I got a contract to play rugby professionally in Ireland with Ulster but I managed to injure my neck and had to hang up the boots – which in retrospect was probably a blessing in disguise! I went to London and got a job with JP Morgan. I had an incredible mentor there with a PhD in artificial intelligence who took me under his wing, but he left the business and it meant I became Head of Research in 2009, far earlier than I should have. I was the youngest managing director JP Morgan had had.

I’d always wanted to do a PhD so I started that at Cambridge which was an incredibly special experience. I did tutorials with my professor in Isaac Newton’s old rooms and you could actually see the apple tree! The PhD was in quantitative finance, investigating better ways of managing the risk of portfolios. Financial theory assumes people are rational and markets aren’t driven by fear and greed, but in reality that’s not the case, so if you abandon those assumptions, you need to use statistics borrowed from the natural sciences, like ‘how frequent are forest fires?’. So I went back to JP Morgan and we rolled out those more sophisticated models and applied them across about $100 billion in assets as a better way of managing and measuring risk.

I met my wife Peta in London and we have two beautiful girls two and six months old, and we wanted to come back to Australia. So now I’m partnering with a group called Plato Investment Management and I’ve just launched a new fund and it has a zero-carbon footprint, enabling investors to invest in a more sustainable fashion. The average self-managed super fund has a carbon footprint equivalent to flying between Sydney and Melbourne 77 times a year, so this fund is trying to be part of the solution.

Running with the Beasts

When Michael Turtle (OC 1998) arrives at Easts Rugby Club to meet Dave Allen, the home team is
down by 42 points and there’s not much chance they’re going to pull off a win today. “We’ll build from this,” the Old Cranbrookian says philosophically. “We’ll learn from this and build.”

If there’s anyone who knows how to help Easts do that, it’s Dave Allen, who started coaching the Colts when he got back from overseas recently and then took over as Club President in 2021. It’s a homecoming of sorts, to a club where he played for years, including the winning Centenary Match against Sydney University in 2000, which he considers one of his fondest memories.

Easts is the beating heart of the community – it provides a grass roots connection.

Dave Allen (OC 1996)

“I definitely fell in love with the club. So many of my best friends to this day are friendships that were made playing on that field and in the clubhouse afterwards,” he says. Easts is 122 years old and has produced 75 Wallabies. There are 650 juniors currently at the club, as well as ten senior teams. But Dave acknowledges the “elephant in the room” – the club hasn’t won the premiership, known as the Shute Shield, since 1969. Changing that is one of his main goals.

“We’re definitely going to drive the rugby performance harder. So, for example, one of the first things that I did after becoming president was bring in two New Zealand coaches from the Crusaders Academy, which is the number one rugby academy in the world.”

There’s always been a strong connection between Cranbrook and the club, so perhaps it’s no surprise to find the club’s CEO is another former Easts player and Old Boy Dom Remond (OC 1982). He joined in 2020 after a two-decade career in sports and entertainment, including roles as the longest serving general manager of the Sydney Sixers in the Big Bash League, and CEO of a startup in esports, the competitive video gaming industry.

Dom Remond (OC 1982), Easts CEO, with Dave.

As we stand on the sideline, watching a game, he tells me that he’s been working hard to make the club more accessible to everyone, including families and young people. “For us, it’s about more than just the footy, and we’ve got a really good venue. If you’d come 20 or 30 years ago, it was a pretty old pub with terrible carpeted floors and poker machines. Now it’s a really good pub with great food and an affordable offering for people.”

The changes are noticeable straight away, and it’s interesting to discover that it’s a venue where people now hold birthday parties, bar mitzvahs and even weddings. In other words, Easts is “the beating heart of the community”, according to Dave. “I think in this digital world that we live in, people are yearning for a bit of community and grass roots connection, and the club, which is a not-for-profit, can provide that,” he says.

As well as plenty of Old Cranbrookians from across the generations cheering on the players, there are kids getting their faces painted, a popular pop-up wine bar, and locals dropping by to enjoy the atmosphere. If you haven’t been for a while, there’s never been a better time to visit.

Dave Allen was Captain of the Cranbrook School 1st XV in 1996. Seated front row.
Around the Ground: OCs at Easts Rugby Club

Around the Ground: OCs at Easts Rugby Club

It is their ties to Cranbrook, to the game of rugby and to each other, that makes Easts Rugby Club the perfect meeting spot for our Old Cranbrookians.


Edward Schiller (OC 2015)

After school, I went to live in England for a year, doing a gap year in London, which was incredible working in a school there as a teacher’s assistant and doing some sport coaching. Then I went to Sydney Uni and did an arts degree and recently I started working in healthcare PR at Ogilvy. When I got back from England in 2017 my good mate from Cranbrook, Declan, got me playing at Easts in the lower grades and I love it. I keep in touch with a lot of my friends from Cranbrook, because we had a great year group in 2015 and I’m very grateful for all my friends I met at school.

Jake Tierney (OC 2012)

After school, I studied sport and exercise management at UTS but when I finished that I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with it. So, I went into the family business, which is horticulture, and have been working for Alpine Nurseries at Dural for the last two and half years. I played for Easts straight out of school and am still kicking around the lower grades. I just love my sport – I love my golf and tennis and I love surfing and swimming, I love my table tennis, squash, and I love backgammon and chess – anything to do with any board games.

Judd Harvey (OC 2013)

I did a gap year with my best mates from Cranbrook around Europe for six months, then I went to Sydney University, and then worked at AMP and Perpetual for a few years. My family owns a few pubs/hotels in town, so I joined that business in January 2020 and I’m the group general manager. We’ve got Three Wise Monkeys, Cheers Bar, Scruffy Murphy’s, and Laughing Buddha and they’re all really welcoming venues with people from all over the world. I’m also coaching a suburban rugby team called the Sydney Harbour Oysters which has been good fun.

Will Bailey (OC 2013)

I’m a high school teacher now at St Catherine’s, teaching history and legal studies. Cranbrook was a pretty good experience and that was the main reason I wanted to do it. Teachers like Anne Byrnes, Thommo, and Mark McAndrew were all just great people and it seemed like a pretty good life, so I’m doing the same thing. On the weekends I watch a lot of footy – my playing career ended after school. And I’ve done a fair amount of travelling and a good chunk of us made the decision at school to have a year off afterwards.

Declan Quin (OC 2015)

I went to uni and did sport and exercise management, but now I’m studying horticulture and I want to get into landscape design. I was living at Palm Beach during COVID and was really getting into my gardening and was really enjoying it and so I thought I would see where it goes. I play fourth grade at Easts and I go surfing when I can, but between working and playing rugby, it chews up a lot of my time.

Grant Lodge (OC 1986)

So, I’m a carpenter working on houses, which keeps me busy, and I’m married with two kids – an 18-year-old boy and 15-year-old girl. I had a footy career at Easts for about eight to ten years, playing first grade where we lost a couple of grand finals to Randwick but, you know, they had 13 Wallabies in the team! Some highlights for me were probably playing Australian Sevens and with the Waratahs. I used to surf all the time until I had kids but now the knees are gone.

Birth Announcements

Birth Announcements

The OCA acknowledges the arrival of our newest and littlest members of the Old Cranbrookian community!

Polly Louise Matheson

Wednesday, 5 May 2021

Nicol James Matheson (OC 1993) and his wife Adele Matheson welcomed Polly Louise Matheson to the world at 9.26pm on Wednesday 5 May 2021. A little sister for Charlie, Ivy and Freddo.


Let us know when you have a new addition to the family!
Cranbrook would love to send you a little gift (as modelled here by Max!)

Email us at alumni@cranbrook.nsw.edu.au

Robert Fleming (OC 1950)

Robert Fleming (OC 1950)

19 July 1933 – 26 February 2021

Obituary

Alistair Harvey-Sutton (OC 1950) pays tribute to his old friend Robert Atholl Fleming OC 1944-51 who passed away in London last February aged 87.

I met Robert soon after he came to Cranbrook in 1944 aged 11, as a boarder in Rawson House. I was of a similar age as Robert and had many of the same interests. One way and another we saw a good deal of each other.

Robert was born in England and came to Australia with his parents in 1939. His father Atholl Fleming, a professional West End actor, had met his mother Phyllis Best, an Australian actress, in 1932 when they were members of a theatrical tour in Australia featuring the famous Dame Sybil Thorndike and Sir Lewis Casson. They subsequently married and, at the end of the tour, returned to England. Robert was born on 19 July 1933 in London.

On the declaration of war in September 1939, his father, who had fought in World War One with the British Army in France and had been severely wounded, volunteered several times for military service. His repeated applications however, were rejected on the basis that he was unfit for service as his war wounds were still troubling him. Later that year, at the suggestion of his father-in-law, Sir Robert Best, he took his family to live permanently in Australia.  

Robert was also of interest to me as his father was the lead presenter in the ABC’s children’s session “The Argonauts Club” which was produced in Sydney and on air every weekday at 5.30pm. The session was very popular and I regularly listened to it. His father performed under the name “Mac”, which was a reference to his Scottish heritage. I was intrigued to know the son of the famous Mac.

I well remember when Robert suggested that we go after school to the ABC studio at 96 Market Street in the city to see a session being produced that afternoon. The studio was a big room with black curtains on the walls to mask noise with a control room on one wall. Mac, together with the two other presenters, known as Elizabeth and Joe, stood around a table with their printed parts in their hands as the session got underway with a microphone suspended above them. The music, songs and other background were interposed with the spoken parts in a smooth and skilful manner. It was very expertly and quietly done. Robert was obviously really interested in the whole production and mentioned to me that he quite often came in to see a session.

Robert’s later decision to develop a career in television, I believe, was influenced by his father’s commanding acting style and this early introduction to him of the production and direction of entertainment presented outside the theatre.

In his life at Cranbrook from 1944 to 1951 Robert made the most of his opportunities in the school year.  Academically he passed the Intermediate in 1948 and the Leaving in 1951. In this last year he was promoted to the Upper VI form. He did well in debating that year as a member of the School’s Debating Team, which held formal debates against neighbouring schools. The above photo of the team appears in the official School photo page for 1951 showing a tall Robert on the left, Danny Fewtrell in the centre and Michael Crouch on the right. Robert was also a Rawson House prefect in 1951 and a member of the Second XI cricket and XV rugby teams. In cricket he was an effective fast in-swing bowler, who bowled with intent and loved taking wickets. That year he was also Drum Major in the Cadets. His desire to help others was shown by his appointment as Assistant Librarian in 1948 and Tuck Shop Assistant in 1949-1950. He made many friends and always did his best to assist others.

When he left school, he, as with others of his age, was required to enter National Service. Robert chose to join the Royal Australian Navy and spent several years with them. He crewed in several ships in overseas voyages including one to Britain in 1954 when, at 21, he had his first opportunity to visit the land of his birth and be welcomed by his cousin’s family. The visit also gave him time in London to learn more about the production of modern TV programs. In 1956 the ABC launched Australia’s first TV channel in Sydney. This led to him returning to Australia in November, via the navy in the aircraft carrier Melbourne, to apply for employment with the ABC. His application was accepted and he was given a position with its TV channel. At 23 he was set for a career in television which proved to be in the development, production and direction of its material.

He worked hard at the ABC but he had enough time for a big social life as he had a great sense of humour, a warm outgoing personality, and a genuine affection for others. He was a great friend. In these years I saw a good deal of him as he joined me in playing with the Old Cranbrookians Cricket Club at Dangar Oval. He loved cricket and the club and was a real team man. A notable cricket connection of the OCCC was with the Stage and Radio Cricket Club, organised by his father for his actor friends. Robert was their opening bowler. On one match with them I had the misfortune of being given LBW to his inswinger. Never in my long cricket experience have I heard such a passionate and explosive appeal by a bowler for an LBW!

In 1959 he felt that he had the experience to make his career in the large and expanding television Industry in England and, in the December, he moved permanently to London to further his career and rejoin his extended family there.

He was soon employed in the production and direction of television programs, first in Wales and then in London. There he commenced working in light entertainment. He was the first director for “Ready Steady Go”, a new and successful pop music programme, and later he presented other programs of this genre including one featuring the famous London Music Hall songs of the past, sung by foremost stage professionals. This programme, though successful, was eventually terminated by Robert. I once asked him the reason for this decision and he said, “Look, there are just so many times you can reprise a song.”

He later found that light entertainment was not fulfilling and he moved from that form of programing to documentary-making across a range of subjects which he felt had    a greater value and interest for the public and himself. At Thames TV and thereafter, he produced award-winning documentary films such as “A Profile of Cardinal Hume”,  “The Bicentenary  of  the Times”, “The Big Bang in the City”, “The Great Houses of England”, “My Brother’s Keeper,” and “This Sporting Land”, a history of the social history of sport. A unique program was one featuring interviews with wounded and ageing “Battle of Britain” fighter pilots, highlighting their struggles to meet continuing health problems. Most of the wounds were burns to the face and hands as their damaged fighters burned in dog-fights in 1940. Robert greatly feared that the publicity these interviews would bring might harm these brave men but he found that they were, in fact, welcomed by them and gave comfort to them.

The awards he received and his high standing in the television industry in Britain arose from his deep interest in people and their relationship with the world as well as his ability to immerse himself in his subjects. This gave him an understanding of them and made for powerful TV.

As his career developed, he became a highly successful producer, director and documentary maker, the result of the breadth and variety of his interests. It was said during his career that he “danced to the music of the times”, constantly changing his focus and pioneering new genres. He was a great innovator. As a true Argonaut he was always looking for adventure!

His success at Thames TV led to him being invited in 1964 to make the opening programme for the new commercial TV Channel 10, in Sydney. He arrived in Sydney in October 1964 and worked for Channel 10 until April 1965, when he returned to London after a successful engagement.

On 27 February 1981, he had the good fortune to meet his true love Marion and, shortly after, marry her. He thought that it had been the best thing he had done. They had a long, loving and sparky life and remained a partnership to the end. Marion was a woman of parts including having the accolade of being appointed a Law Magistrate in London’s legal system. She was a great supporter of Robert professionally and she proved to be of great assistance to him in the planning, financing and production of his TV documentary career.

Together they set up a production company for this purpose called Argo Productions, the Argonauts name, and produced a number of documentary series focused on the London Police Murder and Flying Squads. For these series they used a pioneering “fly on the wall” technique which was then revolutionary and is now a mainstay of police documentaries. Robert told me that when filming these programmes, he had a car with crew and camera ready to accompany the police squads at speed when they were called out for emergency action. I think that he really enjoyed the drama and excitement involved and was proud of the success of Argo Productions in making these series. 

Robert retired in 1996 after a notable career in TV but, rather than relaxing, his vigorous and energetic nature led him to champion a charity called The Primary Club. This was a cricketers’ charity for the blind, whose remit was to provide sporting and recreational facilities for the blind and partially sighted throughout the United Kingdom. To qualify as a member/donor an applicant had to have been dismissed first ball at cricket, meaning they had scored a “primary”. Later all were welcomed as members.

The club relied on annual cash donations from its members so membership was always of importance to the executive. Robert, who was a member, was seen as a man who could, as an Hon Secretary, encourage membership and donations and generally further the aims of the club. He was accordingly offered that position. He accepted without hesitation.

Robert was motivated to assist the club by his belief that sport, in a broad sense, had the ability to change lives for the better, particularly for the disadvantaged. He thought that the club was a worthy charity and was prepared to work hard for its success. Apart from other advances for the club, he was notably successful in gaining support from sport and community leaders such as the former Prime Minister Sir John Major and Test cricketers Ritchie Benaud, Mike Brearley and Derek Underwood. Derek also became Patron of the club. Robert‘s work for The Primary Club was recognised when he was appointed its chairman between 2004 and 2008.

Robert had the advantage of having Marion assist him in his work which led to the trebling of donations, an increase in membership and an expansion in the scope of the club’s assistance to the visually impaired. The club was fortunate to have had their support.

Robert’s great commitment to the club was fully appreciated by its members as was made evident in The Primary Club Members Newsletter for 2021 which included this tribute:

“He was passionate about the ability of sport to change lives. Through his leadership, the range and quality of sporting opportunities for the vision impaired have dramatically expanded and improved. His sense of fun, friendship and support will be greatly missed.”

His work for the club was something of which he could be justly proud.

On retirement, Robert and Marion travelled the world including visiting Australia and Sydney several times and at home enjoying their various interests, their home and, best of all, the company of their family and friends.

Robert and I kept in contact through letters and emails over all the years that we were separated and when we met in England or in Sydney, each would make every effort to organise hospitality and special events for the other.  When Robert and Marion came to Sydney, they were welcomed by all their friends who were so pleased to see them. When Philippa and I went to England, we were similarly entertained and welcomed.

Robert, I believe, though English, had a very strong affection for Australia and, in particularly for Sydney and his old school, Cranbrook. He went out of his way to help in the setting-up of the tours of the OCCC to England which began in1975. He became friends with the players and came to as many of its fixtures on the tours as possible. When watching a match, he was vocal in support of the team! To me, he was always affectionately interested in Cranbrook and his old school friends and was, still at heart, an Old Cranbrookian and Sydneysider.  I think this feeling is shown in this excerpt from an email he sent to me in September 2009:

“You would have laughed if you had seen me watching the series on TV – wearing MCC socks and drinking coffee out of a Royal Australian Navy mug. The perfect balance I thought.”

Sadly, Robert became frail at 86 and, in 2020, became ill with the Covid-19 virus.  His health and vitality did not return and, despite the best efforts of all concerned, he slipped away in February 2021 to the great regret of us all.

I offer our most sincere condolences to Marion, whom Robert loved so much and who cared for him so well – they were a true partnership.

Cranbrook should be proud of having such an outstanding Old Cranbrookian.

Jeremy Phillip Merrick Long OAM (OC 1948)

Jeremy Phillip Merrick Long OAM (OC 1948)

11 April 1932 – 9 September 2021

Obituary

Jeremy Long died peacefully in Sydney on 9 September, aged 89, with his children taking turns by his side in his final days. He was the brother of Jenifer (deceased), father of Daniel, Adam, Benjamin and Emily, grandfather of 12 and great-grandfather of five. Jeremy was the partner of Elsa and former husband of Frances. Malcom Dan (OC 1952) remembers him as being prominent at School and in later life and the son of eminent historian Gavin Long.

I had the pleasure of meeting Jeremy only a couple of years back when he visited College and gave us his old blazer. His sons Benjamin and Adam both attended Paul’s in the 1980s. If I recall correctly. Jeremy had an interesting time after being at College doing pioneering work for Indigenous communities in Central Australia.

Richard Morgan, Director of Community Development, St Paul’s College, University of Sydney

The Glebe Society website, 2009:

Jeremy Long received his OAM award “For service to the indigenous community, to the public sector, and to humanitarian groups”.  Jeremy is a graduate from the University of Sydney, has been involved in the development of land rights legislation and establishment of Aboriginal organisations as an officer of the Office of Aboriginal Affairs, and later as Deputy-Secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs from 1969 to 1982. In 1982 he was appointed Commissioner for Community Relations concerned with racial discrimination issues.  Mr Long works on Indigenous issues with the Australia Council for the Arts.

Notice on St Paul’s College, University of Sydney website:

Jeremy Phillip Merrick Long OAM, in College 1950-53, b. 11 April 1932, d. 9 September 2021 in Sydney, formerly of Glebe NSW. BA 1954. Anthropologist with the Northern Territory Welfare Branch: Patrol Officer 1955-57, Settlement Superintendent at Haasts Bluff 1958-59, and Research Officer 1960-68. In the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs: Deputy Secretary 1975-82, Commissioner for Community Relations 1982-86. Visiting research fellow Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies from April 1987.

In the 1950s there were still Pintupi families living their traditional nomadic desert lifestyle who had no idea the First Fleet had arrived and changed their continent forever. In 1957, Jeremy Long was chosen to be a member of a special expedition to find out how many Aboriginal people were still living out in the desert – and whether any government help was needed. Jeremy was “a silent witness as the curtains came down on a culture that had endured for 40,000 years”.

Of the 48 individuals Long met on that first trip, all but three had never seen a white man before. “It must have been a bit of a shock to them,” said Long. “To think white people had been in the country for 200 years but there were still people out here who didn’t know it. They were still functioning in this unfriendly country, leading relatively happy lives in this hostile environment.” Between 1957 and 1964, Long took part in nine patrols to the Western Desert. It was a period of fundamental change.

(Extracts from an article about Colliding Worlds a touring exhibition by the National Museum of Australia in 2006 which explored more than 50 years of first contact between whites and the native peoples of the Western Desert, from 1932 to 1984)

Jeremy said at the opening of the exhibition: “it was pretty amazing seeing these people who are living quite independently in the desert with the tools they could make themselves, eating every day the food they could gather.”

One of Jeremy’s articles on the dispersal of Aboriginal peoples from the Western Desert can be found here: http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p72111/pdf/article027.pdf.

Jeremy made a generous donation to the College in support of the Medical Alumni Scholarships in 2018 and more recently he gave to the College Archives some of his photos from the 1950s as well as his College blazer from the time he was resident.

Source:

St Paul’s College, the University of Sydney Requiescat in pace | St Paul’s College, the University of Sydney (stpauls.edu.au)

PICTURE: Gumatj leader, Galarrwuy Yunupingu (left) and Silas Roberts, NLC Chairman at Parliament House in 1977 with Jeremy Long and the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, The Hon Ian Viner (right), looking at the two bark petitions presented to the House of Representatives in 1963. Source National Archives of Australia. see: Our history | Northern Land Council (nlc.org.au)

John Mant AM (OC 1955)

John Mant AM (OC 1955)

20 October 1936 – 10 July 2021

Obituary

Sydney Morning Herald
19 July 2021

Urban planner and policy leader ‘made a difference’

By Robert Freestone and Richard Whitington

John Mant AM, who died on July 10 aged 84, left a legacy still in the making, especially in the field of urban planning. With a passion for public policy and social justice, he claimed many distinctions as lawyer, planner, public servant, and politician. He was Gough Whitlam’s Principal Private Secretary on dismissal day, November 11, 1975.

The built environment became his passion and he brought the perspective of a lawyer and an insightful political operative with an appreciation of institutional process in good decision-making, along with the imperatives of integrity and transparency.

His vision for the places where we live, work and relax, and how we move between them, was informed by the need to put common sense, consultation and competence above the frequently prevailing forces of short-termism, sloth and surreptitiousness.

Mant worked as a senior bureaucrat and ministerial adviser for the Commonwealth and several State governments, a consultant reviewing and recommending administrative change, drafting legislation and planning codes for capital city, regional and suburban authorities. He was a wily solicitor for numerous private and public clients, often pro bono, and a tireless advocate for organisational reform to better promote more sustainable, liveable, equitable and productive communities.

He produced numerous seminar papers, journal articles, and an influential book, Living and Partly Living (1971), co-written with Robin Boyd, Hugh Stretton and Ian McKay.

His arts and law degree (1963) and town and country planning diploma (1968 – 1972) from Sydney University, allied to a partnership in the Sydney legal firm founded by his father (Davenport & Mant, later Phillips Fox), along with firsthand experience inside major planning organisations, uniquely equipped him to appreciate the critical link between good governance and quality results.

‘Form follows organisation’ was his mantra which solidified into a pioneering endorsement of integrated and holistic place management by multi-skilled entities, rather than the departmental ‘silo’ based approach inherited from the colonial era.

The comprehensive reform of planning systems went hand-in-hand, employing a formula that remained remarkably consistent through the years: simplicity, division of strategic (goal-setting) and statutory (implementation) functions, independent planning panels, openness, ethicality, permitting legitimate challenges by third parties to counter corruption, and harnessing the efficiency of digitisation.

Mant’s decades of exhortations, submissions, recommendations, counselling and decisions within the corridors of power saw him influence numerous initiatives and reforms in virtually every Australian state and territory. He was awarded an AM in 2016 for ‘significant service to urban planning and public administration as an advisor and consultant to local and state governments’.

John Hayward Mant was born in Sydney in 1936 – a good year, he’d quip: ‘Too young for the Korean War, too old for Vietnam.’ After attending Cranbrook School and Sydney University (consorting with the Sydney Push) he followed his father into the legal profession but was grafted to the idealism of his mother’s Christian socialism.

While John Mant Sr was a founding member of the Liberal Party, Mant Jr took a more left-of-centre course. He ran for federal parliament in 1966, one of 22 candidates for Gordon Barton’s Liberal Reform Group (he was the last survivor), the forerunner to the Australia Party (later integrated with the Australian Democrats) whose preferences helped Labor win in 1972 and 1974.

Re-aligning with Labor he headed to Canberra to work for the National Capital Development Commission, a sobering immersion in traditional bureaucracy that shaped much of his later planning work. He was seconded as an adviser to Whitlam’s Minister for Urban and Regional Development, Tom Uren, and he held a senior position in the reformist Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD).

His political and administrative nous were recognised with his 1975 appointment to the Prime Minister’s staff where he served for the tumultuous last five months prior to the Whitlam Government’s dismissal by the governor-general. Regarding himself as more spectator than player, John broke the news to ALP Secretary David Combe on 11 November 1975 with his ‘usual mischievous grin’: ‘We’ve been sacked’.

Thereafter Mant had a successful trajectory in planning administration and local government law, commencing as director-general of South Australia’s Department of Housing, Urban and Regional Affairs (1977-80) and pursuing a DURD-like reorganisation for Premier Don Dunstan.

Returning to his Sydney legal practice, a steady procession of client and consultancy briefs ranged across planning, organisational and regulation reviews, land management, health and transport policy.

Most notably, he completed a game-changing review of the NSW Department of Housing (1992), acted as interim commissioner of the NSW Independent Commission against Corruption (1994), chaired Paul Keating’s Urban Design Task Force (1994), pioneered place-based zoning in a new Local Environmental Plan for Warringah Shire (2000), comprehensively rewrote the NSW Local Government Act (2003) with Julie Walton, and, in so-called retirement, served as a Sydney City Councillor on Clover Moore’s team (2012-16).

In a life dedicated to fashioning public processes and policy toward quality and socially inclusive outcomes, he found time to lend expertise, skills and leadership to other causes, including two terms as president of the Paddington Society and deputy chair of Common Equity, the peak body for cooperative housing organisations in NSW.

He had told the Herald back in 2008 that whenever he complained about things, his father would say: ‘Well, what are you doing about it?’ Right up until his death he worked with Michael Neustein of the Australian Institute of Urban Studies on a new state planning system embodying all the far-reaching reforms he had long advocated. Their Better Places Act envisages a place management approach to planning, involving greater community participation, appeal rights, and digital dexterity.

As recently as June he was still ‘doing something about it’, meeting with NSW Planning Minister Rob Stokes to discuss how to advance the Better Places mission. Encouragement came from many quarters with the proposal gaining traction. Mant did not live to see the increasing acceptance of his ideas but the momentum he helped create for a better planning system will not falter for his passing.

Mates like Richard Broinowski shared John’s love of sailing as both a burden and great fun. Whether on the Adriatic, Sydney Harbour or in the Whitsundays, ‘like Captain Queeg rolling his marbles, John was always at the helm, master and commander. We did his bidding. No rope uncoiled. No anchor left to drag.’ There were early morning swims at Bondi, where birthdays were celebrated at 6.30am with champagne around the boot of the car, and in earlier years, parties at his fashion-statement, Pettit and Sevitt house in Canberra, his cynical sense of humour an antidote to the greyness outside.

John never allowed ill-health to define him. For someone who had confronted severe adolescent illness and been given a life expectancy of 40, he faced later afflictions including polymyositis and cancer with equanimity, uncomplaining about the cards he’d been dealt. He remained a bright and witty companion, conversations spiced with his withering takes on Sydney politics, or his love of classical music and opera. Many came to share John’s belief that he was indestructible. John Mant is remembered by his family including children Julia and Jim, step-daughter Roberta, grand-daughters Vivienne and Minka, and a legion of friends and admirers as a rare and impassioned individual who can legitimately claim to have ‘made a difference’.

Rex Hinchliffe (OC 1979)

Rex Hinchliffe (OC 1979)

11 January 1962 – 30 April 2021

Obituary

It was with great sadness that the Old Cranbrookian community learned that Rex Hinchliffe (1974-1979) had lost his short battle with cancer on 30 April 2021. Philip Kong (OC 1979) remembers Rex, one of the most gifted all-round athletes at Cranbrook during the late 70s.

Rex received his Colours in tennis, athletics, soccer and cricket. In his final year he was a prefect as well as the captain of cricket and soccer.

After leaving School, he spent a year in South Korea as an exchange student. It was a year of political turmoil in Korea marked by a lot of student strikes and riots, so Rex spent that time improving his tennis, working as an English-speaking DJ and learning to speak Korean.

After his Korean adventure, he completed his Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of NSW. During his time at university he met Lene, who was in Australia from Norway as an exchange student. Not long after, Rex decided to move to Norway to be with Lene. He found work at an international airline as an accountant in Oslo and they got married. When their first child was born, Rex became a stay-at-home dad while Lene pursued her career in medicine. Lene was posted to a local hospital in a very remote country town near the Arctic Circle. Rex thoroughly enjoyed the experience before the family settled in Lillehammer in central Norway, about three hours north of Oslo.

He joined Sealed Air which is an American company that manufactures plastic packaging for food, pharmaceuticals, electronics and most famously the ‘bubble wrap’. He had a very successful career there, performing managerial roles in finance. He was the managing director of their Norway operations for a period, the HR director for Scandinavia and even served as their production plant manager.

While his family grew and settled in Lillehammer, Rex got stuck into his passion for sport. For many years he was the local tennis champion and when his son, Aleksander, was old enough to partner him in doubles, the father and son pairing took all silverware on offer around the local district. Rex also got serious with his middle and long distance running. The Norwegian winters are brutal, so he used to train in the local under cover parking station. He regularly represented his local athletics club at national meets and in 2002 he ran a sub two minute 800 metres as a 40-year-old, making him officially the 14th fastest in the world for that age group. He also represented Norway in meets across Europe in various ‘veterans-masters’ categories.  He was still running until the illness caught up with him a few months ago. But his latest ‘project’ was mentoring and coaching young runners.

Rex was completely devoted to his family and frequently travelled to Australia to enjoy extended Hinchliffe family vacations on the beach in Kiama watched over by the grandparents. He will be deeply missed by his family and loved ones.

The following article was written by Rex Hinchliffe – a visitor to Shellharbour parkrun (who finished in fourth place) from Lillehammer in Norway (originally from Kiama):

As a veteran runner with decades of experience of middle and long-distance races on and off the track, it may be somewhat surprising that it was not until late 2019 that the parkrun movement caught my attention. I had at times heard various references to park runs, but it was not until reading Ian Mortimer’s “Why Running Matters” that my interest was aroused. After all, why would a relatively serious runner with years of competitive experience bother with a free, social event which although timed would undoubtedly lack a competitive edge? How wrong assumptions can be! Upon finally trying my first parkrun in Shellharbour, Australia in November 2019, it was like rediscovering the thrill of running again, and of the enjoyment of participation. A door was opened to a friendly house where those within were genuinely glad to see and welcome you. 30 members of that friendly community were volunteers that day, dedicated to welcoming me, and each of the 321 participants, who had flocked that day to the scenic course in Killalea State Park. Well, scenic hardly does the location justice – breathtaking is more appropriate! Yet the beauty of the course is deceiving, as it is rated one of the most difficult of 379 parkrun courses in Australia. If anything, the difficulty of the course serves to strengthen the bonds between the runners – a mutual respect for everyone struggling against the undulating terrain, against the soft sand when crossing the beach, the long sapping rises and the final kilometre which, although flat, seems to go on and on and on! A respect intensified by the fact that the runners are courteous without exception, with smiles readily at hand. And did I say non-competitive? With no pressure on performance? This was a pure demonstration that competitiveness comes from within! Having started with relatively modest ambitions, the result could be viewed in many ways. A top-ten overall placing (9th), an aged-grading placing to be proud of (3rd), but a finishing time (21:06) which surely could be improved on! Therein lies the key to competitiveness – the almost immediate planning of how to do better next time. The unquestioned obviousness that I will return at the first opportunity to see what level of performance I can push to. There is also a deep sense of enlightenment when I realize that this was actually the 285th parkrun at Shellharbour alone. My pleasure in participating is a tiny fraction of the goodwill created weekly around the globe. With over 1600 locations worldwide, I was just one of over 277,000 park runners who were assisted by nearly 30,000 volunteers! The magnitude of the movement is overwhelming. Importantly, it inspires me to be a volunteer at a future parkrun as soon as possible, in gratitude for the welcome I received as an unknown visitor – and to reciprocate to new park runners who are just as tentative and curious as I was.

Rex Hinchliffe, 2020

   

In Memoriam: 2021

In Memoriam: 2021

For those beloved members of the Old Cranbrookian family who have passed in recent times, our thoughts and prayers are with those who were closest to them.


Kenneth Dixon (OC 1945)

19 August 1929 – 10 September 2021

Kenneth Dixon, died peacefully at home in England on 10 September 2021 at the age of 92. He and his brother Graham attended Cranbrook School from 1940 to 1945, the boys having moved with their mother to Sydney from Shanghai. Their father was held as a civilian internee in a POW camp in Shanghai, throughout that period.
I know that Dad thoroughly enjoyed his time at the school and always felt that it provided him with huge personal and academic development at a very challenging time in his life. He had huge respect for the
then Headmaster Brian Hone.
On his return to England he attended Manchester University before commencing a successful career in business and academia. He was Chairman and Chief Executive of Rowntree plc from 1980 to 1989 and Chairman of the Council of the University of York from 1990 to 2001.

Barry Athelstane Chard (OC 1939)

22 January 1922 – 14 July 2021

Barbara Schaeffer, Barry’s daughter, kindly informed the School of Barry’s passing at age 99 on 14 July 2021. He was the dearly loved husband of Betty. Loved father and father-in-law of Richard and Toni, Barbara and Thomas and Murray (deceased).

Barry was also grandfather to Timothy, Alexandra, Stephanie, Isabelle and Nicholas. Loving brother of Jessica (deceased) and loving uncle of Peter, Jane and William and their families.

Barry attended Cranbrook for his secondary school years during the 1930s and was a proud Old Cranbrookian. His grandfather W H Chard donated a prize to the school which continues to this day in his name. The W H Chard Prize for Mathematics was first awarded in 1922 to the top Mathematics student in the final form (now Year 12) and endowed by William Henry Chard, who founded WH Chard Co Ltd, exporters of wool, furred skins and raw products. Chard was one of Cranbrook’s Founders and Life Governors and his grandson Barry Chard, attended Cranbrook. Chard Steps in Forbes Street, Darlinghurst are named after him.

Warwick Lloyd Penn (OC 1953)

16 October 1936 – 21 October 2021

The School was advised of the passing of Warwick on 21 October 2021 by his son Matthew (OC 1980). His son and wife were by his side. Warwick was also grandfather to Old Cranbrookian Saxon Penn (OC 2014).

Leopold John Oakley Thorp (OC 1952)

17 November 1934 – 11 July 2021

Aged 86 years. Beloved husband of Kay (dec). Much loved Dad of Diana and Tim and grandfather of Sam, Abby, Jack and Charley.

Great schoolmate and lifelong friend of the late Alexander ‘Lex’ Carruthers.

4th XV, 1952 with Leo Thorp and Lex Carruthers

*The OCA will only include these notices at the request of the family.