Toast to the School 2021

This is an edited speech delivered at the Year 12 Leavers’ Dinner for the Class of 2021 by Luke Doblin, School Captain (2021).

It’s such an honour to address you all on this night of celebration, reflection, and inspiration. It has been 114 days since the last VCE exam of 2021 – almost a third of a year. Some of you probably couldn’t have been happier to be out the door last November – turfing uniform straight out of your wardrobe, forgetting about school, and cruising off to holiday. Others maybe still have a little collection of textbooks in the corner, like every Camberwell Grammar Instagram post, and keep up to date with the House Music results. In any case, tonight I wanted to rewind a little, to reflect on our journey together at Camberwell Grammar, and to acknowledge some of the amazing people in this room who made it happen.

On this day in 2016, six years ago, most of us would have been spending our last night at Lord Somers Camp, wide-eyed Year 7s, having experienced just a tiny amount of what was in store for us at Camberwell Grammar. Some things I remember vividly, like when Riley Swinburne’s tooth finished second best against my knee during a game of foxholes. Sorry again Riley. Other things, I wish I could forget, like what the food tasted like, or what the bathrooms smelt like. But all those fragments of memory come together, along with six years of camps, concerts, classrooms, and competitions to form the mosaic of my experience at Camberwell Grammar. It’s an experience that has shaped much of my life so far and will no doubt shape my life well into the future.

One important thing that I’ve discovered along the way is that Camberwell Grammar isn’t 55 Mont Albert Road; it isn’t the PAC, the Sports Centre, or the classrooms – it’s all of us here. The teachers, the parents, the students, and the staff. Our community. A community I feel privileged to belong to and one that we will all belong to for the rest of our lives.

Now, as we go out into the big bad world, I hope we can all find new places to belong at university, at work, or wherever you find yourselves this year, and I hope that you take with you the lessons learned at Camberwell Grammar School. Not calculus, or the Krebs cycle, or quotes from Runaway, but how to be a man of integrity, optimism, courage, and respect. How to be resilient through difficult circumstances, and how to work with others despite your differences. We see time and time again that our institutions, our workplaces, and our communities need voices for good, and we are some of the best equipped to be those voices. We have been privileged and blessed with an outstanding education, but it’s up to us how we use it. Not everyone here is going to be a leader or a CEO, but as Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘In a gentle way, you can shake the world.’

Now, I would like to acknowledge and thank those people who made it all possible.

First, a thank you to our teachers. Somehow, while we’ve stayed exactly the same for the last six years, they’ve changed from overlords and enforcers to allies and supporters. Thank you for guiding us, inspiring us, and persevering with us, especially over the last two years. Thank you for all of the work done outof-hours marking our assignments and managing our sports teams. You’ve been truly influential on the way we think and act, and taught us so many valuable lessons in and outside of the classroom. An honourable mention must go to Mr French, who has stuck with us and supported us from our days in Middle School and couldn’t even bear the thought of teaching at Camberwell Grammar without us.

Next, to the parents, thank you so much. For the sacrifices you’ve made along the way to support us unconditionally; for the hours of car rides to sports training and music rehearsals; for the dedication to parents’ associations and ‘Friends Of’ groups; for your prodding in times of procrastination and your soothing in times of stress, there is no way we could have made it this far without you. Give your parents a hug or a kiss or something and show them your appreciation.

Finally, to my peers, the Class of ‘21. To those of you I’ve shared a classroom, a stage, a court, or a field with. Thank you. I could not have chosen a better group of people to be in a cohort with. Throughout the years as our concerns shifted from signing diaries and shining shoes to sitting SACs and study scores, I am so thankful that we were all in the same boat together, that we stuck together through thick and thin, and came out the other side together as Alumni of the School. I will cherish the memories I made with you all and hope that as we go our separate ways, our paths may cross yet again somewhere along the road. Whatever happens, I’m proud to say that we can look on one another as a comrade and a brother, and we’ll never forget the happy days at school.

Luke Doblin

School Captain 2021