↓ SECTION 05— CURATOR
FROM THE CURATOR by MICHAEL COLLINS PERSSE
Mary Taylor née Agar (Cl’35), who died at Clare, South Australia, on 3 November 2011, was a daughter of Wilfred Agar CBE, Professor of Zoology at the University of Melbourne, and Elizabeth née MacDonald – English and Scottish, respectively – whose other children included Elizabeth Marshall (Cl’32), who after her death was the subject of an article in this column in our April 2011 issue; their grandchildren include four Agar OGGs. Like Elizabeth an intrepid lady with a great zest for life, Mary travelled round Australia no less than 21 times in a variety of vehicles including a yellow Honda Jazz, visiting family and absorbing the beauties of our Continent. She was 74 at the time of her first run, and when, in her own words, she first suggested “this crazy idea”, that she would drive all the way around Australia by herself, her youngest granddaughter, then about five, came over and said, “This morning Daddy said to Mummy, ‘Should we allow Granny to do this?’” In her early 90s, feeling the need for yet another adventure, she moved from Mornington to Clare, where she made a beautiful garden at the back of her new unit. She told much of her story in a book, My Life with Tim: Baked Beans in the Outback. Frederick Blight (P’42), who died in January 2013, farmed for most of his life at Woperana, near Tocumwal, a property bought in 1945 by the Blight family (hitherto notable from the 1920s for supplying groceries and spirits to some 500 hotels in Melbourne and Geelong). A son of Henry John Blight and Jessie née Honeyman, he was born on 1 March 1926 and, after six years at Melbourne Grammar School, entered GGS in 1938, had two years in Barwon House, and was then in Perry until he left in May 1942 to help his brother John at a family property, Gum Gum, near Willbriggie in New South Wales. At only 19 he helped John run Woperana; the partnership bought Aratula in the early 1960s, held it for seven years, and then sold it – a move that enabled Fred to buy
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out his brother and own Woperana in his own right. As well as sheep, cattle, wheat, canola, hay, and rice, vegetables were grown there on a broad scale. In 1952 Fred married Pamela Bassett-Smith – who survives him, and who was a niece of the late centenarian Peter Bassett-Smith (P’27) – and three children were born to them between 1953 and 1957: Richard Henry, Vivien Ann, and Jane. In 2000, after Woperana was sold, they moved into Tocumwal. Richard writes that “Dad spent 54 years at Woperana, working hard and loving every minute of it.” Dr John Yencken OAM (M’43), who died in December 2012, was the elder son of Arthur Ferdinand Yencken – an Old Melburnian, from a family with ancient Estonian and Livonian ancestry, who after Cambridge served as a diplomat in the British Foreign Office (Australia not yet having its own foreign service) – and his wife, Joyce, a daughter of the Victorian grazier George Russell, of Langi Willi, near Skipton (from 1948, in her widowhood, wife of Sir Denys Pilditch, wartime director of counterespionage in India), and sister of Jean, who married Daniel Mackinnon CBE (M’20). Born in Berlin on 11 March 1926, John was sent from Cairo, during his father’s posting to Egypt (after the United States and Germany), to Summer Fields, the leading preparatory school near Oxford, whence in 1938 he won a scholarship to Eton College (where his father preferred him to be an Oppidan rather than a more cloistered Colleger). As the war lengthened, his parents decided to evacuate their two sons, and they were then at GGS from July 1940 until March 1943, John in Manifold House, his brother – now Emeritus Professor David Yencken AO (Co’43) – at Bostock House and then Junior School (before going on to Eton). In 1941, aged 15, John won first place in Victoria in
Greek and fourth in Latin at the Victorian matriculation. He became a House Prefect, and was about to be appointed a School Prefect when it was learnt that, with David, he was to return to Spain, where his father then served. From 1939 Arthur Yencken had worked to preserve Spanish neutrality, but he was killed in an air accident in May 1944. At the time John, by then at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was midway through his first examinations in the Natural Sciences tripos, and, although offered a pass without writing further papers, he elected to do them – and gained first-class honours (he was just 18, and he loved and revered his father). A year later, now a BA (Cantab) after the accelerated wartime course in chemistry, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve for what proved two years in radar and adult education. Back in Australia, he worked as a research chemist and administrator with Imperial Chemical Industries. From 1955-66 he was the very successful executive director of the glass division of E L Yencken & Co, an importing and merchandising firm founded by his grandfather. From 1966-76 he directed P-E Consulting Group’s Australian subsidiary, and from 1976-85, with W D Scott & Co, he held a wide range of industrial and commercial consultancies. In 1951 he married Agnes-Mary Martin, a Scot, at Troon in Ayrshire, and five sons followed – Arthur (M’70), Peter (M/L’72), Michael (M’72), Nicholas (M’77), and Jonathan (M’78) - who all survive him, as do six grandchildren. John and Agnes-Mary loved riding, and on the day she died, in 1983, from a severe asthma attack, he went for a long ride alone – and then never rode again. In 1987 he married Fairlie Mountford, who also survives him. From 1966-83 he served on the council of the Australian National University – and advised it on matters arising from its research activities; the campus now has its John Yencken building. Other influential consultancies followed, and at 79 John earned a Doctorate of Philosophy from Swinburne
LIGHT BLUE - GEELONG GRAMMAR SCHOOL