many boys enjoyed visiting in his hut on the Howqua River: Jim warmed to Fred’s affinity with horses and knowledge of the natural world. His and Susie’s son, Timsbury (Cu’86), and daughter-in-law, Jenny née Ryan (Je’82), have moved from Mount Schank to Minjah, between Mortlake and Warrnambool, formerly the home of James (Bim) Affleck (Cu’67) and his wife, Anna née Durham (Cl’71), who now live at Peterborough. Tim and his son, William, continue a long family tradition of naming a son W. J. T. Clarke (the J and the T ringing the changes): their line descends from the patriarch’s son Joseph, whose brother, Sir William Clarke, first baronet, was the ancestor of the present (fourth) baronet, Sir Rupert Clarke (FB’65), the late Ernest Clarke (Bn’61) (in whose memory their father gave – and later rehabilitated – the Ernest Clarke Pavilion at Corio), Vanessa Cutler, and Peter Clarke (FB/L’73), and of the seven Clarkes and Cutlers of the next generation who are OGGs. Peter Carey (FB’59) is the author of Parrot and Olivier in America (Hamish Hamilton/ Penguin, 2009) – his 17th book. Professor Garth Nicholson (P’59) was appointed Associate Professor in 1993 and Professor in 2003 in the Department of Medicine at the University of Sydney. His and his colleagues’ ground-breaking work in research on hereditary diseases of nerves (the most common cause of neuropathy) is the subject of an article in Lise Mellor’s book 150 Years, 150 Firsts: The people of the Faculty of Medicine, published by the University to celebrate the Faculty’s sesquicentenary in 2006. The Molecular Neurology Laboratory established by Garth at Concord Hospital in 1991 is “the first and only comprehensive molecular diagnostic laboratory of its kind for neurological disorders in Australia”. Professor Ross Crozier (M’60), who died in November, was described in an obituary by Dr Cathy Oke in The Age of 26 November as “a world-renowned evolutionary and behavioural biologist at the forefront of molecular science”; and by Alex Wild – in his Myrmecos (ant) blog – as “a soft-spoken Australian who ushered social insects into the age of molecular biology”. He was Professor of Genetics at LaTrobe University from 1990, and from 2000 Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at James Cook University in Townsville until awarded an Australian Research Council professorial fellowship in 2006 – in which year he also received the inaugural Hamilton award by the International Union for the Study of Social Insects at its world congress in Washington. In 2003 he was elected to the Australian Academy of Sciences in recognition of his contribution to “the world’s scientific knowledge of tropical biology and, in particular, the fields of molecular evolution, molecular phylogeny, and the sociobiology of insects”. Ross’s passion for ants will be remembered by many of his contemporaries at GGS. He is survived by his wife, Ching, their sons, Ken and Michael, a granddaughter, and his brother, Brian Crozier (M’65), and sister, Judy. Brian describes Ross’s life as one “of wonderful consistency,
a more or less straight line all the way from Malayan termites when he was seven to membership of the Council of the Australian Academy of Sciences”. (Ross did not forget the School: I had a touching e-mail greeting from him for my birthday, only two days before he died of a heart-attack in his office at Townsville.) Sam Staughton (P’64), after running a family property, Wolbunya, near Benalla, for some years, became a full-time and successful painter at the Redbox Studio in Melbourne where he was a provocative and much-loved mentor to many other artists. At the age of 14 he painted, in oils, a study of the Shell Refinery at Corio by night, and this (which with typical kindness he gave me as a present) was reproduced in the book Shell Geelong Refinery: 50 Years in Geelong by Marcella Hunter, published in 2004. His last exhibition – “Twin Peaks” (paintings of scenes in the You Yangs and at Hanging Rock) – was held in Melbourne shortly before his death in July. His and Marian’s children all followed him to GGS: Thomas (P’97), Sophia (Cl’00), and Emma (Cl’05). Bruce Wilson (Cu’66) has succeeded Robert Beggs AM (FB’53) as Chairman of the Council of Marcus Oldham Farm Management College, which owes so much to OGGs including Robert’s father, Arthur Beggs CBE (P’25), its foundation Chairman from 196276. Its first Principal was Ivo Dean OAM (GGS Staff 1959-61). Andrew Lemon (FB’67) has completed his trilogy of volumes collectively called The History of Australian Thoroughbred Racing, of which the third volume – published along with updated editions of the first two volumes in 2008 by Hardie Grant – is subtitled In Our Time, 1939 to 2007. In 2009 it was declared joint winner of the biennial Australian Society for Sports History Book Award, and Andrew was elected president of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria in its centenary year. News of his OGG children appears below. In addition, his daughter Frances, based in Toronto, has in 2009 published her first book, Live and Work in Canada, which includes – in Andrew’s words – “a fine autobiographical essay by Gerald Garnett (FB’66), who with his wife, Mary, has lived and taught for more than 30 years in remote Kaslo on beautiful Kootenay Lake, British Columbia”. Simon Murray (M’70) goes in 2010 from the headmastership of Canberra Grammar School to that of St Peter’s College, Adelaide. Basil Hall (FB’72) over some 25 years has been encouraging and fostering Aboriginal printmaking, going to very remote communities to enable indigenous artists to produce often outstanding work. Having been invited to curate an exhibition, “Etched in the Sun”, this year at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London (see the next paragraph), he went from Australia to do so. What was shown was, in his words, “a small sample of the enormous production that has taken place in some Darwin studios over the last 12 years”. Basil, who is director of Basil Hall Editions (and, in Rebecca’s words, “incredibly
self-deprecating”, never seeking to impose his own style on the artists with whom he works), in his introduction to the exhibition stressed the value of collaboration: “At its best, a real collaboration produces something which couldn’t have been made by either party acting alone …. something pretty special, a meeting of minds …. Sometimes the strength of the work lies in the idea behind it, its historical importance, its aesthetic beauty – but, to the artists who made the images, each one of them represents a strong story of which they are extremely proud. Their willingness to share them with us is a generous gift.” Rebecca Hossack (L’73), having abandoned the law for a career in art, studied at Christie’s, worked at the Guggenheim in Venice, and in 1988 set up her own gallery in London. She now has two galleries there (in Fitzrovia) – and a fine reputation for championing Aboriginal as well as other art. From 1993-97 she was the Australian cultural attaché in the United Kingdom, and she writes in the national press and lectures internationally. She found, when in various ways celebrating 21 years of introducing Aboriginal art into Britain, that the rise of indigenous Australian printmaking stemmed largely from Basil Hall (see the paragraph immediately above). In 2008 she ran in the New York Marathon, raising about $50,000 for planting trees in Central London. Anson Cameron (M’78) is the author of Stealing Picasso (Vintage, 2009). He writes often for The Age, and was interviewed by Catherine Keenan in its issue of 12 September. Richard Allen (P’80) is the author of Australia’s Remarkable Trees (Melbourne University Press [Miegunyah imprint], 2009), with Kimbal Baker as photographer. Jane Barrie née Evans (Je’86) was inadvertently omitted from the 1983 list in Timbertop: Celebrating Fifty Years. Sam Austin (Cu’87), whose marriage and fatherhood are recorded below, is a Police Constable based in Warrnambool. The Honourable Sprent Dabwido MP (FB/L’91) has represented Menang in the Nauruan parliament since 2004. Dr Barbara Lemon (Ga’98) was awarded her PhD degree by the University of Melbourne for her thesis in history entitled “In Her Gift: Activism and Altruism in Australian Women’s Philanthropy, 1880 to 2005”. Since then she has produced and presented three fulllength documentaries for Hindsight on ABC Radio National. She is working in research and policy with The Foundation for Young Australians. Geoffrey Lemon (FB’99) has completed a first-class BA Honours degree at the University of Melbourne – and been widely published in Best Australian Stories and Heat and elsewhere. Winner of the New South Wales State Slam, the Melbourne Slam, and the Melbourne Writers’ Festival Poetry Idol titles, he has been poetry editor of harvest, and 37