SPOSA
6161
"THE ST PETERS BOY" 14 APRIL 1931 - 5 OCTOBER 2020 Neville Stallman (Scholarship 1945 – Junior 1947) NICK Y BOYNTONBRICKNELL
old scholar
H
ow sad, that in St Peters’ 75th year, her first son passed away, the boy, who in College lore was known as 'Mr Schneider’s first pupil'. As Ross Roy was renovated to suit the new College and a boys’ dorm was built, young Neville spent his Christmas holidays toiling away doing the jobs too fiddly for the volunteer men: pulling and straightening nails; soldering; crawling under Ross Roy and in the ceiling space to find the water pipes and cables. Some evenings he didn’t make it home to Ipswich. Neville became a true contributor to the establishment of his school. During his time as a weekly boarder he was a scholar, an athlete, a Prefect, an artist and a writer. Neville left the College at the beginning of his Sub Senior year, 1948 to join the Public Service as a clerk in the Department of Public Works and completed his Senior Certificate in 1949, at night, by private study. He earned his Bachelor of Science in 1958 at UQ, as an evening student, majoring in Chemistry and Microbiology. Neville’s impressive career path led him from the Public Service to life as a microbiologist. He held the following positions: Director, WHO/FAO Leptospirosis Reference and Research Laboratory; Scientist in Charge, WHO Arbovirus Reference and Research Laboratory; Secretary, Subcommittee on the Taxonomy of Leptospira of the International Committee on Systematic Bacteriology; Scientist in Charge, Laboratory of Microbiology and Pathology, and Forensic Biology Unit. Neville made numerous round-the-world study tours to study recent developments in medical laboratory diagnostic procedures and forensic biology methodology. He was involved in the design of the purpose-built Forensic Biology Unit of the John Tonge Centre, and the recommendations for the preferred methodology to be used for the introduction of DNA Profiling. In 1991 he was admitted as a Fellow of the Australian Society
of Microbiologists and retired in the same year. After retirement, he was asked to be a consultant to the Government of the Federated States of Micronesia to investigate an outbreak of Leptospirosis, and to recommend control measures. Neville’s family recall that besides research into mosquito-borne and 'pregnant lady' diseases at the Health Department, he also did forensic work for the Queensland Police Department for many years. This forensic work was often in Papua New Guinea and nearly always involved murders. Police visits were a regular occurrence at home or while on holidays at the Gold Coast, much to the neighbours’ interest. His most famous court case was the Deidre Kennedy case, where his evidential work appeared in Justice in Jeopardy – The Unsolved Murder of Baby Deidre Kennedy by Debi Marshall. There were also visits to the morgue with the children to see the results of the regular weekend carnage – before they went for their drivers’ licences! Neville and Rosslyn married in 1960. A man of many interests and skills, Neville cooked, tinkered, gardened and farmed and, researched. He had a deep interest in the history of St Peters and he and Rosslyn assisted with the research for Upon This Rock – the first fifty years of St Peters Lutheran College, compiling the Appendices – recording the names and dates of every member of the College campus community up to 1995. Children: Karen (1975-1979), Malcolm (1976 – 1981), Fiona (1979 – 1983) and Adrian (1981 – 1985) all attended St Peters, as have several grandchildren.
Plus Ultra | November 2020
