SPOSA President

2022 has been a good year for SPOSA.

LLEWELLYN JONES Sposa President and Old Scholar (1983) This year, we have celebrated the achievements of our Old Scholars in their endeavours. This included congratulating 11 of our cohort on their representation at this year’s Olympic Games. It's been said that St Peters would have ranked fourth in the medals table at the end of the first week of the Games, if we’d been a separate country. An amazing statistic, and behind the numbers is the hard slog, determination, sacrifice and teamwork which delivers that kind of success. Our Old Scholars are striving and achieving in many fields, often unheralded, and we celebrate them all. We have welcomed Old Scholars back to the school to participate in a range of extracurricular events including some entertaining Old Scholar vs current students sporting contests. We have Old Scholars as valued mentors and back-up players in musical concerts and as spectators and audience members to cheer on the team and enjoy watching the amazing talents of our current students. Quite often it is family members who come to support and there is an increasing inter-generational pool of parents and grandparents at the College who are themselves Old Scholars. It was particularly pleasing, and an honour to welcome Old Scholar and parent, Noel Pearson (1982), back to the school to unveil the Acknowledgement of Country plaque at the Harts Rd entrance, a plaque designed by Tully Button (2021). How good is it to be part of a community that publicly acknowledges our First Nation people, recognises the importance of their custodianship and the special place our Aboriginal and Torres Strait brothers and sisters have in our society. It is also great to see our Old Scholars reconnecting with each other at reunions. At this year’s Reunion Weekend lunch in the old refectory, now called Café 45 (how posh! Plus, the food is top notch too), we were treated to a viewing and Directors Commentary of a fabulous home movie of life on campus in the 1960s by Garth Dennis (1962). And surprisingly, we were all able to remember the words to the old school war cry! How we came, for many years, to be chanting a Maori Haka as our school war cry is one of life’s mysteries – but it became part of the DNA for many of us. We also acknowledged the life, legacy and contribution of those Old Scholars who have passed on. This year that included honorary Old Scholar, a champion of our school - and our SPOSA Patron - Bill Curnow. We rang the Chapel bell in memory of all our passing Old Scholars and cherish their contribution to our lives. Looking forward, the SPOSA Committee has continued to lean-in to ways which we can invest for future generations of Old Scholars, ensuring the vitality and relevance of our association into the future as our member base grows. This has included the 'Find Your Future' program, the SPOSA Bursaries to current students, which we have increased this year, and the prizes for the winners of St Peters You’ve Got Talent. Our next investment is a kiosk in the new Centre for Learning and Innovation – replacing Luther House in the centre of the Indooroopilly campus. We hope that this will create a physical presence and opportunity to engage current students in the history of their school, build awareness of their place in the ongoing community of St Peters as 'A Saint for Life'. We believe that there will be more opportunities to strengthen the bonds of recent Old Scholars to the SPOSA community, and we welcome all our Old Scholars present and future for ideas and participation. May I take this opportunity to thank our industrious Alumni Officers, Rowena Lester and Virginia Cordingley, who hold us all together. Thanks to our Committee – we’ve got some exciting ideas already for next year! To our Old Scholars who have written in, participated and turned up – thank you. See you all at Carols – a wonderful school community event which is rapidly becoming the new Herbstfest. There you go, I said that out loud.