2013 Annual Review

tradition. You will instead become the most junior members of the alumnae — or body of past students — of the School. I hope that you will also all join up and become members of the Old Girls Association and enjoy an active lifelong relationship with the School through that 114-year-old association. No matter what, though, you will always be a member of the School’s alumnae. This means that no matter how far and wide you range in your life, you too will always be a custodian of some little part of the life and soul and fabric of this School. Treat it with care, for the sake of those yet to come. Put your school badge and a few other treasured mementos of these years in a safe place and one day 30 years from now when you take them out and gaze at them as your daughter, your niece or your best friend’s daughter receives her leaving certificate, I think then that you will know what I mean. The School belongs to none of you and it belongs to all of you. But more fittingly you belong to it.

Another good reason to reflect on the concept of custodianship this year is because we are now entering the final year of the current four-year term of the Board of Trustees. The Board has custodial responsibility for the governance of the School and takes that role very seriously. We share, I believe, a common understanding that the School does not belong to us but we to it. We are accountable to the School community for our custodianship. This is not the appropriate forum for a dissertation on the finer points of the Queensland Grammar Schools Act 1975 under which the Board and School are formed. Suffice to say under that Act, the board of seven Trustees comprises three who are elected from the Roll of Electors (or donors to the School) and four who are appointed, on the Board’s recommendation, by the Minister for Education. In May next year the election process for Trustees will begin for a new four-year Board term starting next November 2014. We will keep the School community well informed of that process and how you can engage in it, including if you are interested as a candidate for the Board. In the meantime, I would acknowledge and thank all of my fellow Trustees — Adjunct Professor Dr Mary Mahoney, Deputy Chair; Mr Tony Young, Chair of FAC; Mr David Vann; Mrs Margaret Huth; Ms Gillian Adams; and Ms Di Lohrisch who have all served your School with diligence and commitment over this past year in which we made one of the most critical decisions in more than a decade, namely the selection of a new Principal, and one of the most ground-breaking decisions of the past three decades in the acquisition of the School’s third campus at Figtree Pocket, to supplement our spiritual home on Gregory Terrace and our second campus, the Marrapatta Memorial Outdoor Education Centre at Imbil. That leaves me with only one last acknowledgement. Year 12s, at the close of tomorrow you will cease to be the most senior members of the student population and custodians of that

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BRISBANE GIRLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL 2013 Annual Review