2013 Annual Review

SPEECH DAY 14 NOVEMBER 2013 THE OCCASIONAL ADDRESS MS ANN HARRAP (BGGS, ‘84)

plan about what I was going to do, about how my life would turn out — circumstances, fate, chance, and opportunity served to change that. But the point I would make is that with the benefit of the high quality education I had at this School, with the confidence I felt in myself about being able to follow my dreams, and with the flexibility that I had been encouraged to develop, I was able to take that leap of faith. How you deal with changes of fate and fortune, with challenges, and with crises, will be what defines you. Of course I hope you all have the family you want, the job you want, the money you want, and the life you want. But if things don’t quite go the way you imagine them now as you sit here, know that with the adaptability and resilience that you have — those characteristics that are so much a part of being a Grammar girl — you are still destined to prevail. As a former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt once said: We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For us, is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.

She proved him wrong in the best possible way — by entering politics and becoming a successful and eminent state Cabinet Minister.

So to all of you as aspiring leaders — whether in public life, in the private sector, in your communities, or at home — know that you are the right age, the right sex and from the right place and it is vital for you to make your voice heard, to be bold and be successful — because that is the best and the only response to those who might seek to discourage you. There is one final point I would like to make. It’s one that I did not reflect on much when I was graduating although in hindsight I think it’s important to do so — and that is the fact that things don’t always turn out the way you plan. Or in the words of Mick Jagger, ‘you can’t always get what you want’. For me when I had finished my Arts/Law degree at Queensland University I was always going to be Jana Wendt — she was a well-known successful Australian journalist at the time — and I was going to have a large family. I ended up being a diplomat with three stepdaughters. My prospective journalism career flew out the window during the year I took off after Uni to backpack around Africa. I was hitching outside of Cape Town (not something that I suggest young people do these days!) and I was picked up by an Australian diplomat. I spent a couple of days with her and decided that there was a lot of similarity between journalism and diplomacy — in particular the need for a curious mind and a love of communication — and I switched career paths. In other words, even though at the end of school I had a fixed

Thank you.

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BRISBANE GIRLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL 2013 Annual Review