Objects of Substance- 2002 Boarders’ Plaque

1978 “Scrape” or afternoon tea for the boarders behind the Main Building

This boarding experience was important for so many girls. Beth Hatty (Fitzgerald 1985) writes “ Boarding opened a whole new world for a young girl from a property 45 km from their closest town in southwest Queensland. Suddenly I had every sport I could imagine available at my doorstep to access both before and after school, as well as weekends. In addition, boarding with girls from a wide range of backgrounds exposed me to places, ideas, and ways of looking at the world and changed what I believed could be my place in it. ” Beth Hatty continues, “ Without being able to access boarding, these opportunities would have passed me by, and I believe I would be a very different person than I am today. I was fortunate to be a third generation BGGS student and was extremely disappointed when I heard of the announcement to close boarding facilities at BGGS. This precluded my daughter from being able to take her place as a fourth generation BGGS student. ” In 1997, Dr Cherrell Hirst, Chair of Trustees, announced at Speech Day, “Among the celebrations of the year, however, were times of difficult decision-making by the Board and the hardest of these was the decision with regard to the boarding house. The decision of the Board to phase out boarding at Brisbane Girls Grammar School after 122 years was not made easily or hastily and only after months of deliberation. The decision was made not primarily for financial reason, it was not made to meet increasing demand from daygirls, it was not made to provide more space – no – that difficult decision was made because the Board believes that no longer can this school pretend that we can go on providing an optimal residential experience for 12-17 year old girls in this setting of a primarily academic campus in the centre of a busy and noisy city.” (1997 Dr Cherrell Hirst Speech Day Address) Thus, the boarders, according to Allana Smith (1998) and Sarah Hyne (1998), became “an endangered species”, with the winding down of numbers from sixty-nine girls in 1998 to six girls in 2002. In preparation for the closure of the House, Mrs Elvie Parsons, as Head of Boarding, had the responsibility of ensuring a fitting finale of 126 years of boarding and the celebration for the remaining six boarders. Part of this salute was the commissioning of the plaque previously