Morning tea for Brisbane Grammar School sesquicentenary celebrations

Chairman of the Board of Trustees; Headmaster; students past and present; ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for the warm welcome you have extended to me on this important day in the 150-year history of Brisbane Grammar School.

I am delighted to be here in my dual capacity as the Governor of Queensland and the school’s Official Visitor.

Today, we are celebrating the proud record of what is certainly one of Queensland’s oldest and most respected places of learning.

In 1868, the year Brisbane Grammar School was established, the Colony of Queensland was only in its fifth year.

Australia had a population of about 1.5 million people at the time, slightly more than 106,000 of whom lived in Queensland.

Brisbane was a young settlement of not even 15,000 when Prince Alfred, second son of Queen Victoria, laid the foundation stone for the original school, a few hundred metres away at the site of what is now Roma Street Railway Station.

Queensland has changed tremendously over the past 150 years. But what has remained is Brisbane Grammar School’s commitment to endeavour, learning, respect, leadership and community.

Queensland and Brisbane Grammar School have indeed grown together.

The school has been intimately connected with Queensland governors, premiers, members of parliament and senior members of the judiciary.

The list of exceptional individuals who have graduated from this marvellous institution and left their mark on the world is long and will undoubtedly continue to grow.

For more than 50 years, from when I was enrolled at a competitor Brisbane school, I have greatly admired and respected the achievements of students of Brisbane Grammar School.

Your students tend to set a formidable level of achievement, difficult for any school to emulate.

Speaking of the students, who have for more than 150 years been the school, there is no doubt the ethos of the school in the institutional sense has buoyed and emboldened them to do their very best.

And I am accordingly most pleased, indeed privileged, to acknowledge the significant contribution of the school, through its students, to the public good in this state.

I offer my warmest congratulations and wish you all the best, now and in the future.

Today, we are not only celebrating the successes of the past, we are celebrating the successes of many generations to come.

Thank you.