Visit to Quilpie State College, Quilpie

Thank you for inviting me to visit your school today. It is one of my favourite things to do when I go to a place, because it tells me so much about the town.

Your school is at the heart of your community, and that makes every one of you very special. You are all ambassadors for Quilpie, and I can tell that you are very proud of it.

Your school makes history in September, when it becomes one of the small, select group of schools to have reached its golden year.

That is such a momentous milestone that it would seem to some of you, especially those in the younger grades, that you have been preparing for it since you enrolled!

It will be a wonderful celebration, and I count myself lucky to be visiting in your centenary year.

Many young lives have been influenced over the course of those hundred years.

Part of who we become as adults is shaped by our school years.

I, too, was educated for a time in a regional school, and that has had a lasting impact on the person I grew up to become.

Those school-day experiences stay with you, and to this day I vividly remember the journey from home to school, the friends that I made, and the subjects I enjoyed.

Back then we didn’t have access to iPads and computers, of course. There were no YouTube clips and interactive games in the classroom. We would just sit quietly and copy notes off the board.

But, like you, we would run around at lunch time and get into trouble for running near the buildings, and like you we would get involved in sport, and music, and extra-curricular activities.

 And, like you, we would sometimes slow down long enough to let the occasional thought about our futures cross our minds.

Wonderful opportunities await you, whether here in Quilpie, further away in Brisbane or perhaps interstate or internationally.

You won’t always recognise those opportunities immediately, but you do have to be prepared for when they come along.

Learn all you can: about your subjects, about your hobbies, about yourself. Work hard, because it is through doing your best that you get the greatest satisfaction. As your school motto says: Work to Excel.

Know that your school years are just the beginning of your life’s adventure, and make the very most of them.

The memories you make here will last a lifetime.