Old Boy’s Legacy Lives On

Old Boy’s Legacy Lives On

It’s a far cry to go from earning three shillings as a school sweeper to living in a stately home many years later. This was the journey of Old Boy Frank Walker (1897), the most significant benefactor to Brisbane Grammar School in the postwar years.

Walker was born in the small Queensland town of Springsure in 1879, later moving to Brisbane with his family and attending Kelvin Grove Boys’ State School where his father was headmaster.

He proved to be a star pupil, winning a government scholarship and the chance to attend BGS from 1893 to 1897. Walker said his family, like many others, was hit hard by the prevailing economic depression.

Walker was awarded the Lilley Silver Medal Upper School in 1895, passing the Sydney University Senior examination in nine subjects in 1897. His school career was impacted by a dose of typhoid in Sixth Form.

He said that it was a terrible blow not to go to university, finishing fourth for one of only three open scholarships awarded. He later found out that Headmaster Reginald Heber Roe and the Trustees had tried to get the Sydney University authorities to let him sit the exam again.

“Had I passed, it was Dad’s idea for me to take up medicine, which I hated and was quite unsuited for,” Walker said. Instead, he entered the Public Service and took up engineering in the Electrical Engineers Branch of the Postmaster General’s Department, rising through the ranks to become Assistant Superintending Engineer before retiring to Redland Bay.

He recalled these events in an address to the School in 1950, emphasising the importance of giving and saying that the boys and masters should do their ‘utmost for this grand old school.’ Walker said that the source of the money he’d accumulated started when he was a lad of 19 and working in the Postmaster General’s Department.

He sent £10 out of his annual salary of £70 to his mother’s distant relative in Yorkshire who was suffering from a bitter winter. Walker said that he continued to send her £10 each Christmas and when she died he was bequeathed £300. “That £300 was the foundation stone of any money I have accumulated,” he said.

In March 1950 Frank wrote to the School Trustees, itemising the £11,295 he’d donated to the School, from the £9000 for the new gymnasium and £1000 for the swimming pool, down to the £10 bread cutter for School House. In today’s money, these donations would amount to well over $500,000.

Walker was 70 years old when he married 41-year-old Doreen Ida “Billie” L’Estrange on 31 March 1950. The wedding was publicised in the press with headlines like ‘Grammar School Benefactor Weds’.

He embarked on the Orcades from Sydney less than a month later on 29 April, arriving in Southampton with his proposed address noted in the passenger list as Kildwick Hall,

near Keighley, Yorkshire. Kildwick Hall had apparently been the setting for a silent film version of Wuthering Heights, which explains Walker’s handwritten inscription in a book he donated to the School and included a photo of him wearing his Naval Auxiliary Patrol cap.

Walker wrote to the Trustees in June 1952 to say he was on a cruise to get away from two years’ restoration of Kildwick Hall and expected to return to Brisbane with his wife after the Coronation to see the completed gymnasium and swimming pool.

Fate took a hand in Walker’s life. By October that year he was hospitalised in Southampton and his affairs were being handled by the official solicitor, Royal Courts of Justice in London. Sadly, Walker was not able to return to his old school to attend the opening of the new Memorial Gymnasium by Old Boy and Governor of Queensland, Sir John Lavarach, on 27 October 1953.

His wife Doreen, who was living at her pre-marital home in Ascot, was in attendance and informed Headmaster Allen McLucas that she would write to her husband with details of the gymnasium and opening ceremony.

Walker died at Virginia Water in northwest Surrey on 3 September 1955 at the age of 75.

Though this was more than 60 years ago, Walker’s legacy lives on. He is listed on the Great Hall’s Distinguished Service Honour Board and his name is perpetuated through three Frank Walker prizes awarded on Speech Day. They include the Frank Walker Prize for the dux of Science in Year 10 as well as two prizes he endowed in 1931 for the dux of Senior Physics and the dux of Senior Chemistry.

Frank Walker is pictured on page 14 as part of the BGS Timeline of Giving.

Vivien Harris – School Archivist