Bridge Builders

In 1923, Mr Osborn Thomas Fenwick, the son of a stonemason, graduated from Brisbane Grammar School, becoming the first Old Boy in a BGS family that now spans four generations.

Fifteen of Fenwick’s sons, grandsons and great-grandsons have since attended BGS, while six daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters have attended Brisbane Girls Grammar School.

The Fenwick family’s reputation for academic excellence began with Osborn and his older sister Marjorie.

Marjorie won the Lilley Memorial Medal in 1914 while ‘Oz’, as he was known at BGS, won the Harlin Prize, the Sir James Cockle Prize, the Harold Plant Memorial Prize, the Bowen Prize, and an Open Scholarship to The University of Queensland.

Osborn was also a champion runner, captain of the Rugby First VX in 1922 and 1923, and narrowly missed out on winning the Lilley Gold Medal because he was not a student of Latin.

After Osborn graduated from UQ and went to work as a civil engineer, his daughter Elizabeth attended BGGS while sons Tom and John graduated from BGS and studied engineering at UQ.

In 1966, John became the 17th BGS Old Boy to receive a Rhodes Scholarship to study at The University of Oxford.

John, who had been involved in the initial design of Brisbane’s Riverside Expressway, went to work for the State Government as a civil engineer.

“There was a strange family connection with the bridges over Bramble Bay. During the 1950s, my father was a consulting engineer in charge of maintaining the Hornibrook Highway – the old timber bridge crossing Bramble Bay from Sandgate to Redcliffe,” John said.

“I remember him taking me down there when I was about 12 or so, and we spent Saturday in a rowboat supervising the replacement of a timber girder halfway along the bridge while it was under traffic. My brother Tom also was involved in maintaining this bridge while working for Dad’s firm in the 1970s.

“I eventually supervised the building of the second bridge to Redcliffe, the Houghton Highway, completed in 1979. So, there was a certain continuity and history in that.”

John was subsequently involved in the design specifications and proof engineering of the Gateway Bridge, which was the longest span of its type in the world when it was opened in 1986.

Meanwhile, Tom was appointed Commissioner of Water Resources, serving under four governments from 1986 until his retirement in 2003.

All of Osborn Fenwick’s children – John, Tom and Elizabeth – sent their own children to BGS or BGGS.

Looking back on a century of history at BGS, John said there was a touch of serendipity in the fact that his father Osborn was of school age in the decade between World War I and the Great Depression.

“If he’d been five years older, he could have ended up in the war, and if he’d been five years younger it’s likely he wouldn’t have finished university because of the Depression,” John said. “It’s all a matter of luck – when you’re born and where you’re born.”

Recognising the family’s good fortune, the Fenwicks have given back to BGS. John served for two decades on the Board of Trustees while Marye has volunteered many hours in various roles assisting the School’s Archivist and helping out in Advancement and Community Relations.

In 2015 their son Simon, who graduated from BGS in 1987, established the Fenwick Bursary to cover tuition and boarding fees for two regional or Indigenous students in perpetuity.

Thanks to Simon’s generosity, in 2020 the first recipient of the Fenwick Bursary graduated from BGS and is now studying at UQ.

“I am a third generation of BGS, yet I have daughters, so there will be no fourth,” Simon explained.

But while there are no boys with the Fenwick name currently enrolled at the School, the Fenwick Bursary is creating life-changing opportunities for future generations of Indigenous and regional boys – building a permanent bridge to BGS and beyond.