13 minute read
CGS Alumni News
SYDNEY REUNION
On Friday 21 February, CGS hosted an Alumni Reunion in Sydney at the Republic Hotel. It was warming to see some of the old faces (some of whom the School has caught up within London before) and to welcome some new Alumni to the group.
This Reunion was off the back of a meeting with The Mentor Evolution, where the new Mentoring Programme was workshopped. Therefore, not only were the contingent able to talk to the group about the programme, it also gave the Alumni an opportunity to discuss mentoring amongst themselves and the possibility of establishing mentoring partnerships within the group.
The group stayed until late in the night and shared stories from School and favourite teacher memories.
These Reunions give the Community Development Office a chance to bring Alumni together who, in most circumstances, wouldn’t often mingle or even get the chance to meet. It once again proves how the bonds developed whilst at CGS transcend age and social circles, and their continued success is a testament to the value placed on these relationships.
REGIONAL VISITS AND DATES FOR DIARY
After a year impacted by bushfires and COVID-19, and the postponement of the regular community engagement programme, staff from the Community Development and Admissions Offices travelled to regional areas to catch up with our current families and to engage with prospective families.
Unfortunately, for the wellbeing and safety of the CGS community, the School does not currently plan to host any Alumni Reunions on-campus in 2020.
REMEMBERING PHIL RICHTER
In February, CGS School Vice-Captains India Kazakoff and Harry Kilcullen attended a commemorative service marking the 50th Anniversary of Operation Hammersley, where one of our Alumni, Phil Richter (class of 1965), tragically lost his life.
Operation Hammersely commenced in February 1970 in Phuoc Tuy province, Vietnam. The squadron was deployed to secure a quarry at the foot of the Long Hai Hill.
During the operation, 12 Australians were killed and 59 wounded with two more killed in the following days. One of the soldiers, Private Richter, was killed in action on 28 February, at 21 years of age.
The service not only marked the anniversary of Operation Hammersely but also commemorated the 70 Australian servicemen who were killed and wounded during it.
LAUNCH OF THE CGS ALUMNI MENTORING PROGRAMME
Earlier in the year, the School launched our Alumni Mentoring Programme with a few potential mentors and mentees from our Alumni community. Since then, more than 30 Alumni sign up as mentors, with experience across industries such as the military, legal services, healthcare, hospitality, real estate, banking and finance, media and communications, education, entrepreneurship and small business, and science and engineering. India and Harry were tasked with laying a wreath in honour of Private Richter in front of over 300 visitors including VIPs at the Australia Vietnam Forces National Memorial.
The Standard, Guidon, Regimental Colours, and Corps Banners representing the units which fought during Operation Hammersley were paraded, and a Call to Remember was voiced by 8RAR veteran of Operation Hammersely, Dr Robert Hall.
At the conclusion of the service, India and Harry were approached and thanked by some of the veterans
who remembered that Phil had attended CGS. With the breadth and depth of our community, there is a wealth of knowledge and expertise that the CGS Community Development & Alumni Office hope to leverage to prepare the School’s more recent graduates.
The School would like now to take the opportunity to invite our Alumni community to join the Alumni Mentoring Programme, either as mentees or mentors, in a collective effort to prepare our recent graduates to become even more ready for the world.
We hope that you are interested in taking the opportunity to connect with the Alumni mentors and draw on their wisdom, learnings, and experience.
FIND OUT MORE OR JOIN AT:
CGSALUMNI.ORG.AU/MENTORING
Many CGS Alumni are making a difference around Australia and worldwide, and the School loves to hear and share their stories.
DR JAMES MUEKE AM (CLASS OF 1981)
AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR
James was awarded one of Australia’s highest honours earlier this year when he was presented with the Australian of the Year award for his work in fighting blindness, especially among those with type 2 diabetes.
Through his charity Sight For All, he focuses on the leading cause of blindness—type 2 diabetes—which is now the leading cause of blindness amongst the working-age adults in Australia. It’s also the fastest-growing cause of blindness in Indigenous Australians and the sixth-biggest killer in this country.
With 80% of world blindness avoidable, and almost 90% in low-income countries, James treats blindness as a human rights issue. The charity’s comprehensive educational strategies positively impact the lives of over one million people each year.
‘The concerning thing is that blindness due to diabetes is virtually all preventable or treatable’ said James.
He is using his Australian of the Year accolade as a platform to advocate for measures to tackle preventable blindness caused by diabetes, including advocating for a sugar tax! James said a tax on sugary drinks must be a part of efforts to prevent and manage type 2 diabetes—which afflicts at least 1.2 million Australians and costs the economy an estimated $15 billion a year, including in terms of lost productivity. He comments that sugar is ‘as addictive as nicotine’ and is cheap and ubiquitous, so it’s readily accessible to everyone. Sugar consumption through sugary drinks and processed food is climbing every year, as is the obesity and type 2 diabetes statistics.
‘Blindness is just one of many complications of diabetes and, as an eye surgeon, I see the end stages of the disease. What we should be doing is going right back to the start and saying “what’s causing type 2 diabetes” and that’s a dietary disease due to consumption of too much sugar and refined carbohydrates in processed food’ said James.
James said he also wanted to encourage people with diabetes to get their eyes checked.
‘The problem is, more than half the people with this disease are not having their regular sight-saving eye checks. They’re coming in too late, sometimes too late for treatment, too late to reverse the vision loss’ he said.
Sourced from ‘Australian of the Year Calls for Sugar Tax to Fight Diabetes Caused Blindness’ in The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 2020 and ‘Diabetes is a Blinding Disease’ AUSTRALIADAYSA.COM.AU, 8 April 2020.
BRANDON WOOD (CLASS OF 1987)
Brandon graduated from CGS in 1987 and went straight to the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) and into the Army, and has never left! He has enjoyed over three decades in this line of employment, which has taken him to some of the most remote places in Australia and some equally magnificent yet contested countries of the world. After a brief period where he thought he had settled back in Canberra, he was fortunate to be offered the position of Defence Attache in the Australian Embassy in Baghdad, which he accepted in 2017.
In a fortuitous turn of events, Brandon found himself deployed to the Middle East with two of his classmates from CGS.
‘Three of us from the same class, who all joined the Army and went to ADFA, were deployed together to the Middle East, 30 years after leaving School together’ said Brandon.
Brandon and classmate Rupert Hoskin AM were in Iraq, while Craig Shortt was deployed to Afghanistan. Concurrently, they covered diverse appointments in the Middle East – Rupert was in Kuwait and Iraq, serving as the head of plans and Coalition coordination for the mission to defeat the Islamic State; Craig was in Afghanistan, acting as the operations manager for US and NATO forces; and Brandon was managing Australia’s broad defence relationship with Iraq.
According to Brandon, 2017 was a fascinating year to be in Iraq since that year, the Iraqi Security Forces regained almost all the territory ISIS had previously captured.
Upon his return to Canberra, he was fortunate to be briefly seconded to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet until early 2019 when the Government decided Australia would strengthen its defence links with Israel. This is how he came to be the first resident Australian Defence Attache in Tel Aviv.
‘I have been in Israel for just over a year and am still thoroughly enjoying and trying to understand the political and security complexities of this region’ said Brandon.
BRANDON WOOD (LEFT) AND RUPERT HOSKIN (RIGHT) AT THE AUSTRALIAN EMBASSY IN IRAQ.
BILL BIRTLES (CLASS OF 2002) ABC’S CHINA CORRESPONDENT
Bill is currently posted in Beijing as ABC’s China correspondent. Bill has been in the Chinese capital since 2015 when the ABC posted him there, but the path to China was paved years earlier.
After graduating from CGS in 2002, he entered the University of New South Wales and later started a career in journalism, initially in radio. He’d worked for Triple J as a journalist but decided to start learning Mandarin and ended up heading off to Beijing when he was 24. He studied the language and worked in a Chinese television newsroom during a time when China was still growing fast with a dizzying sense of optimism.
He then headed back to ABC in Sydney and Melbourne before landing the China posting and returning to Beijing.
‘It’s a huge privilege to travel throughout China and report at a time when it’s rapidly becoming the world’s biggest story’ said Bill.
‘The optimism of my first stint 10 years ago has changed—it has become a lot tougher for Western media to operate here now and an increasing amount of my time is spent covering flashpoints like Hong Kong, Trade Wars or diplomatic stoushes between Australia and China. Yet the work never ceases to amaze me—from getting teargassed in Hong Kong, to watching missiles parade past Tiananmen Square, to escaping midnight coronavirus lockdowns in Wuhan; there’s rarely a dull day, and I’m very lucky to be in the right place at what feels like the right point in history.’
JULIAN BAILEY (CLASS OF 1974)
PURSUING A LIFE OF SONG
Throughout his years at CGS, Julian enjoyed learning music, playing piano, and singing in the Chapel Choir but compelled by the wishes of his family, went to study Law and Economics at the University of Melbourne in 1975. It only took a couple of years before the encouragement he received from two professional musicians at the university (concert pianist Ron Farren Price and the Victoria State Opera conductor Richard Divall) persuaded him to change his study to a Bachelor of Music (Honours in Piano Performance), which he graduated within 1983.
During and post-university, Julian worked as a full-time musician as a chorus singer in the Victoria State Opera, a vocal teacher and as a piano accompanist, and has developed a modern, economical, and minimalist method of teaching singing that he calls ‘Singing Logic’.
In 1992, Julian’s life transformed when he suddenly found himself without employment. He made a career change to become a salesman for the AMP Society. Today, he is a Financial Planner with AMP Financial Planning but has been able to continue fine-tuning his music performance skills as the flexibility of his employment has afforded him the time to release two professional standard CDs, one of which is also available as an LP.
‘It’s quite a blast to have my own vinyl’ said Julian.
Reflecting on his career, Julian has a genuine interest in his clients and in the value of the products he provides for them. He also loves being able to divide his time between this and his passion for music.
‘Music continues to thrill me to my core, and if I were to provide one piece of advice, it would be “ask yourself what do you enjoy doing so much that you would do it even if no-one paid you?” and do that!’ said Julian.
WANT TO HEAR MORE STORIES FROM ALUMNI? VISIT CGSALUMNI.ORG.AU
WANT TO SHARE YOUR LIFE SINCE CGS? TELL US WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN UP TO SINCE LEAVING CGS BY VISITING CGSAALUMNI.ORG.AU/CONTACT/WHERE-ARE-YOU-NOW
ENTREPRENEURIAL INGENUITY EMERGES
When CGS Alumnus Ewen Hollingsworth (Class of 2003) and his wife Jen, watched the announcements roll in about the nationwide shut-down, they were devastated for all the Australian businesses forced to close their doors. As small business owners themselves, they knew first-hand how difficult the future would be.
They decided there and then to call a number of their favourite small businesses with an offer: to pay them now for a service they could redeem when this was all over. After Jen called her favourite hairdresser, the couple realised that a lot of people might like to do the same for their favourite small business, so that night they started Vouch for You, a not-for-profit online voucher marketplace for small businesses.
Vouch for You guarantees small businesses from all industries cashflow now, when they need it most, and businesses can even determine what discount they are willing to offer customers as an added incentive to participate in this initiative. There are currently 1,200 businesses registered already Australia-wide.
Both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores can use the Vouch For You platform—equally those who already offer vouchers and those who want to start.
Customers can peruse the businesses by searching using location, industry, service, or price criteria, ensuring that customers are put in touch with products and services they’ll love.
Ewen Hollingsworth hopes that Vouch for You not only helps businesses now by allowing their current customers (and new customers) to purchase vouchers now but also can assist them long-term as well. ‘Australia has worked hard to come out of the pandemic, but this is going to impact businesses for a long time to come – and we wanted to provide them with a platform that will help grow their business, mitigate their risk and put them in a strong position well into the future.
‘Our platform provides this for them, and we want to be on this journey with them for a long time. We also know that there are a lot of individuals facing a period of financial difficulty, and we want to help them access their most-loved businesses in a new, more affordable way’ said Ewen.
The 2003 Vice-Captain of Canberra Grammar School also included a ‘Pay It Forward’ option, allowing customers to purchase a second voucher at the checkout, for the selected business to give out at their discretion to another loyal customer who may be facing hardship. Basically, it’s humans vouching for their favourite businesses in need, and businesses vouching for their favourite humans in need.
‘We see it as the Airbnb for small business. In the same way as a hotel in Orange might already have their own online presence but post themselves on Airbnb for the additional exposure—we provide that same exposure to small businesses of all types’ Ewan continued.
Vouch for You launched in June, so register your interest as either a small business owner or sign up to support local businesses and score a great discount, head to VOUCHFORYOU.COM.AU
STAY CONNECTED WITH ALUMNI
If you’re not connected already, you could be missing out on eNews, reunion information and networking opportunities! CGS greatly values its former students, staff and parents and encourages your continuing relationship with the School.
If you or someone you know has lost contact with the School, reconnect by email or social media.
COMMUNITY@CGS.ACT.EDU.AU CGSALUMNI.ORG.AU
