LIFE AT FULL TILT

A scholarship in memory of Richard Guest

Thea Guest (Je’77) “My brother Richard was a one off. He was not in the football team or the cricket team. He wore glasses. Academic study came easily to him.He was quick-witted and subversive, with a sharp eye for the absurd and funny. He was not at all conventional. GGS was perfect for him and the close friends he made there – the School relishes square pegs in round holes. And he revelled in everything the School had to offer.”

The second-born of four siblings to parents James (M’55, School Captain) and Sarah Guest, Richard Guest (FB’79) began his Geelong Grammar School adventures at Glamorgan, as the Toorak Campus was then known, during the heady days of the sixties. “Their philosophy was ‘let them run a little’, and Richard thrived”, said his brother Matthew (FB’80). “He made the best billy carts, films with Ian Darling (P’79), ingenious marble alleys, and a ninechannel remote control that could boss around two Richard-built boats.”

At home, sister Thea (Je’77) and brothers Matthew and Owen (FB’88) have riotous memories of a “garden full of (Richard-built) tree houses with arboreal walkways turning homo sapiens into monkeys. Alas, these walkways were not for the study of fauna and flora, but to get over the back laneway to pelt cars with rotten vegetables!”

School at Corio continued to be an adventure for Richard, who was not unduly weighed down by his two scholarships, and “he spent hours in the wood, metal, art and science rooms, and gave debating a crack”, recalled Matthew. Richard really loved Timbertop and discovered a passion for conservation and the natural world. As a shaggy-haired uni student, Richard plastered all the family cars, and some belonging to those of his unwitting neighbours, with “No Dams” stickers to protest against the destruction of the Tasmanian wilderness.

Academically, Richard was gifted, scooping up Year 12 prizes in pure and applied mathematics, physics, chemistry and economics. “He helped many of us through maths and physics”, recalled Professor Fergus Cameron (FB’79). “The linoleum between his study door and mine – and Steve Geroe’s (FB’79) – was well worn! While FB wasn’t really known as an academic fortress at that time, Richard’s presence alone considerably lifted our average performance.” Richard placed third in Victoria in the HSC and became dux of GGS, but the “ready wit and very sharp sense of humour” that Fergus remembered was Richard’s parting gift to the School. On his final day, he and another lifelong friend, Roddy Mackenzie (P’79), connected fire hoses together and turned them on the teachers’ high table in the Dining Hall. “The drenching complete, to riotous applause they put down the hose, turned, and strolled away into their next chapter!” said Matthew. Richard really loved Timbertop and discovered a passion for conservation and the natural world. As a shaggy-haired uni student, Richard plastered all the family cars, and some belonging to those of his unwitting neighbours, with “No Dams” stickers to protest against the destruction of the Tasmanian wilderness.

For Richard, the next chapter was an adventurous gap year living in mining towns and learning French, before embarking on a Law/Science degree at the University of Melbourne in 1981. There he continued indulging his love of sailing, nurtured at school. He was captain of sailing at school and at university. “The advantage of being captain was that you got to commandeer the best boat. At Melbourne Uni in the early eighties that was a three-crew, twotrapeze flyer, often crewed by the bigger Stephen Sasse (C’79) and Paul Hobart (FB’78) as Richard took the tiller,” recalled Matthew.

Tragically, Richard was sailing a little too close to the wind. Mid-degree, he was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer. Even when he was so ill he could no longer rig a boat on his own he found willing helpers to get him out on the water, to enjoy the wind. He died in 1983, soon after celebrating his twenty-first birthday “in raucous and extremely humorous style”, said Matthew. “He had briefed comedian Campbell McComas on all family members and some unsuspecting friends. Campbell arrived as a distant English cousin. Everyone was taken for a ride, even as his stories became more ludicrous. It was a final prank from a veteran prankster.”

Where might Richard be now, had he lived? His family imagine him at the heart of Silicon Valley, or a pioneering scientist perhaps in climate change: “There would have been so many courses open to him … the world was his oyster.” It is for this very reason that the Guest family is establishing the Richard James Chester Guest Scholarship – to change a life through education in his name. “I know he would have wanted to extend the privileges of the education which he had to someone who was less fortunate”, explained Sarah Guest.

When that lucky person fills their sails and tilts to the wind, it will be Richard handing them the tiller. Where might Richard be now, had he lived? His family imagine him at the heart of Silicon Valley, or a pioneering scientist perhaps in climate change: “There would have been so many courses open to him … the world was his oyster.” It is for this very reason that the Guest family is establishing the Richard James Chester Guest Scholarship – to change a life through education in his name.