Rev Dr Lewis Rushbrook's Grace at 50th Anniversary Gala dinner

50th Anniversary Grace

By Rev Dr Lewis (Lew) Rushbrook, Foundation Resident (1971–1976), Staff Tutor 1972–76, Principal 1995–2005

Thank you, Sally and Amelia, for inviting me to launch this 50th Anniversary dinner in this way with a ‘Grace.’ I can’t believe it’s 50 years since I walked through that door on ‘Day One’ of the new College kid on the block.

It’s a great honour, as is the opportunity to acknowledge the Kambri/Ngunnawal people on whose land Burgmann College goes about its business. We, a mere 50 years young, they thousands!

In my view, a Grace should be neither perfunctory nor unintelligible to the Latin illiterate! It should mean something to those present. It’s a way of expressing gratitude as we come together - not quite as lithe and sexy as we used to be (or thought we were!) – to share what we’ve done, are doing and are anticipating, both for tonight’s dinner and the College’s next 50 years.

G K Chesterton says, 'You say Grace before a meal, but I, before a play, a concert, fencing or a boxing match.' So, catching the baton into this Grace I want to map our gratitude:

• For the College founders, notably Charles Price and Bishop Clements who, animated by an ecumenical Christian vision of a different sort of college, doggedly pursued a place on the fledgling ANU campus, up against a sterile university dogma for a totally secular campus, yet, nothing daunted, cheerful even, despite a huge lack of funds;
• For the brilliant appointment of David Griffin as Master, whose intuitive management style in those heady days of the early ’70s was sort of ‘let’s see what happens when you partner with a feisty bunch of over-confident residentss';
• For that memorable opening day in February 1971, when we came into this hall to find it stacked with mattresses and metal beds, only to learn where we’d be farmed out around campus and Canberra until the building was finished;
• For the pageant-like roll-out, unique to Burgmann: of BRA, the Chat Noir bar, the ‘passion pits’ in the Common Room, Luigis, Elevenses, WOBCO (Workers of Burgmann College), St Beryl and Burgmann Day, Rent a Crowd, and for me, the birth of my two daughters (the first babies in Burgmann College);
• For warm memories too, of staff: Bob Falconer the first maintenance manager, Wal Beckhouse, Mark the Mopper, Helga, Dragitza, Ross and Gwen and a passing parade of exceptional Staff Tutors and Residential Tutors; we call them staff, but they were really family, 24/7 many of them;
• For, 30 years on, the opportunity to create and blend into community life a vibrant postgraduate Village;
• And, icing on the cake, after nearly 50 years of grey-haired men as Principals of a college with 50 percent women members, gratitude for the appointment of a female Principal, Sally. Yay!

Those exciting, rumbunctious even, days of the early ’70s were formative, not just in terms of bricks and mortar (the buildings), not just as a going concern (the College as an entity), but formative in our lives too, as late teens and 20-somethings. We grew up as people. It was a place to be, to become, of living and learning and loving, a place for shaping and enriching what we knew about ourselves within this unique community.

And I, for one, with 16 years of my life lived under a Burgmann roof, would have grown into a different, lesser, person sans Burgmann College. Perhaps you, too.

So, merging all our gratitudes in this Grace, we say thanks: for all Burgmann meant, means and will mean—thanks for what’s past, thanks for each other, thanks to God, to life itself.

AMEN, SO BE IT.