Early support for the future of Burgmann
Each year, along the Homer corridor with a view of the Front Lawn, a student is living in Room 232. They may not know much about the name above their door. But alum Peter Graves (1972-1974) knows this room well: its thin walls, the sound of his neighbour Fran's laugh carrying through from Room 230, the particular quiet of late evenings spent writing essays, while the rest of the college hummed with life around him. Peter arrived here in 1972 with not much more than blankets and sheets. A few short years later, in 1978, he made a significant donation and became a Founder Fellow of Burgmann College.
A Long Road to Canberra
Peter Graves grew up in Parramatta, Sydney, and left high school in 1964 with, as he puts it cheerfully, "a very indifferent leaving certificate." University was not part of the picture. There were only two universities in Sydney at the time, and neither felt within reach: one too far, the other too classical in its requirements. "I never even thought that I would go to university," he says.
What followed was years of working in the Public Service, a stint living on a kibbutz in Israel where he went searching for something he couldn't quite name, and a return to Australia that felt like starting again. The kibbutz had appealed to him philosophically: shared land, shared meals, collective purpose. "I like the whole concept of sharing," he reflects. But it wasn't quite home.
Back in Canberra, the newly established Macquarie University briefly offered hope. He applied for 1970 and still has the rejection slip. But a chance conversation with a colleague who was studying law at ANU changed everything. Peter thought, "well, I'll give it a go", and ANU accepted him. He enrolled cautiously in a single psychology unit, continuing to work full time, staying at the Hotel Kurrajong just across from the Customs Department. "That was the closest I came between living and working," he laughs, "and it still is."
Academic life was an adjustment. "Public service writing is very different than academic," he says. "I struggled a bit." But a fellow student in his psychology unit, Steve Pinkus, who lived at Burgmann, mentioned that Doc Griffin had a vacancy. Peter came to have a look and stayed for three years.
Finding the Community He'd Been Looking For
"Coming to Burgmann was almost like finding the kind of community I was looking for," Peter says. After the kibbutz, after years of managing everything alone in Sydney, Burgmann offered something quietly transformative: meals in the dining hall, practical things taken care of, the easy rhythm of shared life. "At Burgmann, everything was done for me."
He was 24 when he arrived, older than most of his corridor-mates by several years, working through the day and studying through the evenings while a vibrant and caring college community buzzed around him. He may never have made it onto the Inward Bound team, but he made friends, settled into the academic rhythm, and completed a triple major in psychology, sociology and political science, a combination that would underpin a distinguished career in the Public Service, including prominent roles in the Customs and Industry departments.
Room 232 was Peter’s home for those three years. The walls were thin enough to hear his neighbour’s laugh next door. The corridor shower was a few steps away. The dining hall was a place of comfort and, like all good dining halls, constant complaint. "The food was a lot better than I could have done myself," he says, "but it didn't stop everyone complaining."
He may not have been involved in every college activity, but he absorbed everything Burgmann had to give: the mix of ages and disciplines our first Master ‘Doc Griffin’ believed in, the particular warmth of a community where people learn to live beside those who study different things, hold different views, and come from different places. "Burgmann makes that easier," he says simply.
A Life of Service
The triple degree Peter completed at Burgmann became the foundation of a life spent in service to others. Beyond his Public Service career, he served as Chair of the Canberra Chapter of the Walter Burley Griffin Society, honouring the architects whose vision shaped the capital he now calls home.
In 1981, Peter became a Family Support worker at Canberra One-Parent Family Support, which was a mutual support organisation which assisted one-parent families with dependent children to grow through change. He was President from 1988-1996 and again 1999-2011, when it closed after assisting 4,000 parents and 7,000 children.
In 1986, Peter helped start RESULTS Australia, a non-partisan international aid and development organisation lobbying Australian Parliamentarians to leverage millions of dollars in Government funding to create transformational change for the world's poorest and most vulnerable communities. Through RESULTS, he became involved in the 1990 World Summit for Children in New York, which contributed to the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
He is now involved with the Heritage Committee of the National Trust, committed, as ever, to protecting what matters for those who come after.
It is a career with a clear thread running through it: the belief that people need structures of support around them to flourish, and that building those structures is a worthy thing to spend a life on.
Becoming a Founder Fellow
Peter left Burgmann in 1974, moving to the Macquarie Hotel before eventually settling in the Canberra home where he still lives today. But his connection to the College did not fade. By 1978, just a few years after leaving, he had already made a significant donation, one that earned him recognition as a Founder Fellow of the College. A letter from Master Trevor Wigney, dated 11 April 1978 and addressed to Peter at the Macquarie Hotel, records the College's warm gratitude for his Gift and notes that Founder Fellows were periodically brought together for dinner at the Lodge. Peter had not waited long to give back.
The College had been looking to reduce a loan, and there was an opportunity: donate the equivalent of what it cost to build a room, and your name would be placed permanently above the door.
What struck Peter was the particular logic of it in a place like Burgmann. "So many times, when you give a donation to anything, you don't see what the outcome is," he explains. But a named room is different. In a community with constant turnover, where a new student arrives every few years with their own blankets and their own hopes, the nameplate is a memento: proof that someone came before, that the room has a history, that the community has purpose worth supporting. "It provides mementoes of who've been living here," he says.
Peter's Gift was also, at its heart, an act of fairness. He knows what it is to reach for education from an unexpected angle: to arrive later than most, to carry a rejection slip in your pocket, to need the practical conditions of stability just to be able to focus on learning. Today's students face pressures he recognises and some he doesn't. "Living today is difficult enough," he says. "We all need support. If you're thinking about a degree, you don't need the stress of trying to find accommodation. So much gets done for you at Burgmann."
He thinks about Maslow: about people scrabbling at the base of the pyramid, unable to reach the level where they might give back, volunteer, contribute. Burgmann, he believes, lifts people up through those layers. It feeds them, houses them, surrounds them with peers who are serious about their futures. It gives them the conditions to rise.
Hopes for Future Students
Having once worked in the Federal Office of Regional Development, Peter is aware of the difficulties faced by people living in rural and remote areas. He especially supports the College's Bursaries and Scholarships Program, enabling students from those areas to access university by living on campus.
When Peter thinks about the student now living in Room 232, his hopes are direct and deeply felt. "Make friends. Find it easier to study and graduate. Because after that, it's difficult enough, especially for anyone going through university these days."
And when he thinks about fellow alumni who might be considering giving back, his message is equally plain: "We all need support. Burgmann gave it to me. It still gives it to students now."
Securing Burgmann, One Room at a Time
Building the Burgmann College Endowment Fund
Somewhere in Burgmann right now, a student is settling in. They have arrived, perhaps from a long way away, perhaps from circumstances that made getting here harder than it looked, and they are figuring out how to make this place home.
They don't yet know how much the dining hall will matter. Or the corridor friendships. Or the simple fact of not having to worry about where they'll sleep while they try to work out who they are becoming.
Peter Graves knows. He arrived in Room 232 in 1972 with not much more than blankets and sheets, and Burgmann gave him the stability to flourish. Within a few years of leaving, he had already become a Founder Fellow, naming his room so that every student who passes Room 232 knows that someone came before them, and that this community has always been worth investing in.
You can do the same.
We are building an Endowment Fund so the College can provide the opportunity to flourish, for generations to come. A gift of $30,000 to the Burgmann College Endowment Fund names a room in your honour. In a community that renews itself every few years, a named room endures: creating a lasting reminder that Burgmann has always been built by the people who believed in it.
As Peter puts it: "So many times, when you give a donation to anything, you don't see what the outcome is." A named room is different. You can picture exactly what it does. It holds a student steadier, frees them to focus, surrounds them with community at the moment they need it most.
If you would like to talk about what naming a room might mean for you, we would love to hear from you.
Named Room gifts of $30,000 support the Burgmann College Endowment Fund, ensuring the College can continue to provide outstanding residential education for generations of students to come.
