1962 Alumni

I was only in 3C1 for part of the year before moving to Brisbane (September I think). I never finished my Junior year and started work as a message boy for Queensland Country Life Newspaper. I left there as an Editorial Assistant(?) and embarked on a variety of jobs including labouring, rigging, drilling, underground coal mining before travelling to Europe for a year. On returning worked as a mechanic, truck driver and undertaker. Met a bloke writing software for a pathology laboratory in Melbourne and he got me a job in IT (programming). I had found my niche and except for a year where I ran a small ferry on the Gold Coast Broadwater I have worked in IT ever since. IT has had me working in all states in Australia as well as New Zealand, Canada (4 years), USA, Hong Kong, Malaysia and India. Retired to Gympie but a year later I was back doing my IT work. Now from home you can work virtually anywhere in the world. Currently I am working on sites in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne as well as UK and Canada. Now at 71, I'd say I've had a pretty good life. - long may it continue... I always think my 3C1 Typing and Book-keeping set me up well for where I ended up.

I am not even certain that 1962 was my last year at high school but it would be about right. When I attended the Rockhampton High School, the campus was in Bolsover Street and the new school near the show grounds was built. At times, we journeyed by bicycle to the sports fields near the show grounds.

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Commercial studies over 2 years...Commenced work at Rockhampton Post Office in 1963 with transfers to Emerald Gladstone and GPO Brisbane and suburbs for total for 14 years (included 2 years Army conscription 1967-1969) Accepted an attractive role in Banking in New Zealand for a further 14 years returning to Australia in 1990 to a managerial role in Foreign Exchange on the Gold Coast...took a self imposed "long service leave" break in the 1990's before returning to south east Queensland in 1999 to retire in 2011 from a solicitors office in Beenleigh I returned to live in Frenchville in 2016

Our year was one of the first students to new school.

Gracemere State School - Rockhampton Technical College - Worked in Rockhampton - Left Australia for TPNG - Returned to eventually become Public Servant till retirement.

My Year 9 - Form 4C3 - was at the old school in Bolsover St and we moved to the new school for Year 10. My father Charles Bruigom and his brorher Christian attended RSH in the late 1920s.

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I spent the first three years at the "old school" in Bolsover Street and only the final year at Wandal. I wasn't a star student and my most outstanding achievement was to be drummed out of the School Cadet Corp for smoking on a bus returning from a camp when I was an under-officer in 1962. I improved a bit after leaving school with a first class honours degree in Geography at Queensland University and PhD in Geomorphology at Bristol University.

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I thoroughly enjoyed my years especially sport - football and cricket kept me going until August in final year when I panicked and started studying - and kept going with degrees in engineering, management and environment. Going from engineer to management consultant to environmental director on large infrastructure projects. In between I did a PhD and became university lecturer in environmental management (which I am still doing). Writing keeps me active in retirement: two books on environmental management and three on family history. Roslyn and I have four children and seven grandchildren. Our year's people and stories are documented in a book produced for our 50 year reunion.