Great Scot December 2019 Great Scot 158_December_ONLINE | Page 60

OSCA
MR JAMES DOUGLAS ('84)
OSCA PRESIDENT
JAMES DOUGLAS
(’84, SECOND FROM
RIGHT) WITH OSCA
COUNCILLORS,
FROM LEFT:
ANDREW
CRAWFORD (’89),
ANDREW WILSON
(’78) AND MARTIN
BARR (’96)
60
OSCA’S VIBRANT
COMMUNITY IS DRIVEN BY
EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE
Two great contributors earn OSCA Honorary Life Membership
What an incredible year 2019 has been. I want to
thank everyone in OSCA for their contributions to the
association, and for allowing me the privilege of being
President of OSCA.
We started the year with the Scotch Family Chinese
New Year Dinner in February. This event is a wonderful
celebration of the diversity of the Scotch community.
Where else but Scotch could you attend a dinner where
you are welcomed by a
bagpiper, enjoy magnificent
Chinese food, be entertained
by a Wu Long dragon dance
and traditional Chinese
musicians, and not feel out of
place wearing a kilt?
We followed that dinner
with more than 30 other OSCA
events, from reunions to club
parties and OSCA branch
events around Australia and
across the world. OSCA
arranged networking, resume
building and wellness events for our young Old Boys.
We established new clubs, notably a Science Club,
and we capped the year with our Annual Dinner, where
nearly 450 Old Boys celebrated Scotch’s innovation and
entrepreneurial spirit with an entertaining speech by Rob
Phillpot (‘91), who together with 1991 classmate Leigh
Jasper was one of the founders of Aconex. Grace was
said superbly by our oldest living Old Boy, at 103, Bill
Morgan. In October, Bill celebrated his 104th birthday
with a visit to Scotch, during which he was interviewed
in Assembly by School Captain Nick Marks, 84 years
his junior! (See articles in Features and the Foundation
sections of this edition.)
Our vibrant OSCA community is driven by the
extraordinary people who contribute so much to the
School and to OSCA. At this year’s OSCA Presidents’
Dinner, I had the pleasure of awarding OSCA Honorary
Life Memberships to Hon Dr David Kemp AC (‘59) and
to Bruce Brown (‘60) – almost peers from School and
both lifelong contributors to Scotch and to the broader
community.
Great Scot Issue 158 – December 2019
David Kemp’s family connection to Scotch dates back
to 1860. After a lifetime of service in academia and as a
Federal Minister, he joined the Scotch College Council in
2005 and became Chairman in 2012. He has overseen a
period of amazing development in the School, reflected in
new buildings, the strength of our academic results, the
quality of the young men we are producing, and through
increasing our understanding and appreciation of our
Scottish heritage and traditions. I have been fortunate
to serve with him on School Council, and I have seen
first-hand his leadership, grace, thoughtfulness and drive.
Bruce Brown was a much-loved History and Politics
teacher at Scotch from 1985 to 2007. A devotee of sport
and a diehard Demons supporter, Bruce was known
as ‘Mr Football’ in his teaching days. He wrote OSCA’s
centenary history, With A Keen But Loving Eye, and was
an OSCA Councillor for 10 years and OSCA’s President
in 2013, its centenary year. He has been a leader in the
OSCA community in many ways, including establishing
the Old Scotch Staff Club, serving on the Heritage Club
committee since 2010 and as President since 2014, and
now writing a history of the Old Scotch Football Club.
OSCA has been most fortunate to have Bruce as part of
our community.
Importantly, both David and Bruce are passionate
about Scotch’s history and its links to Scottish heritage
and the Scottish Enlightenment. They have both served
on the board of the Victorian Scottish Heritage Cultural
Foundation, and each has contributed enormously to the
understanding of our School’s history and its link to the
intellectual traditions of Scotland.
It might not be the case that the Scots invented the
modern world, but the focus on the importance of reason
and the rejection of authority not justified by reason is the
touchstone of Scotch’s purpose. Our constitution states
in its opening paragraphs that our object is to ‘provide for
the students of the College an education of a humane,
scientific and general nature … and to encourage each
student to achieve the highest standard of which he is
capable in all his activities …’
David and Bruce exemplify this objective, and I am
proud to have worked with both of them.
‘A Man’s a Man for a’that’