Epsom Girls Grammar Old Girls' Association

To Dr Gerald Young, Chair of Board and your fellow of trustees,  to Madeline Gunn, Principal of Epsom Girls Grammar and your staff,  to Julie Goodyer, President of the Old Girls Association,  to Kingsley Avery, Head Girl of Epsom Girls Grammar,  to Hon Rodney Hide, Member of Parliament for Epsom,  to past pupils,  students,  and all staff and parents,  to Distinguished Guests all, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa a warm Auckland good evening to you all.

What a pleasure it is for Anand and me to host this event at this beautiful Government House here in Auckland.  I know that the exceptional staff led by Helen will make you feel it is a special occasion indeed.

Let us first remember those who tragically died in Christchurch and all of those in Canterbury, New Zealand and throughout the world who are grieving and whose lives have been changed forever.

We visited the City five days after the devastating February 22 earthquake and on Monday we visited again, to offer our support to those living in the aftermath of this tragedy and those working to support them.  What we have seen and the plight of some of the people there was shocking.

Visiting the Emergency Operations Centre in the Christchurch Art Gallery was heartening and we were impressed by the competent, dedicated work of the Urban Search And Rescue teams from New Zealand and around the world.

Our visit on the Monday just past was first to the Disaster Victim Identification team and then to the eastern suburbs.  Important information already known about victims, like dental records, has and is being gathered and matched to the people found.  Care, efficiency and respect are all evident in the medical teams, police and coroners working there.

In New Brighton and in Aranui we found people working assiduously for the common good, distributing food and care while sometimes disregarding their own needs.  There is concern for damaged homes but we saw a lot of support in the community between neighbours.  In Bexley and all through these Eastern suburbs the streets are bumpy with areas of silt everywhere, especially where people had shovelled it out from their home onto the grass verge.

There is a feeling that the normal infrastructure of the city has broken down and people have to often fend for themselves and their family and neighbours.

I have included these thoughts from our trips there because we will all need to help Christchurch in the months and years ahead.  Our country will need to hold the focus, day by day if Christchurch is to recover, which I believe it will, just as New Zealanders have always picked themselves up and got on after disasters of the past.

May I now speak about my connection with Epsom Girls Grammar and the important contributions that the Old Girls Association continues to make to the school.

At EGGS during the early sixties in the B stream, I was a student who got a lot out of school.  Our daughters, Tara and Anya, also attended the School and they have benefited from the high standard of teaching and values held, just as I have.

The Old Girls Association continues to connect us.  A feature of us as students and past pupils is the variety of backgrounds and interests we represent.  Were it not for the Old Girls’, the diversity of our relationships and our appreciation of those from a different sphere may wither with age.  An over-arching concept demonstrated to us by living nearly 5 years in this role, is that all people have positive attributes that we can learn from.  Those who share their teenage years can overlook apparent shortcomings in their peers.  We sunned our legs in ‘Paradise’, played sport, competed in sewing, maths and other things and sang together the inimitable school song.

As the English novelist Charlotte Bronte wrote:- “Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years.”

This bond we feel, which is strengthened by those fond memories, has been exploited around the world as alumni support their alma mater.  The School may benefit financially and from mentors and achievers.

I encourage you all to continue to play an active role in contributing both to Epsom Girls’ Grammar and the wider New Zealand community.  The benefits to students of the present and in future can be likened to the duty between parent and child: that which we receive from our parents we owe to our children.

Epsom Girls Grammar has the ongoing task of equipping its students with values and knowledge that they will use to question and grow their own outlook and ability.  I commend the staff, past and present, for the fine tradition of teaching and learning they have had a part in.

May I end with a lovely quote from the well known New Zealand author and educator, Sylvia Ashton-Warner.  Sylvia believed very strongly in the need for young people to learn to form their own standing in the world, using their school learning as a resource from which to draw, and issued this advice:

“You must be true to yourself.  Strong enough to be true to yourself.  Brave enough to be strong enough to be true to yourself.  Wise enough to be brave enough to be strong enough to shape yourself from what you actually are.”

No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora, kia kaha, tēnā koutou katoa.