Most outstanding Clayfield College alumni
From Olympic swimmers to senators, Supreme Court Justices, indigenous artists, authors and guitarists, Clayfield College’s list of amazing graduates is long indeed. We take at a look at just some of them.
Local
Don't miss out on the headlines from Local. Followed categories will be added to My News.
We asked Brisbane schools to nominate their most outstanding former students and the response has been overwhelming.
Clayfield College has long had a reputation for academic excellence.
But its Old Girls have shone in every imaginable field, from swimmers to senators, Supreme Court Justices, indigenous artists, authors and guitarists.
We have a look at just some of their best-known former students.
MORE OUTSTANDING SCHOOL GRADUATES
• St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School
● Brisbane Girls Grammar School
● Brisbane Boys Grammar School
● St Rita’s College, Clayfield
STEPHANIE RICE
Our swimming Golden Girl Stephanie Rice was just 18 when she competed in the 2005 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, winning the 200m individual medley and 400m medley.
Three years later she proved that was no fluke, breaking the world record in the 400m individual medley at the 2008 Australian Olympic trials.
At the Beijing Olympics, Rice won her first gold medal (and the first for Australia at that Olympics) in the 400m individual medley, once again breaking the world record for this event, and becoming the first female to break the 4:30 in the event.
Rice went on to clinch three gold medals at the Games, setting three world records.
She retired in 2014 after competing in the 2012 London Olympics without the same success as Beijing after a number of shoulder surgeries.
She’s been busy outside sport, winning the 2013 Australian version of Celebrity Apprentice. Rice was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame and Sport Australia Hall of Fame, both in 2019.
She founded and now heads the Stephanie Rice Swimming Academy in India.
SUSAN BOYCE
The former LNP senator did a Bachelor of Arts at Monash University after graduating from Clayfield.
She later gained a Masters of Business from the Queensland University of Technology.
Ms Boyce chaired Everhard Industries, a plumbing supplies company founded by her father, before entering the Senate in 2007.
One of her three children has Down syndrome, leading to her advocacy for people with disabilities and their families.
She left the Senate in 2014 and resumed her position in Everhard Industries but continued to work with the Federal Government on social issues such as the social and personal cost of forced adoptions, advocacy for people with cognitive impairment, and family business, in particular agribusiness.
MARGARET WILSON
Part of the Clayfield College 1970 graduating class, Justice Wilson was school captain and dux.
She won an open scholarship to the University of Queensland where she studied arts.
In her third year she took two law subjects which sparked her interest in practising law.
After working as an articled clerk at Feez Ruthning she qualified as a solicitor before being admitted to the Bar in 1979, where she practised until 1998.
She was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1992.
As a barrister, she served on the Committee of the Bar Association of Queensland (1984-1986, 1995-1997). She was a Commissioner of the Legal Aid Commission (Queensland) from 1996 to 1997 and a member of the board of Legal Aid Queensland from 1997 to 1998.
Justice Wilson was a Judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland for more than 15 years from 1998 to 2014.
During that time she was the Judge constituting the Mental Health Court (2002-2005), a Commercial List Judge (2009-2011) and an Additional Judge of the Court of Appeal (2011-2012). She took a keen interest in procedural reform, sitting on the Civil Procedure Division of the Litigation Reform Commission from 1994 to 1996 while a barrister and on the Rules Committee for 12 years while a Judge.
She continued her contribution to the law after leaving the Supreme Court and was the Commissioner appointed to inquire into the closure of the Barrett Adolescent Centre.
Since 2014 she has been a Justice of the Court of Appeal of Solomon Islands and a part-time member of the Queensland Law Reform Commission.
She is also a part-time PhD student in the Melbourne Law School.
ELIZABETH WILSON
Liz Wilson had an unusual start to her distinguished legal career.
After Justice Wilson graduated from Clayfield College she studied Arts at Griffith University before moving to Taiwan and Japan to teach English.
It was only after returning to Brisbane that she joined the Director Public Prosecutions, while studying part time at the Queensland University of Technology.
In 1996, she was admitted to the Bar and gained silk in 2011.
Over the course of her stellar career she has appeared in criminal and administrative law matters and various public inquiries and royal commissions, sat as a sessional member of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) and the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal Queensland.
She was also a member of the Bar Council for six years and served as Chair of the Bar Association of Queensland’s (BAQ) Criminal Law committee, along with serving on the Law Council of Australia’s National Criminal Law and Human Rights Committees.
Her career highlight, to date, came in 2018 when she was appointed as a judge on the Supreme Court.
JACOBA BRASCH
Following her years at Clayfield College, Dr Brasch went to the University of Queensland where earned a Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Public Administration while working full-time doing news text for television stations.
This lead to her joining one of the newly-created post-Fitzgerald Inquiry commissions.
Dr Brasch joined the then Attorney-General as a press secretary. Her interest in law was sparked by the discussions between the AG and department heads during briefings.
She then studied law at Queensland University of Technology, going on to do an LLM at New York University as a Fulbright Scholar.
In 2000 she graduated with a PhD from the University of New South Wales where her doctoral thesis concerned what constitutes a fair, independent and impartial trial, using Australian courts martial as her subject matter.
She was admitted to the Bar in 2000 and developed a practice in family law, mental health law, customs and excise.
Dr Brasch took silk in 2014.
MARILYN DARLING
Philanthropist and patron Marilyn Skinner graduated from Clayfield College in 1967 and went on to study microbiology at the University of Melbourne, taking up a postgraduate research position at Monash University.
But she is best known for her philanthropic work and is considered to be the person who drove the establishment of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia.
She was a trustee of the Victorian State Opera Foundation and sat on the organising committee for the Spoleto Festival in 1988–1991.
In 1989 Ms Skinner became a member of the board of the Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund at the National Gallery of Australia, where she was convener patron of “Uncommon Australians: Towards an Australian Portrait Gallery”, which travelled Australia
in the early 1990s.
It was this exhibition which brought Marilyn into contact with the director of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, Alan Fern, who encouraged the establishment of a single gallery to house portraits of uncommon Australians.
From 1993 to 1997, Marilyn lobbied for the NPG in Australia, and in 1997, the Federal Government allocated funds towards the establishment of a portrait gallery, located in three rooms in Old Parliament House and managed by the National Library of Australia.
She sat as deputy chair of the board, going on to chair it from 2000 to 2008.
Ms Skinner was awarded the Centenary Medal on in 2001 and made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 2009.
KARIN SCHAUPP
Classical guitarist, actor, creator and teacher Karin Schaupp has forged an international reputation as one of the world’s best classical guitarists.
After her time at Clayfeld, where she was dux, she graduated from the University of Queensland with First Class Honours, a Master’s degree and also won the University Gold Medal.
Other accolades include the Music Council of Australia Freedman Fellowship (2003) and a Music Fellowship (2014-2015) from the Australia Council for the Arts.
Her playing has been hailed by the German press as “so perfect, so complete, that it seems like a miracle”.
Even in her teens she won prestigious international prizes in Italy and Spain, and is today sought after internationally as a recitalist, soloist and festival guest, making countless television and radio appearances.
Schaupp has released six best-selling solo CDs for Warner Music and ABC Classics as well as various award-winning ensemble and orchestral albums.
Performance highlights include performing as soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, some 150 performances of Lotte’s Gift, performances at a Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony, Goodwill Games Opening Ceremony, World Expo (Japan) and Hong Kong Arts Festival, and a Musica Viva International Concert Season tour with Pavel Steidl.
She is currently Head of Classical Guitar at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University.
TANIA MAJOR
Tania Major is a Kokoberra woman who grew up in the Indigenous community of Kowanyama on Cape York.
She was awarded an indigenous scholarship which took her to Clayfield College for her secondary education.
She went on to study at Griffith University and gained a Bachelor of Arts in Criminology and Criminal Justice.
In 2004 she became the youngest person ever elected to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.
She took up a position as a youth ambassador at Indigenous leader Noel Pearson’s Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership.
She spoke openly about the social problems affecting her community including alcoholism, domestic violence and youth suicide.
She aimed to lift the “blanket of shame’’ on these issues and work with government to end welfare dependency and to improve health and education for indigenous Australians.
In 2007, Ms Major was named Young Australian of the Year, having been earlier named as the Queensland Young Australian of the Year.
She is currently the Youth Development Project Officer for the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, and a Regional Councillor for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).
JOY RHOADES
Coming from Roma, Joy’s mother knew life on the land was unstable and unpredictable.
So she urged her daughter Joy to undertake a law degree to have a career and livelihood which was dependable and stable.
For the next 20 years, Rhoades’s career in law and compliance took her to London, Hong Kong, New York and back to London.
But when she had her children, she left her career to take up her writing full-time.
Her best-selling books The Woolgrower’s Companion and The Burnt Country are set in the Tablelands region of Northern New South Wales during WWII and the years after.
The stories had their genesis in her grandmother, whom she cared for while she was at UQ studying Arts/Law.
CLAUDIA MOONDOONUTHILAUDIA
The well-known artist grew up on Bentinck and Mornington Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
She came to Clayfield College for her secondary education on an Australian Indigenous Education Fund scholarship before going on to study Indigenous Art at Griffith University.
It was while she was at school that a teacher suggested she paint, and to draw on her Bentinck Island background and her family.
She sold her first painting when she was in Year 9.
“But the only thing that really got me to paint was me. I had to take a risk and see if I could – to see if I was good enough – to believe that I could do it,” she said.
Her relaxed and intimate style of work has a significant meaning behind it, depicting life and memories of her time on Bentinck Island with her family.
She considers the stories sacred. Claudia has branched out into photography and sculpture, both capturing life in far north Queensland, her people and her culture.
She has held a number of exhibitions around Australia and she is a professional artist who likes to mentor younger artists.
Last year, she was one of three artists chosen for a limited edition Vegemite label art work.
NATALIE JEREMIJENKO
Artist and engineer Natalie Jeremijenko was born in Mackay but moved with her family to Brisbane where she attended Clayfield College.
After studying a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science at Griffith University, she went on to forge a stellar career combining science and engineering with design.
Named by the MIT Technology Review as one of the top 100 minds in the United States,
she currently directs the xDesign Environmental Health Clinic at New York University and is an associate professor at New York University.
Awarded the 2013 Most Innovative People, she was also named one of the most influential women in technology in 2011 and one of the inaugural top young innovators by MIT Technology Review.
She has also taught at Yale and was a visiting professor at Royal College of Art in
London.
Her most notable works include D4PA: Designed 4 Political Action, a catalogue of devices and strategies for political engagement and direct action developed by the Bureau of Inverse Technology; Live Wire (Dangling String) an art installation made up of LED cables that lit up relative to the amount of internet traffic (the work is now seen as one of the first examples of ambient or “calm” technology).
SARAH IRELAND
The One Girl CEO studied journalism at the University of Queensland after graduating from the University of Queensland.
She was offered a position with Reuters as a journalist and, on the same day, as a volunteer with an international aid agency. She took the role in the aid agency.
Since then, she has gone from being a first-responder in disaster zones to working in humanitarian outreach, international aid and the development sector.
She has led emergency response teams in the Philippines, Iraq and in the Horn of Africa. Then as a Humanitarian Advocacy and Policy Adviser, she lobbied both Australian and overseas governments to increase foreign aid budgets and the intake of refugees, and to prioritise women and girls in their overseas aid programs.
It was on the front line of disasters and crises where Ms Ireland witnessed the power of education, particularly for women.
She now heads the girls’ education not-for-profit One Girl, which supports girls with educational opportunities in Sierra Leone and Uganda.
Ms Ireland is a winner of Pro Bono’s 2018 IMPACT 25 Awards and is currently the humanitarian representative on the Red Cross Australia Victorian International Humanitarian Law Advisory Committee.
GRACE SHAW
Shaw released her first album one year before graduating from Clayfield College in 2015.
She has since gone on to record two more albums.
Her tracks Groceries and UFO placed at 7 and 70, respectively, in Triple J’s 2018 Hottest 100 list.
She took the name Mallrat from a song by American punk band, The Orwells.
Last year she toured the US and played solo in the UK, Germany and Amersterdam.
Five to try: Top spots in SEQ to find cinnamon scroll heaven
Is there anything nicer than the perfect cinnamon scroll? Here’s where to get some of southeast Queensland’s best.
‘Sickening, horrific’: Childcare worker charged with indecent treatment
A worker at a South East Queensland childcare centre has been charged with the indecent treatment of a young child at the facility.