MONASH UNIVERSITY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Computer Science and Software Engineering John Hurst

UNCS

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UNCS People Page

People

The following people were members of UNCS. If you know any of the dates? or contact? details, or the existence of any home pages for these people, please mail John Hurst.

Here's a big long mailing list that you can cut and paste into your mailer:

jwb@csse.monash.edu.au
t.hart@bom.gov.au
kencooke@sydney.dialix.oz.au
kencooke@sydney.dialix.oz.au
derooy@tig.com.au
hblegal@4unet.co.uk
s.disney@unsw.edu.au
L.DuVe@latrobe.edu.au
margdav@hotkey.net.au
paulineh@psych.su.oz.au
barb@csse.swin.edu.au
ajh@csse.monash.edu.au
g.isaacs@mailbox.uq.edu.au
bevan@blackbox.com.au
lmann@tmx.com.au
mckenzie@physics.su.oz.au
margdav@terrigal.net.au
vshih@netspace.net.au
derooy@tig.com.au
Kristina.Macrae@adm.monash.edu.au

Gossip!

Ella De Rooy

Hi, this is Ella, from trendy Balmain where you will find me with husband Lewis Stenson and daughter Carolyn (16), as well as Emma (our Airedale terrier) and 2 cats. After many years of relative abstinence, Lewis and I are actually singing again in the Balmain Consort, a struggling local choir with lots of promise, rather reminiscent of UNCS in fact. This Easter Saturday I am also singing with Margot's choir and Willoughby Choral Society in 'The last night of the Proms', or the last stand of the Poms or whatever one might call it.

Workwise I keep busy-ish running a one person superannuation consulting business from home, following a promising career in the NSW public (and private) service which had a tendency to end in redundancies (repeatedly). Lewis, who was an architect, is more or less retired, but keeps our growing pile of technology running (which can be a full time job thanks to Bill).

Apart from that we enjoy playing with the grandsons (Lewis's of course, I am far too young to be a grandmother?!), occasionally escaping to a bit of bush in the Lower Hunter and lots of walking the dog. If you want to find out any more, you'll just have to come to Sydney on the weekend of the 25/26th April, won't you.

Christina Hart (Karbowiak)

I was a member of UNCS from 1969 to 1972. For most of that time I was secretary, so you may remember me trying to organise you about! About a dozen UNCS members sang at my wedding to Terry in April 1975 (see photo). We lived in Hobart for four years, where I sang in the chorus of the Tasmanian Opera Company for about a year. I am now teaching physics and science at Presentation College, in Melbourne, and unfortunately don't have much time for singing. Terry still works at the Bureau of Meteorology.

Terry and I have two children. Philip is now 21, studying Arts/Engineering at Monash Uni. His passion is astronomy and he spends as many nights as he can star-gazing, but he is also heavily involved in student politics and many other things. Judy, 19, is also doing Engineering at Monash. She plays clarinet in the Melbourne Youth Symphonic Band, and enjoys going to the ballet with me. Terry and I are starting to plan our lives post-children, as both of them plan to travel overseas as soon as possible.

I was glad that Heather Leviston managed to contact me to let me know about the memorial service for John, and that I was able to catch up with Lesley du Ve and Kristina Macrae (Thorburn). There is quite a contingent of ex-UNCS in Melbourne!

John and Barbara Hurst

Just to fill you in on our personal history, Barb and I moved to Melbourne 10 years ago from Canberra, where we moved after Sydney. Our two boys were born in Canberra, they're now 15 and 20. The eldest (Nathan) is studying here at Monash in maths (Barb's genes) and Computing (John's genes)! The younger is still at high school, and currently wants to do electrical engineering (definitely John's genes!). Barb has recently moved to Swinburne from Monash, after completing a Masters at Swinburne.

We both still sing in choirs, mainly the local church (a 'good' parish choir, if I can characterise it that way ), but also in an occasional university one (Christmas, mainly). Our most recent major effort for the parish choir was Stainer's The Crucifixion for the sunday before Palm Sunday last. In November, we are planning to do The Messiah in the Glen Waverley Police Academy. This is a semi-regular event, held every 2 or 3 years. (Any Melbourne based ex-UNCS members are most welcome to join!) Barb has joined a couple of other choirs since stopping studying, and she will tell you about those ... In Canberra, we did sing with SCUNA for several years BC (before children), but have lost contact with people from there.

While in Sydney, I revived a boyhood interest in trains, and have pursued this, firstly with an active involvement in railway preservation in Canberra with the Australian Railway Historical Society, then in Melbourne with the Puffing Billy Preservation Society. More recently, it has been a passive involement through my railway web pages, now linked to around the world. Some of these photos have even been used commercially, but I don't think I'll ever get rich on that income!

If you want more info, you are welcome to check out my home page!

Geoff Isaacs

It's wonderful to be in contact after all these years, and I'd like to thank Ella for making the effort to find me and, by the look of it, others. I'm sad that I wont make the ANZAC Day bushwalk, but glad it's not actually happening on ANZAC Day (I don't think they ever did!).

For your amusement, you might like to know that I sang in a choir, for the first time in about 15 years, about 4 weeks ago, on the day I received the first message from Ella. I am in a community choir associated with my son's school (Brisbane Grammar) and we are singing bits of the Faure requiem as well as some junk (O sifuni mungu, which is not bad, and some pop stuff, which is). I have discovered that I have forgotten how to sight sing (well. I reckon I once could) and have lost lots of vocal range. I think I am almost a monotone, rather than a baritone!

Back in the 1970's I sang in two small and fairly good choirs at the University of Queensland -- the Renaissance Singers and University Pro Musica. They are both now defunct, and I have learnt from recent emails that UNCS is too (when did that happen??). I wonder whether it's too late for me to leave the Grammar Community Choir and thus save it from a similar fate.

I have done nothing but work in academia (and, in these days of budget stringencies it does start to seem like nothing but work!). I have earned a little over the years from somewhat rare consultancies, but not enough to get excited about (or, for that matter, to make early retirement a particularly attractive prospect). I moved in 1971 (while still in UNCS) from mathematics to higher education research and development (specialising in teaching and learning generally -- including assessment) and there I have remained ever since. You can see from my Web pages what I have done and what my academic interests are.

I moved to Brisbane at the start of 1974 with Josephine (who comes from the Netherlands) and we married in the Netherlands in December 1997. She is the pharmacist at the University of Queensland School of Veterinary Science. We have a son named David who is 15 1/2 and wants to be a Civil Engineer and who does not sing in choirs (nor does, or has, Josephine) and a 2 year old dog, Nick, who is a poodle/cocker spaniel cross (sometimes called a "spoodle"). Nick also does not sing in choirs, 'though his volume can be impressive.

We live in a comfortable, reasonably spacious but totally characterless house in the suburb of Kenmore. Kenmore is green and leafy, but, as it dates from about the 1950's, not particularly trendy. For us it has the advantage that it is only 10--15 minutes drive to the University where we both work, and that we can have a nice garden. We have the kind of house/suburb combination that's probably worth $700,000 in Sydney (full brick lower story, brick veneer upper, 4 brs, leafy suburb, pool, 15 mins drive to city, quite n'hood. cls schls, tpt --- hell, first to see will buy!), but only $250,000 in Brisbane. One of the reasons we are unlikely ever to move to Sydney or Melbourne. There's also a good gym ("The Indooroopilly Workout") between home and work and, believe it or not, we actually go there. Our other recreations are gardening, going to art galleries, going to concerts, and walking the dog. Taken together with the demands of our son, that make a fairly full agenda -- although I still manage to do a lot of reading.

Bevan Leviston

Just a little gossip on my movements since UNCS. In the early 70s, I returned to Melbourne, and for 10 years or so I was a maths lecturer at various institutions. When I found tertiary institutions becoming increasingly constipated in the mid 80s I decided it was time to try my hand at the business and corporate world. I worked for a number of organisations and eventually became the National Marketing Manager for Acorn/BBC Computers. This involved large amounts of time on planes and in corporate suites in strange cities, so music commitments had to drop back at this stage. I became increasingly frustrated with management styles and business practices around me, so in the early 90s decided to leave and form my own company to train business and management skills. That's what puts the food on the table at the moment, and I can't see myself ever going back to work for someone else.

Heather and I set up house in Prahran and added one girl (Zoe) to the existing boy (Conrad). Conrad was married at Easter. He now has the long hair & beard while his dad's has turned grey and disappeared at an alarming rate. Zoe has completed a Psych degree at Swinburne and is looking at becoming a forensic psychologist. Heather & I separated (amicably) in the mid 80s but still maintain cordial relations. My partner of a number of years, Glenda, is in the process of converting an inner city warehouse into living space (we choose to maintain separate living spaces - she knows that I spent several years living in the belltower of a church). We first met when I headhunted her from the Tasmanian Education Department. She recently sold her pre-prepared food business in the city and is currently Sales & Marketing Manager for Deakin Australia (the training arm of Deakin University).

On the music front, I spent about 15 years very heavily involved as conductor, performer and organiser. I conducted MONUCS for a number of years and then MUCS. At any one time I am usually conducting some choir or orchestra. In 1975 I formed my own group, Ars Nova, and we have had a great time performing anything from one man shows to a staged performance of Carmina Burana in the Concert Hall (bigger than King David?). For many years we were performing somewhere almost every week, but corporate life eroded that level of activity, and we are now settling into just several main concerts a year. Some of the works I have most enjoyed conducting are Stravinsk's Les Noces, Monteverdi Vespers, St John Passion, Catulli Carmina & Carmina Burana, Machaut Mass, Mozart Requiem as well as fun concerts such as The History of the Dirty Song.

I try to keep active in a range of interests. For many years I wrote as a music critic for the Herald, Australian and The Age, and I still write occasional articles on technology or education. For a while I devised and wrote educational computer programs, and still initiate the odd project in that area - I did some work for Sun Computers last year. Several years ago, I had to think about what I could do to create a job safety net for my children if there was no job to be found after uni, (and how I could support myself in retirement) so I set up a little zero start-up tourism company. At nights and weekends you can now found me or my guides dressed in some outlandish outfit running a cemetery tour or Murder & Mystery Tour or whatever I have become interested in that year. There's still a lot of things I want to do in life, and less time to do it in so I don't know what I'll be doing 2 years from now - but I know I'll be enjoying it.

Looking forward to catching up with everyone on Anzac Day.

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