As the nation celebrates the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Opera House by Queen Elizabeth II in 1973, the performing arts in Australia are particularly in focus. Much is being said this year about the great impact the building has had on the arts in Australia and, of course, the image of the building making Sydney one of the most recognizable cities in the world. Fortunately all aspects of art, performance, drama, composition, writing, architecture, physics, chemistry, design, engineering and construction are all embodied in this one iconic structure—a great modern wonder of the world.
There is an enduring but little-known connection with our Chapel. John Coburn’s Curtain of the Sun and Curtain of the Moon (1973) have recently been restored and Sun is returned to the stage of the Joan Sutherland Opera Theatre. At St Paul’s our Chapel features significant modern art including the set of limited edition screen prints Seven Days of Creation by John Coburn (1969-70) which were printed by his wife Barbara Coburn.
The architecture for the Chapel was influenced by Henry Ashworth “who was working with Corbet Gore on the Sydney Opera House” (A Atkinson, Hearts and Minds, 2017, p. 308). Ultimately the design was the work of John Mansfield (in College 1924-28) and Peter Reed (in College 1928-32). The Warden at that time, Rev’d Peter Bennie, was also Opera House-connected and was one of the leading lights to come to the defence of Jørn Utzon.
Pictured: the works by John Coburn in the Chapel (top); below is “The 6th Day God created man”. Next is “Curtain of the Sun” on show in the Opera House for its 50th Anniversary ‘open house tours on 21 October 2023. Bottom is the College Chapel and the Opera House shells.
We are interested to learn of any more Pauline connections to SOH which may form the basis of another news post. Please contact Richard Morgan at the College.
Unauthorised immigration arrival by boat was the topic of PhD student Jake Davies, in College 2022-22, on Monday 16 October. During this seminar Jakes presented his research findings from a comparative study that reviewed the Fraser Government years to the present. He has worked from relevant archives and current policies of successive Australian governments and the UNHCR, and assessed the “diplomatic overtures” to Australia’s relatively harsher methods of handling illegal arrivals by boat after 1999. Like all the Graduate House Seminars this presentation caused lively debate amongst students from many different parts of the world. A truly international gathering.
The College community is delighted to learn that Prof Ben Saul (in College 1995-97) has been appointed as a Special Rapporteur to the 54th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. Ben is the Sydney University Challis Chair of International Law and a Fellow of the University Senate.
Ben’s work with UNHRC54 will provide independent advice on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. This is a mandated role which has been operating since 2005. Ben succeeds a long list of eminent international jurors and is the first Australian appointed to this important unpaid role. These mandate-holders act independently of governments and as such play an important role in monitoring sovereign nations and democratically elected governments and policies.
Over three nights of full houses in late September the College presented the 59th season of Victoriana! under the direction of Jack Stephens, the College’s Director of Music. Performing the traditional ‘fare’ was a large group of current College men and women singers backed by members of the Chapel Choir. This musical talent was supported by old Paulines at the piano and on the stage and another 18 current Paulines working behind the scenes. From Tattinger to Queensland prawns; from Fandango to the Galloping Major, the show was a great success.
In 2024 planning is underway for four big nights to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Victoriana! either side of the Semester 2 mid-sem break – Fri 27, Sat 28 September, Fri 4 and Sat 5 October.
Join us for an evening of drinks, dinner, dancing and fireworks to celebrate the end of the academic year & the start of Summer! Saturday 2 December 2023, 6pm to 11 pm in the College Quad and Salisbury Bar Dress: Summer chic Tickets available until sold out $140 per person ($100 for 2023 Paul’s Residents)
St Paul’s College Union Summer Soirée
The Warden & Committee of St Paul’s College Union invite the St Paul’s College Community of alumni, students, the partners and parents and friends to celebrate with us at the Summer Soirée Tickets: https://events.humanitix.com/summer-soiree
The Rawson Football team continued their phenomenal winning record, taking out a fifth consecutive tournament win. The outstanding effort was only exacerbated by the fact that they didn’t concede a single goal throughout the entire campaign. Photo of their ‘black tie’ Victory Dinner held outside in the Quad.
Def. St John’s 3-0, def. Wesley 3-0, def. St Andrew’s 2-0.
The Rosebowl side showed a lot of promise, unearthing some talented prospects on the way to their equal third place finish. The future is bright.
Def. by St Andrew’s 2-1, def. Wesley 1-0, def. by Women’s 1-0, def. Sancta 1-0, def. by John’s 1-0.
Basketball:
Basketball is one of the few Rawson sports that is still any college’s game. A nail-biting victory against Drew’s, and bouncing back from a 17pt deficit against John’s meant the Paulines finished second place overall. Wesley took the gold, and the Androvians ended the tournament in an unfamiliar third place.
Def. by Wesley 64-59, def. St Andrew’s 63-61, def. St John’s 57-39.
The Rosebowl team showed no signs of chucking the towel in, despite their final placement on the ladder. Many players had not played much basketball before, but rolled up the sleeves anyway and got on with it.
Def. by St Andrew’s 53-24, def. by St John’s 43-35, def. by Wesley 57-25, def. by Sancta 52-44, def. by Women’s 43-20.
Tennis:
Rawson: 3rd place.
Rosebowl: 5th place.
(Final results have not been released yet).
Both athletics teams are training hard to finish 2023 in strong fashion. Most afternoons, there are great numbers putting in work on the Oval.
Other Sporting News:
A mixed college touch football tournament was held on the Oval in the afternoon of Friday September 15 to raise funds for the Boys to the Bush Charity. It was a great occasion attended by many. A raffle was held at the end of the day with some fantastic prizes, including a ticket to the highly coveted 2023 St Paul’s College Formal held in October.
The College rugby league team had two fixtures pencilled in against arch rivals St Andrew’s during the early weeks of semester 2, however, both fell through due player shortages on the opposition’s part. Hopefully this initiative will come back bigger and better in 2024 and the 13-man code continues to grow its presence on the intercollegiate scene.
Answer: they are each the subject matter of MD projects which were presented in a Monday Dinner Seminar on 18 September. Three 3rd year MD student members of Graduate House presented their mid-year project work to an enthralled audience including their MD colleagues and plenty of others doing non-medial courses.
The MD project is a 14-week research block undertaken by the University of Sydney medical students in the middle of their third academic year. After submitting preferences for pre-approved projects or organising their own the year prior, they are matched with a supervisor and provided with a research topic. The projects vary from literature reviews and product development to original laboratory-based research, culminating in an oral presentation and final report for review and marking.
Picture above: the Anderson Stuart Building, completed in 1892 from the McMillan Building Rooftop Terrace. Sydney Medical School is the graduate medical school of the University of Sydney. Established in 1856, it is the first medical school in Australia.
Richard Henchman: Development of a Lab Protocol to Analyse Blood Metabolites for the PROFASTA Clinical Trial on Fasting and Exercise. Richard reports:
The PROFASTA Clinical Trial will examine the effect of fasting and exercise on a wide range of health parameters in humans. Blood tests are a valuable way to assess health. The aim of this project was to develop a method to separate blood into red cells, white cells and plasma and analyse their metabolites that was suitable for PROFASTA. In brief, blood components were separated by centrifugation and the metabolites in each component were isolated using extraction media and measured using liquid chromatography mass spectrometry. Aspects of the method examined were tubes for blood samples, extraction media types and volumes, solution for washing, numbers of cells required, centrifuge speeds, whether to dry metabolites, and whether to freeze and thaw prior to metabolite extraction. Improvements were made in an iterative manner until a suitable protocol was found. The protocol was written up in a standard operating procedure ready for implementation in PROFASTA.
Arnav Shetty: Novel Therapeutic Antibodies in Chronic Kidney Disease: Current Concepts and Future Directions. Arnav reports:
Novel antibody-based therapeutics have revolutionised outcomes in many fields of clinical medicine such as cancer therapy by outcompeting their small-molecule counterparts in specificity and effector function. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) poses a growing burden on global morbidity and mortality and is characterised by irreversible and progressive loss of kidney function. Current therapeutics can only slow this progression, so new therapeutic modalities such as antibody technology are sorely needed to target specific molecular processes and improve patient outcomes. Looking particularly at preclinical studies published in the last five years and clinical trials, this study aims to explore, describe, and discuss novel strategies utilising antibody technology in order to treat diabetic kidney disease (DKD) – the chief cause of CKD – and renal fibrosis. Despite the limitations in developing antibody-based therapeutics, the modality hold promise for the future therapy of DKD and renal fibrosis due to their potential to reverse fibrotic pathogenesis rather than just delaying it, as is the effect of current therapy. Antibody technology also has a diverse potential outside of the scope of this study, such as identifying novel targets for future drug design, diagnostics and disease monitoring, and enhancing other novel therapeutic modalities.
Meheer Zaveri: The grim reaper hates this one new trick that can bring back the dead! A look at the use of ECMO in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Meheer reports:
We’ve all seen the pen tracheotomies, emergency needle decompressions, precordial thumps, and other wondrous, wild, and whacky techniques used to bring ‘dead’ patients back to life on television with astounding success. Unfortunately, what Meredith Grey didn’t tell you is that out of hospital cardiac arrest has a success rate of barely 5% in optimal conditions. Further, once you get return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC), the chances of the patient re-arresting are high. eCPR is a technique which uses ECMO (heart and lung bypass) to keep out of hospital cardiac arrest patients alive while their underlying pathology is treated. I did a retrospective cohort study looking back at how this has gone so far at Westmead Hospital Emergency and Intensive Care. I will also be discussing how it has been going around the world, and where the future lies. If time permits, I will briefly touch on an ethical dilemma in resuscitative medicine for you all to ponder over a glass of madeira.
Tutorials in academic writing are just one part of the offerings of the St Paul’s College Tutorial program. In September as Semester 2 moves rapidly towards finalisation of thesis work, major assignments and coursework reportage the Dean of Graduate House, Dr Antone Martinho-Truswell led a tute on writing for scholastic success “Writing with Beauty and Clarity”.
Antone is a graduate of Harvard University where he studied Neurobiology and has a doctorate in Zoology from Oxford, where he co-founded the Oxford Duckling Laboratory. Prior to his role at St Paul’s he was in the Department of Zoology at Oxford, where he was a Fellow and member of the governing body of Magdalen College, as well as a Lecturer in Biology at Pembroke College.
The talk focused on sentence structure and how to avoid the pitfalls of dense academic writing and provided undergraduates and post-graduates with the benefit of some practical skills development not generally available at the University.
The Australian History Prize for 2023 was won by Emeritus Professor Alan Atkinson (in College 1964-67, Fellow 2011-16, Senior Tutor 2010-16) for his recent book Elizabeth and John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm, 2022. The NSW Premier The Hon Chris Minns congratulated Alan and the other prize winners at an awards ceremony at the State Library on 7 September. He has spent his much of his life researching and writing about the Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm and this most recent book is a wonderful product of that work.
Alan previously won the same Prize in 2015 for his monumental work The Europeans in Australia: Volume Three, Nation which took him 10 years to write, twice as long as the first two volumes of The Europeans in Australia. He also won the 2015 Victorian Prize for Literature for Volume Three.
The NSW Premier’s History Awards were first presented in 1997 to honour distinguished achievement in history by Australian citizens and permanent residents. The awards acknowledge the contribution of historical research to our culture and communities, and to society at large.
Alan is the author of the College’s history Hearts and Minds, 2017. While Senior Tutor and resident at Paul’s he contributed to the improvement of the College’s library and archival collection and the importance of protecting and preserving the College’s history. He is an honorary professor and Doctor of Letters with The University of Sydney, and an honorary senior research fellow with The University of Western Australia.
The College community congratulates Alan on his 2023 prize winning work Elizabeth and John available in all good bookshops.
For those interested copies of Hearts and Minds can be purchased by contacting the College.
Join us at the Summer Soiree
The Warden and the Union Committee warmly invite Old Paulines, their partners and friends to join us for an unforgettable evening of festivities and live entertainment in the Quad and Salisbury.
