John McVeigh (Groom, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Friday I visited St Ursula's College in Toowoomba to congratulate them for winning the Queensland secondary schools' category of the 2017 Anzac Day Schools' Award, which is a national competition encouraging the study of our wartime history and the commemoration of our service women and men. This was particularly apt, considering this year, 2017, is the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Milne Bay, a significant battle during World War II, with local significance given the number of veterans involved with our Darling Downs community who left all those years ago.

I was at St Ursula's for their commemoration of Anzac Day, when they hosted former prisoner of war Norman Alderton, who shared his unique perspective of being captured by the Japanese in World War II. Such experiences and the memory of those we've lost are kept alive by instilling respect for our wartime history for future generations, as is the case at St Ursula's College in Toowoomba.

I say thank you most sincerely to Wendy Collins; to the principal, Mrs Anne Marie Pawsey; and, particularly, to the students I met with on the day, last Friday, Olivia Golightly and Charlotte Corfield, who, as part of the Rising Daughters Service group at St Ursula's College, also volunteer at the Harlaxton RSL, cooking meals, meeting with diggers and generally expressing their thanks on behalf of our whole community.