From a handful of Old Boys in 1898 to 128 years of connection, memory and service.
The School was founded in 1868. Thirty years on, in 1898, the Old Boys who had passed through it formed an Association of their own. This is the short version of the 128 years since: the milestones that made the OBA what it is, told by Old Boys, for Old Boys.
On 1 June 1898 a group of Old Boys formed the Brisbane Grammar School Old Boys' Association, with Headmaster Reginald Heber Roe as its first President. Fifty-odd members gathered at Cafe Eschenhagen on Queen Street that July to settle the rules, and one of the Association's first acts was to fund prizes for the boys still at school.
The following year the OBA held its first annual reunion dinner, gathering Old Boys around a table to renew the friendships of their school days. The reunion dinner became the Association's oldest and most enduring tradition.
Within two years the OBA had a home of its own: two rooms in the London Chartered Bank Chambers on Queen Street, with a billiard table, a piano and a reading room. President John Laskey Woolcock opened them, and they quickly became the social heart of Old Boy life in town.
A fire tore through the Association's premises, destroying its property and leaving it in serious financial trouble. Within a year there was a proposal to wind the OBA up altogether.
J. G. Nowlan stepped in as Honorary Secretary and Treasurer and, with Stuart Stephenson, refused to let the Association die. His simple rule, that every boy leaving the School should join, carried membership past a thousand by 1922 and set the pattern for the next forty years.
A field gun captured in Palestine in 1918, in an action led by Old Boy Brigadier General Lachlan Wilson '87, was brought home and unveiled on the main driveway in 1921. It stands on Gregory Terrace still, a lasting trophy of the Old Boys' service in the Great War.
The War Memorial Library opened on Armistice Day, 11 November 1924, its fundraising carried in large part by the OBA. In the same year the Golden Book, hand-lettered by Old Boy Charles Bennett Fox, was created to record every Old Boy who had served in the Great War.
Beginning with Sydney in 1924, the OBA reached beyond Brisbane, with branches following through the late 1920s and 1930s in Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton and further afield. The Association was becoming a statewide network of Old Boys.
The OBA started its own rowing and dramatic clubs, and awarded the first R. H. Roe Memorial Bursary, named for the Association's founding President. It was the beginning of the OBA's bursary work, the same instinct that supports boys at the School today. Through the Depression years it also ran an appointments board to help Old Boys and school-leavers find work.
The Association marked its fiftieth anniversary as it helped fund the Second World War Honour Board in the Great Hall. Nowlan, by then forty years its Secretary, died in 1950 and is remembered still by the J. G. Nowlan Bursary.
The OBA helped pay for the School's new gymnasium in 1953 and its swimming pool the year after. It was practical philanthropy, Old Boys giving back to the place that made them.
The Association became an incorporated body, B.G.S.O.B.A. Inc., putting its governance on a formal footing for the modern era.
The OBA launched its own quarterly newsletter, Old School Ties, and for the first time the Old Boys' record had a home of its own rather than a few pages at the back of the School Magazine.
A hundred years on, the OBA opened its membership to every Old Boy at no charge and gathered six hundred of them for a Centenary dinner at City Hall. It was both a celebration and a reset: membership as a birthright, not a subscription.
A crew of Old Boys came together to row, and under the OBA banner formed the Brisbane Grammarians Rowing Club, affiliating with Rowing Queensland that June. It gave Old Boys a way to keep rowing, stay fit and rekindle old friendships, and the club still races today.
The OBA supported the appeal for the Lilley Centre, the School's new library and academic hub, named for Sir Charles Lilley. It was the kind of contribution the Association had been making since the 1920s, helping build the School the Old Boys came from.
For the School's sesquicentenary the OBA put $110,000 towards restoring the War Memorial Library, through Old Boy donations and a grant led by President Chris Austin, funding an electronic honour board and climate-controlled cabinets for the School's precious memorabilia. Around the same time the Association made a deliberate turn, putting connection between Old Boys ahead of fundraising.
The first OBA-run Sportsman's Lunch, paired with the First XV the next day, became the seed of the Back to BGS weekend, now the anchor of the OBA year. A modern Business Breakfast series had returned the year before.
In December 2023 the OBA and Brisbane Grammar School signed a Memorandum of Understanding, setting the terms of a partnership that had grown warm and close, and giving the Old Boys' voice a formal place alongside the School.
The OBA began funding bursaries for boys in immediate need, helping families keep their sons at BGS through to the end of Year 12. It turns the money raised at events like the Sportsman's Lunch into a direct hand up, and now supports four boys.
The OBA set about surfacing 128 years of its own history: the caps, the magazines, the presidents, the stories and the photographs, gathered for the first time in one place and shared with every Old Boy to explore.
Brisbane Grammar School Old Boys' Association · Old Boys History. Part of the OBA Knowledge Project.
Draft site for committee review. Spot an error or hold a missing piece? Tell the OBA