James Ruse Agricultural High School Pioneers Inc.
This page was last updated: December 10, 2017
Gesta Non Verba Deeds not words

  • Aravind Adiga (1991-1992) - Journalist and author, 2008 Man Booker Prize winner
  • David Fung (1996-2001) - Concert Pianist, laureate of the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Masters Competition, Tel Aviv (2008), and winner of the 2002 ABC Symphony Australia Young Performer of the Year Award.
  • Kate Fagan - (1985-1990) Folk singer
  • Jasmine Yuen-Carrucan - (1988-1989) Film Writer and Director
  • Stefan Gregory - Guitarist from the rock band Faker
  • Erryn Arkin - Film and Television Actor based in Los Angeles
  • Dr. Katrina Warren - Celebrity, veterinarian and television presenter
  • Jason Davis (Jabba) - Television host and radio presenter, Nova 96.9 Host
  • Kate O'Toole (1992-1997) - Journalist, host of Hack on Triple J
  • Joh Bailey - celebrity hair dresser
  • Antony Green (1971-77) - ABC Elections Psephologist
  • Natalie Bates - Cyclist, 2006 Commonwealth Games gold medalist
  • Greg Mail - Cricketer, former opening batsman for the New South Wales Blues (see below)
  • Andrew Leeds - Footballer, former member of the Australian National Rugby Union team
  • Richard Ings - Chairman: Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority
  • Colin Osborne - (1971-1977) President, Confederation of Australian Motor Sport
  • Ron Jackson - Gold Medal Winner 1650 yard freestyle Commonwealth Games, Kingston, Jamaica. 1966 (while still at school).
  • Rowland Horn (1955-1957) - Recipient of the 2008 "Australian Poultry Award" for services to the Poultry Industry. Awarded by the The Australian Poultry Science Symposium.
  • Dr. Frank Ellison - Wheat breeder
  • Dr. Jeffrey Moth - Poultry breeder
  • Major General Mark Kelly AO, DSC - Repatriation Commissioner, Soldier, former Land Commander of the Australian Army
  • Scott Farquhar (1992-1997) - Businessman, co-founder of Atlassian and winner of the 2006 EY Entrepreneur of the Year
  • David Sandoe OAM (1957-1962) - Businessman, Former National Chairman of Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, Former National President of Swiss Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Now SwissCham) and Former President of Australian & New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance
  • Andrew Leigh - ANU Economist, Federal Member for Fraser
  • Peter Barrett (1980-1985) - a Vice President of Microsoft?
  • Rear Admiral Trevor Jones AM, CSC - Deputy Chief of Navy | Former Chief of Staff of Headquarters Australian Forces in Middle East
  • Bill Moss AM - Philanthropist, former Head of Banking and Property Group at Macquarie Bank (see below)
  • Catriona Noble - CEO of McDonald's Australia
  • Dhananjayan (Danny) Sriskandarajah - Director General of the Royal Commonwealth Society
  • Scott Farquhar - CEO of Australia software company Atlassian
  • Melinda Howes - CEO of the Actuaries Institute
  • Dr. Alan C Watts - OAM (1955 -1957)
  • Peter Ledger - world renowned artist
  • Barry Gavin Baillie - (see below)


History
(Alumni)

The following is a raw list was originally taken from the Alumni section the JRAHS Wikipedia entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ruse_Agricultural_High_School

As many readers would know, Wikipedia is subject to alteration at any time by anyone (at one stage all the JRAHS alumni entries were removed by one person).

JRAHS needs a better system of researching and maintaining an alumni list.

Greg Mail
Former NSW SpeedBlitz Blues batsman, Greg Mail, has become the leading First Grade run scorer in the 119 year history of Sydney Grade cricket, surpassing the mark set by former team mate Greg Hayne.

Greg began the weekend needing 55 runs to pass Hayne’s career tally of 12,354.
He knocked off 42 of those runs during Day One of Sydney University’s Two-Day fixture against one of his former clubs, Sydney, on Saturday, before making the record his own with 67 in his side’s First Grade Limited Overs Semi Final loss to Fairfield-Liverpool, taking his First Grade career run tally to 12,409.

Greg, who topped the Fifth Grade averages as a 15-year-old back in 1993-94, has represented four teams in First Grade: Parramatta (1995/96), Hawkesbury (1996/97 – 1998/99), Balmain/UTS Balmain, now the Sydney Cricket Club (1999/2000 – 2003/04) and Sydney University (2004/05 – present).
He was team mates with Greg Hayne at Sydney from 1999 – 2004.

The majority of his runs have been made for Sydney University (7,414) followed by UTS Balmain (2,837), Hawkesbury (1,924) and Parramatta (234). Greg also shares the record of most First Grade centuries (36) with Victor Trumper and Warren Bardsley.
He played 72 First Class matches for the NSW SpeedBlitz Blues making 4,085 runs at 32.16 with nine centuries. Of the 12 occasions that a NSW player has carried their bat through a completed First Class innings and the 16 occasions that a player has scored a century in each innings of a First Class match, Mail is the only NSW player to have achieved both of these feats during his career.

Bill Moss wants to be remembered for more than his millions, writes Rick Feneley.
Fabulously rich and still begging  Date August 21, 2010

Bill Moss grew up without two things that help explain the man he has become. One was money. Moss saw little of it in the Guildford West fibro where he was raised, the fourth and youngest child of a gardener. Second, Moss toiled through his childhood, and then his early adult years, without knowing he had a terrible disease, a type of muscular dystrophy which, if diagnosed, would have explained the cramps, the backaches, the progressive slowing of his limbs and the spasmodic ''throwing'' of his legs as he walked, for which he was teased at school.
This is the same Bill Moss who would become fabulously rich at the ''Millionaires' Factory'', Macquarie Bank, from which he retired with a payout of more than $40 million three years ago. It is the same Moss who made plenty of other people absurdly rich along the way.

The former head of property and banking at Macquarie is devoting his ''retirement'' - a preposterous description given his productive output - and much of his personal wealth to helping science find some answers to the little-understood disease that is slowly but surely crippling him: facioscapulohumeral dystrophy, or FSHD.
At 56, Bill Moss laments: ''I've found that a lot of the doors that were open to me when I was helping people get rich weren't open to me when I was trying to promote a social charity. It actually made me very disillusioned with a lot of the wealthy people I had met. They had an attitude: we don't give to charity. And that really shocked me.''

For our lunch, Moss has chosen Glass Brasserie, the latest venture of the celebrity restaurateur Luke Mangan, in Sydney's Hilton Hotel. When the Herald arrives, Moss and Mangan are deep in discussion. Mangan is designing a three-course banquet, infused with chocolate, for a fund-raiser for Moss's project, the FSHD Global Research Foundation.
''Luke helps me,'' Moss explains as Mangan leaves us. ''If Luke wants some help, I help him. I only help people who help the foundation. I'm proud to say that.''
At first glance, Moss does not appear disabled. He has a cane nearby but no wheelchair. He must, however, decline our request to move to a better position for a photograph. ''I can't get up,'' he explains - not without the help of his assistant, who will be returning after lunch. ''I'm stuck until I get moved.''
Moss's facial expressions are somewhat muted and there is a persistent puckered protrusion of his lips. (''Generally, you have a problem in your lips. You can't close your mouth tightly. You can't blow up a balloon. You can't close your eyes properly. You have distortion in the facial muscles.'')

With the progressive wasting of his skeletal muscles, ''I'm getting a bit worse each day. Now I really can't walk unless I use a stick and hold someone's hand. Twelve months ago I could walk without holding someone's hand. With this disease, you can do one thing today and you can't do it tomorrow.''
This reality would be psychologically debilitating for many. For Moss it is his daily motivation. It was the same motivating force which, before he left Macquarie, spurred him to found Lime Taxis, a fleet of wheelchair-accessible cabs. Fed up with the two-hour waits for a taxi - and furious on behalf of thousands of disabled people - he turned his anger into action.

Now he wants to ''change the world''. He is determined to help find treatments or a cure for FSHD. ''Too late for me,'' he says, ''but I want to make a difference.'' And he wants to fight for the human rights of the one in five Australian people who have some form of disability; rights that the United Nations has set in stone but which its signatories, including Australia, fail to uphold.
When he was six or seven, Moss recalls of his days at Guildford West Public, ''I was the fastest runner at school. By the age of 12, I was the slowest runner in the class.'' He became still slower in his teens. He persevered with cricket, rugby, tennis and basketball but struggled to catch a ball or get up after a tackle.
He won a place at James Ruse, the selective state high school. His parents were role models for hard work. ''My mother used to work in Aussie Post and do cleaning and cooking to make sure the kids had a good education.'' But young Bill envied neighbours with new Holdens and Fords. Even in his youth, he remembers, he wanted to get ahead. ''I already wanted to change the world - from Guildford.''

But still he had no clue about his illness, and he suspects this was a blessing. There were signs, a pronounced winged scapula among them, but nobody understood them. There was pain but, with nothing to compare it to, he had no measure of its significance. He soldiered on.

Moss studied economics at the University of Sydney. Invited to undertake his honours, he declined. It would have meant forfeiting a year's income. He could earn $8000 in his first year in the state or Commonwealth public service. Moss applied for both.

''And I got rejected by both. I would laugh about it later, particularly when I was very successful at Macquarie. But it never really dawned on me until a couple of years ago, when I realised: 'Bill, you got rejected because you had a funny walk. And you got rejected because, even though you couldn't see it, the symptoms were there that you weren't quite normal.' You know, it was discrimination.''
Moss became a graduate trainee at ANZ. At 25 he married his first wife, Denise, with whom he had two children, Stephen, now 25, and Natalie, 23. It was not until Moss was 27 or 28 that he was diagnosed. Denise needed open-heart surgery and Moss met her specialist. ''He looked at me and said, 'You have FSHD.' Given what I know now - how little is still understood about this disease - it was a pretty remarkable diagnosis.''
And yet Moss had been living in denial. ''At that age, I'd never look at myself in the mirror. So what was I doing? Psychologically, I was afraid to confront what I looked like. So, I never saw it.''

Moss went to a neurologist. ''He said, 'Look, I can't tell you much about it. We don't know whether you should exercise or not exercise. All I can tell you is you'll be in a wheelchair by the time you're 50. So my advice to you is: don't work too hard; enjoy life.' I took a totally different view. I thought, I've got to achieve in 20 years what I would normally achieve in 40. I've got to be at my peak by my early 30s and have made all my money by the time I'm 40 … So that changed my life. It drove me.''
Moss had moved to Beneficial Finance, then the number one construction lender in NSW. In five years he progressed from graduate trainee to lending manager to leasing manager to credit manager to securities manager and finally state manager, with 80 staff, at age 30. In 1984 he was head-hunted to set up real estate at Hill Samuel, the year before it became Macquarie. He was lured with a staff of one, a shared secretary and a pay cut. ''I wanted the challenge of starting something from scratch.''

Twenty-three years later, in 2007, when he resigned from Macquarie, his division had real estate assets under management worth $30 billion and employed 1400 people in 12 countries. But that is not the story he wants to tell today.

Moss's abilities have towered over his disabilities, which were never an issue for the likes of David Clarke, Macquarie Bank's executive chairman, or Macquarie Group's chief executive, Allan Moss (no relation). Bill Moss did encounter discrimination, though - in middle-management. He once recommended someone whose expertise the bank needed. ''About three weeks later I said, 'Whatever happened to that person I referred through.' And they said, 'Oh, we couldn't employ them because they had a disability.' I was horrified … If I had gone to David Clarke, he would have been horrified.''
It is not about bosses so much as entrenched cultural prejudices, Moss believes. Will a disabled employee be as capable, require more sick days, impose costs on the business? Sometimes it is a fear of confronting disability. ''When I used to walk to work, I'd fall over a lot. I'd fall over in Pitt Street Mall. Eventually someone would help me get up, but I was always amazed that sometimes you'd wait for 60 or 90 seconds before anyone would offer to help.''

Returning from overseas, he would request a wheelchair at the airport. ''They'd wheel you as far as the gutter and say, 'You've got to get out here. We don't have the authority to take you to the car park because it's not owned by us. We don't have insurance for that.' '' A couple of years ago, he refused to get out of the wheelchair. The airport employee insisted, so he told her: ''Well OK, look, what I'll do - I'll crawl across the road. Could you tie my bags to my feet?'' She relented.
While making his millions, Moss took honorary roles on the Tourism Task Force and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. He founded the Sydney Airports Forum. He joined Kevin Rudd's 2020 summit. He was made a member of the Order of Australia. His philanthropy reached from the arts to disability. He personally funded the establishment of Gunya Tourism, a resort in the Titjikala community near Alice Springs, a model for self-sustaining Aboriginal businesses.
In his last months at Macquarie, Moss required an assistant to tie his shoes. He needed more time for his health, his family and his wife, Lata. And for his new project, FSHD.

The Australian government, he says, has spent not a cent on researching the disease, so there is no database of sufferers; no clue how many there may be. ''And we still don't even know if you should exercise or not.'' A 2008 study suggests it may be the most common dystrophy in Europe, affecting one in 15,000 people.
After he retired, Moss went to the Macquarie Bank Foundation, which said it would love to help. ''I put in two applications and they rejected both. You can create billions of dollars of value for a corporation …'' Other rich contacts disappointed. So he went back to work. With friends he established Moss Capital, corporate guns for hire. Moss's slice - all he earns - goes to his research foundation.

In the past two years it has funded seven research projects in the US, the Netherlands, Italy, France and Australia. ''We've already made some major breakthroughs. We've created the world's first embryonic stem-cell line of FSHD. That's now being pursued around the world in research. We've done some amazing stuff with Monash University, with some very promising results on procedures that might improve muscle strength, not only for FSHD but for people in old age.''
Moss's assistant arrives at our table to lift him to standing position. They begin to shuffle away.
''If I can leave one memory in my life,'' says Moss, ''I don't want it to be about Macquarie Bank. It got me to a point. It developed me. It was great. It gave me a chance to meet global leaders and build businesses that might never have been built, and to change that world. But that's not what I want to be remembered for. I want to be remembered for making a difference to society.''

An itch that won't go away. Some days Bill Moss feels like an ''unofficial disabilities ombudsman''. He fields calls from many disabled people. He lectures on the subject. And he is happy to be regarded as an irritant for Bill Shorten, the federal parliamentary secretary for disabilities.

''Bill's a remarkable guy,'' Moss says. ''He has the ability to become prime minister one day. He has his heart in the right place. He has created this incredible awareness about disability. He's called it a national disgrace.
''Bill's problem is that he hasn't been able to carry through with the bureaucracy and his own party to make changes. The reason for that, I don't know. Is it because it isn't a cabinet ministry, which it needs to be? Is it because, within cabinet, disabilities are not taken seriously? Is it because there are no votes in it?''

Moss recently shared a stage with Shorten at an event organised by Mad as Hell, an advocacy group which argues there are votes in it: the 1.4 million Australians with a serious disability - the population of Adelaide and Hobart combined - and 700,000 full-time carers. One mother told the Herald her family had spent $500,000 on equipment for her 15-year-old son - none of it covered by government - and was about to spend $20,000 on a wheelchair.

Moss, like Mad as Hell, says it is high time Australia had a no-fault disability insurance scheme, paid for with a Medicare-style levy. Shorten awaits a Productivity Commission inquiry into the need for such a scheme.

Some Ex - JRAHS pupils...
Barry Baillie
First in Barry Baillie's working life was a 30-year career with the Department of Agriculture, then, in 1997, he was nominated by the minister of agriculture to become chief executive and chairman of the NSW Meat Industry Authority.
He held the position until 2000, when the authority was merged into a new body, Safe Food Production NSW.

Then, his close involvement in and knowledge of government played a major part in his selection as chief executive of the Caravan and Camping Industry Association of NSW, a position he held with distinction for more than a decade until his death.
Dedicated … starting as a trainee, Barry Baillie moved up the ranks to become a prominent figure in the agricultural industry.

Among many state and federal tourism awards that the association won during his tenure was the 2012 Australian Tourism Award for festivals and events for the association's Supershow, held in April each year. The award, announced two days after Baillie's death, was fitting for a man who played a major part in the camping and caravan industry, one of the highest growth sectors in tourism for the past several years. Then, on March 29, at the Caravan, RV & Accommodation Industry of Australia awards ceremony, Baillie was posthumously given the Eric Hayman award for contribution to the industry nationally.

Barry Gavin Baillie was born on August 4, 1945, the son of Guy and Eunice Baillie. At that time, Guy was a flying officer in the RAAF and later worked as a sales representative.
Barry grew up in Neutral Bay and Gordon and in 1959 was in the first intake at the newly named James Ruse Agricultural High School at Carlingford. He was then well prepared for his tertiary education at Hawkesbury Agricultural College, near Richmond. He excelled as a student and played in the First XV rugby team in all three years.

After completing his diploma of agriculture in 1966, Baillie joined the Department of Agriculture and was posted to Trangie Agricultural Research Station in western NSW as a trainee sheep and wool officer. He went from there to Temora, Eastwood and Cowra, and in 1972 became district sheep and wool officer at Dubbo.

Later, he was posted to Gunnedah and Maitland, where in 1980 he became regional director of advisory services for the New England, Hunter and metropolitan areas. During this period he helped establish and was chairman of the Tocal Field Days, an annual event held at Tocal College near Maitland.

Throughout his early country postings, Baillie played first-grade rugby union, including for Eastwood in 1969 and 1970, where he excelled as a half-back.

His career highlight was being selected to represent NSW Country against the Springboks at Orange in 1971. However, to his great disappointment, he was a reserve in the match and did not play.

Baillie returned to Hawkesbury Agricultural College in 1975 to complete a graduate diploma in extension - the equivalent of a university degree. He maintained a long and close association with the college and, later, its successor, the University of Western Sydney. From 1998 until 2001, Baillie was chairman of the university's Hawkesbury Foundation, which established and continues to fund the Sir Vincent Fairfax Chair in Sustainable Agriculture at the university.

Baillie was also an active member and past president of the ex-students' association, the Hawkesbury alumni convocation.

Among several executive positions he held during his career, Baillie was director of the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute at Camden, where he managed a multimillion-dollar research budget and 160 staff. While stationed there, he developed a close affinity with the Belgenny Farm Agricultural Centre Heritage Trust, and for four years, from 1992, he was the chairman of the trust.

In 1990, Baillie launched the Agview Field Days at the property, which he ran for six years until, against his wishes, the Department of Agriculture withdrew its support and the popular annual event, known as the ''family farm show'', ceased in the mid-1990s.

Throughout his life, Baillie was a keen fisherman, spending many hours with family and friends in his blue rubber ducky in coastal areas of NSW. Barry Baillie, who died from complications after contracting legionnaires' disease, is survived by his former wife, Margie (nee Hughes), children Paula and Brock and grandchildren Ella and Julian.
Paul Myers

http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/
Peter Ledger
Artist, Pilot, Adventurer. These things only begin to sum up the interests, talents and enthusiasms of a complex man who died much too soon. Peter was born in Sydney, Australia. As a young man, he roamed widely. In New Zealand, he hunted deer for the government, collecting a bounty for the ears. In Australia, he worked on government surveying teams and had many fascinating adventures in the outback, seeing places no white man had ever laid eyes on before.

His artistic talents found many outlets, from woodworking to leatherwork, but his greatest recognition in Australia came from his pioneering use of the airbrush and his wildly imaginative paintings and illustrations for the advertising world. In 1977, he won the Art Directors Silver Award for his stunning Surfabout poster (if you're a fan of the Silver Surfer, be sure to have a look at this one). Also in 1977, his Golden Breed poster was honored in the Graphis yearbook of award-winning posters from around the world. In 1978, he won the "King of Pop" award for "Best Album Cover Design" for The Angels' album, "Face to Face".

He was also well known for his stunning portrait of John Lennon sponsored by a Sydney radio station a day after Lennon was killed and rushed into print as a special commemorative poster. I believe Peter said he painted the portrait within a 24 hour period.

When he wasn't producing art, Peter had many other activities he pursued with zeal: scuba diving and professional salvage diving, racing motorcycles, flying hot air balloons, hunting, bodybuilding, sailing, and cooking gourmet meals. He had an insatiable passion for good food, garlic, and wine. He was the quintessential gentleman barbarian.

But he had a wanderlust that wouldn't let go. From around 1978-1979, he lived in New York and worked for Marvel Comics. One of his groundbreaking contributions to the comic book field was the first fully-painted and airbrushed work on the series, "Warriors of the Shadow Realm". Peter and I met in Oct. of 1979 at a meeting of the Comic Art Professional Society in Los Angeles. He was on his way back to Australia and stopped off overnight in L.A. to visit friends. Sparks flew the moment our eyes met, but a day later, he was gone.

A year and a half passed. Suddenly, Peter was back in L.A. He'd been brought over to work on a project funded by George Lucas and Gary Kurtz. It was a top-quality, coffeetable art book of "Uncle Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times", as written and drawn by Carl Barks. Peter was a big fan of Barks' wonderful duck art. His contribution was to hand-paint and airbrush all the stories.

We were together from that time on. From Oct.-Dec. 1982, we lived in Australia, shuttling between Sydney and his magnificent old home (a historic rectory, one of the oldest buildings in New South Wales) in the tiny town of Carcoar, where one can still see the bullet hole in the wall of the bank when it was robbed by Ben Hall, a famous bushranger. We returned to the States and were married on Catalina Island in March of 1983. He lived in California the rest of his life.

Peter concentrated on working in the film and television business, mainly doing storyboards and preproduction design. He painted robot suits and designed aliens for the movie THE ICE PIRATES. He created the first BABYLON 5 logo, did the first character illustrations and an initial painting of the B5 station. J. Michael Straczynski used this art while selling the series.

In spite of his remarkable talents, Peter didn't have the temperament for Hollywood and success in this field eluded him. He had a zero b.s. threshhold and wasn't a man to compromise with stupidity. He was an open and generous man with no patience for avarice or stinginess. So he turned his energies to another one of his great passions: aviation.

Peter loved planes and he loved flying. He was a natural pilot. His particular deep interest, since he was a boy, were the German planes of WWII, most especially the amazing jet aircraft developed during the war. In 1988, Peter and I travelled to Bonn, Germany to have a limited edition aviation print signed by Adolf Galland. He didn't just paint WWII aircraft, he also flew them, when he got the chance. And, as with so many pilots, he had a weakness for pin-up girls as nose art.

Together, we produced a number of comic book stories, such as Carlos McLlyr, and The Sisterhood of Steel graphic novel. He did many other wonderful pieces of art, such as this duelling spaceships cover for Alien Encounters, and another one for "The Monster of Planet Og".

Toward the end of 1988, Peter and I signed a deal to create computer games for Sierra On-Line. We moved up to the Oakhurst area in the Sierra mountains just outside Yosemite National Park. We produced THE CONQUESTS OF CAMELOT: King Arthur and the Search for The Grail. Though Peter did continue to produce paintings for use in computer games (Ringworld, Blood and Magic), he never much cared for working with computers.

Peter was a sensualist and a hedonist. He wanted the tactile feel of art, as he did with everything in life. He lived for the moment, the day. He must have said to me a hundred times, "I need to do this now, because I could be dead tomorrow."

From about 1990 on, Peter concentrated on doing large wall murals and trompe l'oeil paintings. He partnered with a marvelously talented British artist, Susie Wilson. Together, they created many magnificent works of art in the Fresno, Oakhurst, and Monterey areas. Most are in private homes, unfortunately, but if you're ever in Oakhurst on the way to Yosemite, stop in for a meal at Castillo's Mexican Restaurant. It's filled with the murals Peter and Susie did: jungle scenes, desert scenes, parrots, even a pteradactyl bursting in through an open (trompe l'oiel) window.

On the evening of Nov. 18th, 1994, Peter was driving home from Monterey. He was on a dark country road, driving fast, probably deep in thought, and he either missed or ignored a stop sign at a blind corner. He was hit broadside by a semi-trailer hauling a full load of cotton. Both vehicles were totalled. The truck driver survived. Peter died instantly. He's buried in the small, historic cemetery in Oakhurst.

His mother, Ilma Ledger, has sinced passed on, leaving Peter survived by his two children: Karynne Ledger lives in Sydney where she cooks wholistic catered meals, designs webpages, and does spirit guide readings and portraits. Julian Ledger lives in L.A. and works in the special effects business. He builds, paints, sculpts, puppeteers, does computer graphics, and more. He's also one hell of a cook. Art and food. Must be in the genes.

The Australian comic art awards are called "The Ledgers" .

Reprinted from:-
http://www.christymarx.com/ledger/plbio.htm