A lifetime of learning
When he left school in Year 10, Gordon Doyle didn’t consider he had great prospects.
Gordon Doyle (back row, second from right) circa 1980 with students from the Papua New Guinea University of Technology at Lae.
“I’d gone right through high school in the second-bottom class; all the smart kids did languages, while I did wood and metal work,” Gordon says. “I thought my two sisters were the smart ones in the family and that I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”
He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, so Gordon joined his father in Papua New Guinea working as an insurance agent. But a chance encounter with a dedicated primary school teacher in a little school outside Port Moresby in 1967 forever changed his career trajectory.
“It was a village school made of bush materials with a dirt floor and rough-hewn desks and chairs,” Gordon remembers. “These island kids were beautiful and I could see the wonderful relationship the teacher had with them. It was a magical experience and I went home that night and thought ‘this is what I want to do.’”
Begging his way into an intensive course at Port Moresby Teacher’s College opened one door—“I did better than I ever could have imagined”—but it was his subsequent acceptance into a Bachelor of Arts degree at UNE that kick-started a lifetime of learning.
“It was terrifying coming back to Australia in 1973—the people, culture and climate was so different and I didn’t know a soul in Armidale; it was very, very difficult,” Gordon says.
However, slowly he began to find his feet. “It wasn’t easy as a mature-age student, and I was so concerned about failing a subject that I withdrew from two in that first year,” Gordon says. “But passing everything in year one helped me to find new determination and courage. I started to get credits, distinctions and even high distinctions, and I had two offers to do an honours year.”
The experience was life-changing. “UNE gave someone like me a real break and I owe the university a great debt of gratitude,” says Gordon, who subsequently did Honours and a Masters of Education at UNE and for 20 years has worked in private and state schools as a careers counsellor. “UNE has been great to me and I look back on my time at the university with the greatest affection. At UNE there were people who believed in me and who stretched me. Because they gave me a go, it enabled me to develop confidence in my abilities and to show myself that I could do it. Some of the friends I made are still friends today, almost 50 years later.”
Which explains why Gordon is leaving a bequest to UNE in his will. “It’s a chance to give back to an institution that gave me a leg up,” he says. “I know what it means to struggle and I hope this gift can make it a little easier for someone else.”
Gordon hopes the gift will fund a scholarship in memory of his parents David and Roma Doyle and help a rural student who is first in family to enjoy the opportunity of university study.
“But UNE is going to have to wait,” says the 70-year-old, who has mastered Indonesian and is now learning to speak Thai. “I intend on living a long time yet; I am having too much fun.”
