Lois Calvert (Class of 1953) The Story of a Tasmanian Family
Posted on August 14, 2024
Lois Calvert (Class of 1953) matriculated as a Dux before studying at the Universities of Tasmania and Canberra, teaching writing and literature and tutoring with the Adult Migrant English Program. She and her mother Edith Calvert co-authored The Johnsons of Castle Hill: The Story of a Tasmanian Family (1996) and she shares the experience of her displaced Norfolk Island ancestors sent to Van Diemen’s Land in 1808 in her essay “Digging for Yams” (Griffith Review, 2012). Lois plans to publish a selection of her essays online.
Lois’s daughter Irene Wettenhall (Class of 1974) studied music and history at the University of Adelaide before studying in China at the Beijing Languages Institute (1979-80), then at Fudan University in Shanghai (1979-81). This led to a career in the overseas aid agency AusAID (1983-2012), with postings in Nairobi, Harare, Beijing and Port Moresby. She later managed aid program evaluations at DFAT before transferring to the Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security during the pandemic. Irene currently pursues interests in poetry, music and Tasmanian colonial history.
After Lois’s younger brother Neville Calvert (Class of 1955) left The Friends’ School, he took over the family farm, Single Hill, and married Odette (nee Willing, 1955), a fellow Friends’ student. Single Hill, a landmark between Roches Beach and Seven Mile Beach, was badly burnt in the 1967 bushfires. Neville and his family later moved to a new property, Benbullen, at Tayene in northeastern Tasmania. Neville and Odette now live in Launceston.
