It was still pretty active, there were a lot of people interested in what was going on with the Guild. Much the same as it is now, I suppose.
...there was nothing much there, but Hayman Hall and a small admin building, and there was the physics, chemistry, pharmacy buildings.
I’m originally from Western Australia, I’ve been at Curtin for nearly six years and it’s been fantastic. What else might people not know about me…
I was born in Melbourne. My Dad, who was from Donnybrook, got a job in Melbourne and moved over there, met my mum, and then I was born, and I spent 15 years living overseas.
The history of Grok Magazine, the official student publication of Curtin University, begins exactly 50 years ago, in April 1969, only a couple of months after the creation of the Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT) Student Guild.
I was the Education Research Officer and I was very much interested [in politics]. The Guild was all around us and I had previously been a Guild Councillor at UWA and been involved in politics there. I was a draft resister and was heavily involved in student politics at UWA, and got caught up in it at WAIT too.
50 YEARS OF THE GUILD: LOOKING BACK WITH FORMER GROK REPORTER, KATHRYN SHINE
After finishing school I was all set to become a teacher when my mum met someone who taught journalism and she suggested to me it might be something I would be interested in. It was the biggest gift because I suddenly knew with absolute clarity that was what I wanted to do.
An academic at Murdoch University is facing legal action and removal from the University Senate for being brave enough to speak up against Murdoch University.
Curtin was a fantastic place to study! It was a large campus and it had only just begun the process of beautification that you enjoy today. When I was there it was largely an environment of bleak, brutalist buildings from the 1960s, that hadn’t improved much at that point, but it was just starting to.
A trial program which aims to provide additional support to students with “on the ground” unit representatives has been successfully implemented in the Science and Engineering Faculty and is expected to be extended to other faculties next year.
Currently the music and feature editor at The West Australian newspaper, Simon Collins has interviewed Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, and Ray Charles. Nowadays, he can often be found at concerts. but back in the ‘90s, Simon’s first big journalistic gig was becoming the editor at Grok Magazine.
Tim Wallace has been everywhere: he’s worked at The Canberra Times, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Australian Financial Review. He’s dabbled in magazines like The Diplomat and Cosmos, and written articles that span politics, science, the environment, religion, and more. Where did he learn all these editing and writing skills? What was the spark that gave him the equipment to embark on an elastic, far-reaching career (or “careen”) in journalism? It all began while he working for Grok and at the Curtin Student Guild.
Curtin Student Guild stands with survivors of sexual assault and harassment
It has come to our attention that a group of Curtin students have been captured making racist and anti-Semitic remarks in an iLecture recording, which has subsequently been distributed widely among the Curtin community.
In the late ‘90s, Tanya came to Curtin a little lost, looking for a fitting degree and a purpose. She found that purpose when she joined the Guild, especially when she became the Guild Vice President in 2000.
While Giles has since moved away from his university roots of music and journalism and on towards law and union representation, he still remembers his time at Curtin and the experiences that would shape his career and his life.
We talked about what made her take on all those roles and what she got out of them.
Troy Fuller reflects on his enjoyable time at Curtin, writing and editing for Grok, the work that the Guild did for students, topical issues during the period, and how his experiences on campus contributed to his perspective and career development.
During the five years he spent studying at Curtin, Liam became highly involved with the Student Guild, hopping from one role to another and eventually becoming Guild President.
Natalie Barr—a journalist, and one of the most recognisable faces on Australian breakfast television—reminisces about her formative years in Bunbury, travelling from the country to Perth to study journalism at Curtin (formerly WAIT), what the campus environment was like in the mid-80s, her memories of the Student Guild, and how her experiences shaper her career and who she is as a person today.
