History of UoN Graduates' Walk

The Graduates’ Walk was developed by Student Services, Alumni and the University’s History and Heritage project, Towards UoN50.

From 2012, the Graduates’ Walk will be laid progressively from a location between the Auchmuty Library and the Shortland Union up the hill to the Great Hall.

In the first stage of the Graduates’ Walk, 137 commemorative pavers are laid representing the first graduates of the autonomous University of Newcastle in 1966. The keystone laid at the beginning of the walk is inscribed with the quote

“Lifting on to their shoulders the fame and fate of their children’s children”.

This quote, taken from Book Eight of Virgil’s Aeneid, was the preferred University motto of our Foundation Professor of Classics, Godfrey Tanner. The quote also appears below his portrait in the campus bar that bears his name, now known as the GT Bar.

In the Aeneid, the hero Aeneas is given a shield that depicts the future of Rome, ‘the fame and fate of his children’s children’, a burden he shoulders. It is a future Aeneas will make possible, but which, but for the shield, he cannot see. The Graduates’ Walk commemorates those who, in seeking their own future, have made ours possible.