OUR SAY How Dellys shaped thousands

I OWE a lot to Dellys Kelly.

Mrs Kelly met with Prime Minister Robert Menzies and Treasurer Harold Holt in 1958 with a dream for a university.

Helping to raise 30,000 pounds led to the Darling Downs University Establishment Association, which succeeded with the formation of the Queensland Institute of Technology (Darling Downs) in 1967, followed by the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education in 1971 and finally University of Southern Queensland in 1992.

Mrs Kelly saw a future for higher education in Toowoomba and it is due to her vision that I am here today.

I moved to Toowoomba in 2004 to study at USQ.

I had already been accepted into Charles Sturt University in Bathurst but I assumed living in Queensland might be a bit warmer. (I would be shocked to discover how cold the Garden City can actually get.)

But I loved my time at USQ. I had fantastic lecturers and I made so many lifelong friends. This included meeting my husband.

As a part of my degree I did my internship at The Chronicle, which led to a job and here I am 11 years later.

There are thousands of others that owe so much to Mrs Kelly’s contribution to Toowoomba.

It is odd to imagine Toowoomba without this internationally recognised institution.

I think about how different my life would have been and for this I am eternally grateful.