Mark has advised on major utilities projects throughout
Australia and South East Asia and for a time was based in Singapore and
Jakarta. His clients include Rio Tinto, Anglo American, Stanwell Corporation,
Ergon Energy and the governments of Queensland and Fiji.
He has worked in commercial law since 1983, and focused principally on the energy and resources sectors since 1992.
Mark's expertise has been recognised many times by
legal directories, including Chambers Asia Pacific, Chambers Global, the Who's
Who of Energy Lawyers, Best Lawyers, IFLR 1000, and Doyle's Guide. In 2013,
Mark was chosen as the leading Energy Lawyer in Queensland (and one of four in
Australia) by the peer elected "Best Lawyers"
Before attending Clontarf, Mark
was a student at an all-male private school.
When his family relocated from Toowoomba to Margate Mark joined Clontarf Beach State High and
completed Years 11 and 12 here at Clontarf.
Upon joining Clontarf the first
thing Mark noticed was how much higher the academic standards were at Clontarf in
comparison to his old school. He observed
that there was a group of smart, hard working students at Clontarf who were
determined to succeed and took nothing for granted and he soon realised that it
was great to be in their company.
Mark also found that Clontarf,
as a co-educational school, created a friendlier more tolerant environment than
his old grammar school. There was also a wider variety of co-curricular activities
on offer, from sports he hadn’t tried before, to orchestra, the talent quest, the
school musical and playing in a band and he was pleased that he had been given
the opportunity to sample them all.
After graduation Mark started
studying at university and during one vacation he door knocked the shops on
Redcliffe Parade looking for a job.
Armed with a reference from one of his teachers he secured a position as
a part time job as a storeman at Coles. After working at Coles for three years,
the fact that he had a real job and had worked hard helped him obtain a position
in a good law firm when he finally graduated from university.
Mark says that it’s sometime
the subjects that you don’t think you will use end up being valuable to your
life after school. In his last semester
at CBSHS he did a maths unit on computer programming taught by one of the many
good teachers at the school, Mr Jan Kubert.
About fifteen years later he used what he had learned to build a
database and computerised method for the kind of legal work you need to do
before your client buys a business or asset (called Due Diligence). At about
the same time, he got off a plane in France after a very long flight, and found
that he remembered enough of his high school French to buy train tickets and
tell when a taxi driver was ripping him off!
He says “I learned history from a teacher called John Driscoll, and his
emphasis on getting to the original source materials really helped me as a
lawyer in later life”
Mark has also found that you
don’t just use what you learned at school in your job: he put the computer and
history skills he had learned at Clontarf together to build a website around
his interest in poetry: www.oldqldpoetry.com
If Mark had to do his time at
CBSHS again he says he would have studied harder, particularly the STEM
subjects. Even though he works as a lawyer the STEM subjects are still relevant
to all the work that he does.
Mark says that as Australians
we are lucky in that basically everybody gets the chance to have a good
education and that a school like CBSHS gives you the chance, if you work hard,
to launch yourself for life. He has interviewed
a lot of people for graduate positions during his time working in a law firm and
has found that the kids that come from state schools are every bit as good as
those from private schools. If you are smart and you use your time well, you
can make good friends and have a lot of fun, too.
Mark’s best memory from his time
at CBSHS was the last night of the school musical, Bye Bye Birdie. He says “it was just the feeling that as a group you
had done something that none of you could have done by yourself”.
Looking back as when he was
sixteen Mark says that his advice to himself would have been don’t try to
impress, just do good work and you will impress. Also, proof read your work
carefully!
He is now in a band now that
occasionally does ABBA covers, and thinks that his 16 year old self would have
been mortified at that!
Finally Mark says that “Clontarf was exactly the right experience
for me at the right time. Even the difficult times were important, and my time
at that school went a long way to forming me into the person I am now. When I
see a friend from those days, I feel like they know who I really am”.