Robert Michael Clarke

   Another name for Robert is Rob.

  General Notes:

By Wendy Clarke nee Phillips, Rob's mother

Rob was born in Bankstown Hospital, near Chester Hill where we lived until 1980. We built a kindergarten onto the back of our house at 33 Treloar crescent in 1975, which is still going strong, so he and his sisters grew up with plenty of company and educational toys. (Maybe that's what made him so smart :-) After a 12 month caravan trip up the east coast of Australia we settled in Brisbane in 1982. Rob won a scholarship to Brisbane Grammar School at the end of year 7 and another scholarship with AFS in 1988 to study for a year in China before starting university. He was in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square incident and it was five days before he and his fellow scholarship students made it safely to the Australian Embassy, which was a very worrying time for us all. He started a combined arts/law course at university in 1989 and graduated four years later in Modern Asian Studies after failing law (too much time at the university tavern and not enough time at his books.) He then worked in banking for a few years, at Brisbane City council for a while, and finally gained employment with Telstra, our major communications company, where he and his wife, Nicole, work to this day. (Nicole is Nic to her friends, of whom I count myself one.)

Robert married Nicole Christine Skuja on 11 Jul 2000 in Three Monkeys Cafe West End, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.¹ (Nicole Christine Skuja was born on 4 Jan 1970 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.)