FALS: Percy Fritz Rowland, A Brief Biography by Anne McKay

Percy Fritz Rowland, A Brief Biography by Anne McKay, 1974

The name of Percy Fritz Rowland is well known to many North Queenslanders. Former pupils of the Townsville Grammar School will remember him as the jovial English headmaster who, with his new wife, sailed into the Townsville harbour in the Arawatta in January 1905, to take charge of that school. He remained there until December 1938. In those 34 years of devoted service to the school he made a name for himself as a headmaster and teacher of the highest order and as a man of great humour, understanding, and outstanding ability.

Other Northerners will remember Rowland as the author of the entertaining "Essays in Brief' written by "P.F.R.", which were published in the Townsville Daily Bulletin and in The North Queensland Register during the 1930's. Still others may remember him as the man who did so much to improve the standard of education in North Queensland, and who endeavoured to dispel the rumours in those early days that the North was no fit place for the white man.