Merilyn Luck is a quiet achiever who has devoted the better part of a lifetime to ways of improving her local community.  She has made an outstanding contribution through her active involvement and support of the arts, the Anglican Church and CQUniversity over a period spanning more than 40 years.

CQUniversity has recognised Merilyn's contribution by conferring the Honorary Award of Companion of the University, during the recent graduation ceremony in Rockhampton.

Community stalwart Merilyn Luck is recognised on graduation day

Merilyn's involvement with the Rockhampton Art Gallery began in the late 1960s as one of the inaugural donors who contributed towards an acquisition fund to establish an art collection for Rockhampton, responding to a call from a group led by the then Rockhampton Mayor Alderman Rex Pilbeam.  Her generosity, along with that of other donors including her husband Frank, enabled the gallery to acquire a number of significant works by a series of highly renowned Australian artists including Arthur Boyd, John Brack, Fred Williams, Sidney Nolan and John Percival.

Thanks to the enthusiastic efforts of Merilyn and other like-minded supporters, in the 1970s the artworks in the Rockhampton Art Gallery collection quickly grew to over 300 pieces, forming the nucleus of what is today, one of the most significant and valuable collections in regional Australia.  Merilyn continued her involvement to become one of the mainstays of the Art Gallery as a Trustee from 1994 and as Chair of the Rockhampton Art Gallery Trust from 2007 to the present.  Under her vigorous and astute leadership of the Trust, the gallery has gone from strength to strength, instigating two important biennial art prizes, the ‘Gold Award', named after another generous benefactor to both the Gallery and CQUniversity, Moya Gold, and the ‘Baynton Award' for Central Queensland artists, the first such prize solely for artists from this region.

Merilyn has also been a stalwart of the Anglican Church in Central Queensland over many years as a lay Minister, Dean's Warden and Parish Councillor as well as a generous donor to the St Paul's Anglican Cathedral restoration fund.

Besides her own personal contributions, Merilyn also played a key role in identifying and approaching other potential donors as a Director of the Central Queensland University Foundation in the 1990s, helping to lay the foundations of the University as it is today.  In recognition of her lifelong contribution to the arts and the community generally, Merilyn was the 2012 recipient of the Rockhampton City Council's Australia Day Cultural Award.

Merilyn Luck's legacies include one of the best and most active art galleries in regional Australia, an engaged and active local Anglican Church and a dynamic local university that is truly in touch with its local community.