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27th Governor of Queensland Her Excellency the Honourable Dr Jeannette Young AC PSM

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Flying Arts Alliance Reception for 55th Anniversary

The 25th Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia and 24th Governor of Queensland, the Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO; Honorary Consul of Switzerland in Queensland, Mr Daniel Gschwind; Councillor for Central Ward, Councillor Vicki Howard; Mayor of Cairns Regional Council, Councillor Amy Eden; Flying Arts Alliance, Board Chair Lorraine Dinsey, Deputy Chair Jan Manton and Directors of the Board; Chief Executive Officer, Ms Toni Palmer and Cultural Patrons, Mr Tim Fairfax AC and Mrs Gina Fairfax AC; 2025 Queensland Regional Arts Award recipients; partners and supporters of The Flying Arts Alliance and the many distinguished guests joining us tonight, welcome all.

I acknowledge the Original Custodians of the lands around Brisbane, the Turrbul and Jagera people, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and to any First Nations people here this evening.

I am delighted to welcome you all here to mark the 55th anniversary of Flying Arts, and to celebrate the enormous contribution of this
unique organisation and its founder, Merv Moriarty OAM, have made to the wellbeing of Queenslanders living in regional and remote communities.  

Early in my term of office as Governor, Graeme and I saw the Paint the Town exhibition in Cairns, and, eighteen months later, visited the touring exhibition, Reframe, in the same Cairns gallery. Those first experiences of the Queensland Regional Arts Awards gave us an insight into Merv’s enduring legacy and since then, as Patron, I have watched with great pride as the Awards, the education services that feed into them and the exhibitions and opportunities that flow from them have become central to the work of Flying Arts.  

At this point, I take the opportunity to congratulate the 2025 prize winners who are with us tonight and to thank all those who have contributed so generously as partners and supporters over the 15 years since the Awards were established.  

Together with the opening of the new headquarters and gallery space at Festival House in the Valley,  and Queensland Government funding for touring exhibitions, your support has helped create what is now the nation’s largest regional art awards program.  

The fact that artists as young as 15 are eligible to enter the Awards competition is an interesting reflection of Merv’s own experience.  

As an enterprising 15-year-old in suburban Moorooka, he regularly entered children’s art competitions organised by The Sun newspaper in Sydney, and it is possible that his one pound prizes in the 1950s was the spark that led to the idea of using his prize money from the Captain Cook Bicentenary Prize in 1970 to take flying lessons and realise his vision of taking to the sky to bring art education and inspiration to the bush.

Whether or not those early prizes were the spark, the bicentenary prize later encouraged Merv to directly (and successfully!) approach Gough Whitlam for funding and today, 55 years after Merv’s first flight, history has proven, as it often does, that a bold, slightly crazy idea can work when combined with passion, determination, and skill.  

I am delighted that Flying Arts has been able to provide us with a selection of Merv’s works for display tonight as a tribute to the power of his big dreams and to the 12 phenomenal years he dedicated to his great pioneering adventure.

Six paintings and three panels of archival material, as well as a video of Andrew Moriarty talking about his father, will be on display here on Saturday when Government House is open to the public to celebrate Queensland Day.  

This retrospective will give thousands of people the opportunity to see Merv’s work and to discover the marvellous Queensland story of Flying Arts and one man’s vision and determination “to support rural, regional and remote arts communities, to inspire creativity, foster artistic excellence, strengthen wellbeing, promote social connection”, launch careers, and enrich lives.  

We all owe a great debt of thanks to Merv Moriarty – what he did truly mattered.

My gratitude extends to you all. Thank you.