11 AMC 2000-12

By the year 2000 entries in the AMC had reached saturation through most secondary schools in Australia, and now if anything declined slightly. However during the period covered in this chapter, i.e. up to 2012, the AMC remained a massive, highly viable event. The period saw introduction of papers for primary students, some changes in the scoring system, some further governance changes (not apparent to the outside world) and further growth in Asia, to countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Indonesia.

2000: First perfect medal haul

The year 2000 saw the first student to obtain the maximum haul of 6 AMC medals. This was achieved by Geoffrey Chu, of Scotch College in Melbourne, who in 1999 had also achieved Australia's highest IMO placing, a Gold Medal just one point below the best in the world. It also saw Peter McNamara win his 5th in five attempts. The full report and medal list can be found here. The AMC typically proved its reliability as an identifier of high talent by also allocating medals to Thomas Sewell, Thomas Xia, David Chan, Bobbi Ramchen and Gareth White, all in the Australian IMO team or about to be, and with Laurence Field a little further down the track.

An interesting feature was the appearance in the Junior section of three future Informatics Olympians, Australia's David Barr and Christopher Butner and New Zealand's Robert Bowmaker, who was to be that country's main trainer in later years.

The national presentation was held at Rippon Lea, a historic house in Melbourne and Guest of Honour was Sir Gustav Nossall, who as Australia's most famous medical scientist was also a very strong supporter of mathematics and had been Patron of the AMC for five years. This was his last year as Patron and Bernhard Neumann presented him with an engraved decanter in thanks from the Trust.

2001: A second perfect medal haul

The year 2001 saw a second student obtain the maximum haul of 6 AMC medals. This was achieved by Peter McNamara, of Hale School in Perth, who in the same year was the first Australian to win a second IMO Gold Medal, again showing the reliability of the AMC as a talent identifier. The full report and medal list can be found here. Medals were also won by Olympians David Chan, Gareth White, Sally Zhao and Bobbi Ramchen, and future IMO Gold Medallist Ivan Guo won his first AMC Medal. Other future IMO team members to appear for the first time were Vinoth Nandakumar, Konrad Pilch and Sam Chow, and also future Informatics Olympian Christopher Leong.

The National Presentation was made in Canberra at Old Parliament House with presenter Professor Brian Anderson.

An international highlight was the introduction of entries from Taiwan and Hong Kong, which were both strongly represented in the medal list.

2002: Overhaul of scoring system

Over the years we had consistent complaints, mainly from teachers, that the penalty for a wrong answer was unfair on students. There had been strong determination to keep it, to discourage guessing, but whereas in real life people do need to take risks, the pressure was building up. There was a lot of discussion among the committee. We did not want to completely eliminate penalties so devised a scheme for the following year in which the questions from 1 to 20 had no penalty but it remained in 2003 for 21 to 30.

2002: Medal Presentation in Western Australia

In 2002 we moved the national ceremony to Perth for the first time, with Cheryl Praeger as Guest of Honour at the Hyatt Hotel. There was the usual representation of IMO team members among the medallists, including David Chan with a perfect score, Bobbi Ramchen, Nicholas Sheridan, Gold Medallist Stewart Willcox, Gareth White and Zhihong Chen. The full list can be seen here. There were a number of future representatives in the younger divisions with future Gold Medallist Ivan Guo getting a perfect score in the Intermediate and future IMO veteran duo Graham White (perfect scorer and Gareth's cousin) and Konrad Pilch again.

2002: UNSW goes into competition

We had pioneered inclusive competitions in Australia, but had needed to use the services of the optical readers at UNSW. They, under the leadership of Jim Tognolini, had good relations with us but were impressed by the system and wanted to try going into disciplines other than maths. Peter O'Halloran asked me if I could set a primary school paper but I said I was overloaded and declined. So under UNSW, competitions were held for high schools and primary schools in English and Science and just in Primary Schools for Mathematics.

UNSW's interest in these competitions was completely commercial, to make a profit for the University. The testing was more classroom testing than our supplemented problem solving program, and there was no path in the UNSW program beyond. They were simply one-off tests. The academics running these tests were psychometrists, not specialists in the subjects they were testing. For some years we worked cooperatively with them on what we called the Asia program also. They were trying to expand their programs into Asia, and we were licensing our problems for them to use in countries which we were not accessing. However no progress was ever made with the Asia project. There were always pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, but when it came to the point, they could not be found.

By the end of 2002 Jim Tognolini had moved on and his successor tore up what was an unwritten agreement for areas where we operated, and the written Asia contract agreement. At the end of 2002 we learned they would mount a secondary mathematics competition, starting in 2003. This would free us up to start a primary competition, which we now wanted to do anyway. So basically, since we were no longer the only organisation marketing secondary "tests" in mathematics, our profile would sharpen up to distinguish ours as having the unique problem solving complement, a pathway through to Challenge and Olympiad mathematics. Whereas we did not wish to distract mathematics questions with unnecessary glossy pictures, we were to emphasise our better quality for originality, more experienced problem composers, better standards of moderation, and support of the mathematical profession.

Our entry into a primary AMC could not make a 2003 time line but we set up a high quality primary composing committee and would be in operation in 2004. There has been much discussion as to whether UNSW affected our entries. But if one looks at our entry pattern in the years leading to 2003, and the years after, there was no sharp change in the entry pattern.

2003: The Prudence Award

Almost from the start, we used to give a special award to each school known as a special achievement award. This was based on trying to get the best score in the school. To do this we took into account that some papers in different years were of different levels of difficulty to others, so we used statistical methods to standardise the scores across the year groups. It was a bit confusing for some, who did not understand this process, and maybe it did not always choose the right student.

In 2002 the Trust hosted the 4th conference of WFNMC. This is a subject for another part of this web site. However one of the plenary speakers was Jean-Christophe Deledicq, son of one of the founders of the Kangourou competition in France (discussed in Chapter 15: Anecdotes) in about 1991. I had attended one of their problems committee meetings in 1994 in Paris and was fairly well versed. Particularly that they kept exactly the same format and scorong system which we had started with. However I did not know about the Prudence Award which they used and which Jean-Christophe described.

The Prudence Award is a rather quirky one, but very simple to describe. The French award it to the student in the school who gets the most questions consecutively correct, starting from question 1. It is interesting, as we have had medallists who have had early questions wrong, in their bid to race through the easy part of the exam. I recall a student one year winning a medal after getting both of questions 3 and 5 wrong. This seemed a much nicer award than our special achievement award. I recommended we replace the special achievement award with the prudence award, the committee agreed unanimously and it was introduced in 2003. I have only heard positive remarks about it.

2003: Presentation in Sydney

The main presentation was held in Sydney's Parliament House by Deputy Premier Andrew Refschauge. It was also noted by the presence of sponsor Westpac's CEO David Morgan, and this was at the peak of the relationship between the Trust and Westpac. By now future IMO Gold Medallist Ivan Guo was really demonstrating his ascendancy with a perfect score as a Year 11 student. Some other past, present or future IMO team members were also among the medals, including Bobbi Ramchen, Daniel Nadasi, Stephen Merriman (NZ), Matthew Ng, Stephen Muirhead and Sam Chow, and future Informatics Olympian Angus McInnes. The full medal list can be found here.

Not all students could attend ceremonies and on those occasions I was sometimes able to compensate by being in the vicinity of a school and visit at the right time. For example Bobbi Ramchen, who had won an IMO Bronze Medal won AMC medals in 2002 and 2003 and on both occasions I visited Melbourne Girls Grammar School to attend a school assembly and present her medal. Here I am on the 2003 visit with Bobbi's teacher Sue Michell at left.

2003: Convening of AMC Primary Problems Committee

During the year a strong Primary Problems Committee had been assembled. It was chaired by Warren Atkins, still the Chair of the Secondary Committee, who by now lived at Newcastle after retiring as an academic at the University of Canberra. There were three other Newcastle-based members in Mike Clapper (Principal of Hunter Valley Grammar School and later AMT Executive Director), Jacqui Ramagge (University of Newcastle) and local teacher Karen Diehl, and in the first years the committee met at Newcastle. Also from NSW was Lismore-based teacher Jim Green, who had been associated with the former Northern Rivers Competition, Jan Cavanagh, a consultant from Brisbane, Jillian Neale, a Perth Primary School Principal, Anne Briner from Melbourne, and a trio of ACT teachers in Phil Gray, Anthony Telford and (my son) Gregory Taylor. I also joined the foundation committee.

2004: First year of the primary AMC and first Hobart presentation

The first year of the primary AMC attracted several thousand entries. The committee decided that medals would not be awarded to primary students, as this was meant to be fun and not placing pressure on younger students. It was also decided that although calculators were not deemed suitable for the type of question we wanted to set in secondary schools, primary students should have access to all the resources normally available to them in the classroom, not necessarily calculators, which are not used so much in primary schools anyway, but other aids which students might use such as MAB blocks.

The first primary competition actually yielded six perfect scores, which included two by twins in New South Wales, and the first glimpse of a future IMO Gold Medallist in Victorian Aaron Chong. The secondary medal list included again IMO Gold Medallist Ivan Guo, with a perfect score again, and other IMO team members, including Kamil Khan, Laurence Field and Daniel Nadasi. The Intermediate list again showed coming IMO Silver Medal duo Graham White and Konrad Pilch and also 2006 IMO team member Matthew Ng. The year 2004 also saw the first student to win a medal in more than one country. Suranyi Muhammad Adib had previously won an AMC medal in Singapore. He had now moved to Victoria, and won a Year 11 medal with a perfect score.

The presentation was to be the first to be held in Hobart. Guest of Honour was the Hon Paul Lennon, Premier of Tasmania. An unusual thing was that this was to be the first presentation to a second generation medallist, and appropriately it was to a Tasmanian. Jet Holloway's father Damien had won a medal in 1980, following his twin brother David in 1979. Now Damien's son Jet was a winner, and Damien and Jet are shown with me at the ceremony. This was also to be the last ceremony in which Don Aitkin attended as Chairman of the AMT Board. And as an innovation, a student was invited to give a speech at the lunch, and IMO Gold Medalist and multiple AMC Medalist Ivan Guo appearing for his final time gave a great speech.

The full medal list, and the first list of primary perfect scorers, can be found here.

2005: Administration issues

When theTrust started each of the Subtrusts had autonomy, even financial autonomy. But there were different philosophies in the Subtrusts, which did not always guarantee fairness. In particular there had by now developed a need for cross-subsidisation of the difficult to fund Olympiad programs and different approaches to price fixing and to professional development for the committee members. It seemed to me there needed more central control of at least the financial aspects of the Trust and I proposed that a restructure was needed. This proved a somewhat difficult position for the AMF, the subtrust which ran the AMC, which was being asked to cede powers and traditions it had successfully built up. This is discussed in Chapter 15.

2005: Change to format and scoring system

Whereas the scoring system for using penalties in the last ten questions was fair, it was more complicated than the previous system to explain. It was decided to change to a system in which there were no penalties anywhere, but the last five questions were remodeled on the style used in the American AIME exam and had recently been picked up for AMOC's AIMO exam. There were some on the committee who did not wish to give up the last vestiges of penalties in fear of someone of not high calibre fluking a perfect score. But since the answer for these questions had to be an integer between 0 and 999, easily read by an optical reader, those committee members were now satisfied it would be too difficult to guess a medal score. So questions 26 to 30 took this form from 2005, with all questions from 21 to 30 still worth 5 marks. The maximum possible score had now changed from 150 to 120.

2005: New Chairman and presentation in Melbourne

As noted above and elsewhere Don Aitkin, founding Chairman of the Board, had indicated 2004 was to be his last year. He had stayed on as chair well after having left his post as UC Vice Chancellor but felt now was the time to move on. He was replaced by Mr Greg Taylor AO, an economist who had a record of distinguished public service, having risen to First Assistant Secretary of Treasury, Deputy Secretary of Prime Minister's, and then Secretary of three Departments, first Education, then Science and finally Primary Industry into the early years of the Howard government before serving as Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund in Washington.

Greg's first appearance at a national AMC medal presentation was to be at Government House, Melbourne, with Guest of Honour Governor the Hon John Landy, in an earlier life the legendary Australian mile runner. I am shown here at the hotel before departing to Government House with Greg and his wife Beatrice.

This medal presentation created a new initiative in that musical talent of the medallist was identified for live performance. This was to be the first AMC medal for Victorian Andrew Elvey Price, later to be an IMO Gold Medalist.Here he is playing a guitar at the lunch. He was also in a punk rock band, which the ABC featured when introducing our IMO team in a 730 report a few years later.

John Landy was an extremely popular figure and he appeared to enjoy hosting the function. He is shown, centre, with, from left, Naida Atkins, Greg and Beatrice Taylor, and Peter and Lois Taylor.

The full medal list, and the first list of primary perfect scorers, can be found here. Among the IMO team were duo Graham White and Konrad Pilch, again, and future team members Charles Li, Alfred Liang, Andrew Elvey Price, Aaron Chong and Stacey Law. Suranyi Muhammad Adib, who had previously won an AMC medal in Singapore and Victoria, and won a further medal with a perfect score.

2005: State and National Award Ceremonies

Except for New Zealand the founding of a national award ceremony in Singapore in 1995 had led to all Asian awards being presented in their country from that time (except for ones further away like India, where we would post the medal). I had held on to bringing New Zealand students to Australia, as I realised the trip was popular with them, but it was not in the best interest of the Trust.

So in November 2004, Anne Barnett, Warren and I went to Auckland and we organised a presentation for all New Zealand Medals upstairs in Westpac's headquarters building. Whereas this was a realtively quiet affair, the following one in Christchurch in 2005 was not. NZAMT permitted us to present the medals in a full plenary session in front of the 600 attending mathematics teachers, and the teachers provided a standing ovation, probably only rivaled in my experience when I attended Scotch College to present Daniel Mathews with his Australian blazer, in this case the strength of the standing ovation coming from students rather than teachers. This, including the strengths of the standing ovations, was repeated in Auckland 2007 and Palmerston North in 2009, but the 2011 could not be done this way as because of the Rugby World Cup NZAMT had to reschedule to earlier in the year, before the results were known.

In the years leading up to 2005 I had been thinking of holding ceremonies in various states. The medals were being presented elsewhere but it seemed that we could award prizes, maybe high distinctions, but in particular prudence awards, which was helping us diversify the Singapore presentations, as it ensured the presence of every school with a reasonable entry, even those without top academic results. I had discussed this idea at MANSW conferences with Greg Murty, on the Executive of MANSW and Deputy Principal of Girraween High School, a selective school to the west of Parramatta.

Greg was encouraging a function for the western suburbs, and in any case the sort of function I had in mind would be too big for all of Sydney or Melbourne, as there were several hundred prizewinners alone in each city. And Greg noted the mayor of Holroyd was a maths teacher and they had a nice function room where citizenship ceremonies are held. So in 2005 we had our first presentation there. It was easy for me to drive up with three staff members, normally including Heather Sommariva, who was brandishing her skills as a photographer, and return the next day.

The Mayor turned out to be John Brodie, as it happened, and as he would relate in his speeches, a direct male descendant of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde (who was also a councillor, in Edinburgh). John took up the job with energy and ran several of these until his term expired, proud of the fact he was filling the hall up with people who had only been there before for citizenship ceremonies and could now turn up as real Australians.

With this success, and with the success of a similar function in Canberra, we gradually added the other major cities to the list, as we ran national ones in the same city, starting with Adelaide in 2006. For Melbourne we copied the Sydney one by focusing on the north western suburbs and using the Brunswick Town Hall. Brunswick provided a parallel experience to Holroyd. MAV's office is in Brunswick and its CEO Simon Pryor is an avid Brunswick citizen and former Mayor. In 2012 the function was to be held instead in the Coburg Town Hall, part of the same council these days, but a little further out, as the Brunswick Hall was undergoing renovation.

The Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane functions were always held at Universities, and this was a win-win situation, as we gave Universities a good excuse to get prospective talented students familiar with their campus. The Universities were also always able to provide an interesting speaker from their department, providing talented students and parents an insight into life as a mathematician. The functions were not expensive and probably in any case paid for themselves, as we observed improved entries in the year after their introduction in various cities. I felt that once the six local ceremonies were developed, this was about as much as any of us could handle.

In 2007 my nephew Nicholas Taylor won a prize. That year the Adelaide ceremony guest speaker was Professor Nigel Bean, and here he is seen presenting the prize.

2006: A return to Adelaide

Having had one of Australia's great Olympiads presenting as a state governor, 2006 saw a repeat, in Adelaide, where one of Australia's "Golden Girls", Marjorie Jackson, was now Governor. Marjorie Jackson, formerly known as the Lithgow flash, was an outstanding sprinter, who had won the Gold medal for the 100m and 200m at the 1952 and 1956 Olympics, and relays, and held world records in those events. The full medal list, and the first list of primary perfect scorers, can be found here.

The list shows the duo of Graham White and Konrad Pilch both receiving AMC medals, but now being in Year 12, this was for the last time. Other IMO team members included Mark Norrish, Anthony Morris and Paul Cheung in the Senior Division, but up and comers Max Menzies, Anthony Elvey Price, Colin Lu and Aaron Chong in the lower divisions. An interesting appearance was that of Andrew Elvey Price's older brother Matthew. The Elvey Price family was an interesting entity, with the mother being a mathematician taught by Hans Lausch at Monash.

The function was held at Government House, on the corner of North Terrace and King William Road.

The Governor is with me, Anna Nakos (on right) and Anna's mother, second from left, just after the ceremony.

These presentations are always followed by a nice lunch somewhere, to honour the students and their parents and teachers, some of whom travel a long way. This is the scene at the Stamford Plaza Hotel, just opposite Parliament House on North Terrace, before guest arrival.

2007: One last change to scoring system and presentation in Brisbane

The changes to the format and scoring system had been successful, but too many ties were appearing. We decided to make one last change in this series by changing the value of Questions 26 to 30 from all being worth 5 to progressive values of 6, 7, to 10. This brought the maximum possible to 135. It worked well, but there were still pressures on the problems committee. There was a situation a couple of years later in which Intermediate questions up to 29 were fairly accessible to a lot of students, but question 30 was very difficult, with the result that many medal candidates scored 125. However it has generally proved that the paper became quite discriminatory.

The full medal list, and the first list of primary perfect scorers, can be found here. During this year the IMO in Vietnam was held a little later than usual, resulting in difficult circumstances for the team. I ended up supervising Max Menzies on the plane travelling home. The only team member to win a medal was in fact Ildar Gaisin, an interesting student who had only seriously studied mathematics late in his school career, and went on to study at King's College, Cambridge.

There were some future IMO team members making regular appearances, including future Gold Medallists Andrew Elvey Price and Aaron Chong and Silver Medallist Colin Lu. A look at the rather short list of perfect scorers in the Primary show two interesting Year 4 students making their first appearances. Future Gold Medallist Alexander Gunning and future multiple IOI team member Michael Chen both appear on this list.

The function was presided over by Queensland Governor Quentin Bryce, at Government House, not long before she was to be appointed Governor General. Above is the presentation scene with long-serving AMF Treasurer Bob Thompson in the foreground monitoring the medals.

Above are the medallists assembling on the steps while Governor Bryce makes her way to the front. Aaron Chong can be seen in the centre of the group, just in front of the Governor's aide-de-camp.

2008: Second ceremony in Perth

The year 2008 saw the ceremony held in Perth for the second time. The full medal list, and the first list of primary perfect scorers, can be found here. This page shows the WA Governor Dr Ken Michael with the medallists. The function was held at the University of Western Australia. The page also shows photos from other medal ceremonies, including the local presentation at Brunswick Town Hall where three medals were presented to Melbourne students who could not get to Perth.

Andrew Elvey Price and Paul Cheung were two IMO team members to win medals, while future team members included Aaron Chong, Alfred Liang and Colin Lu. Cynthia Wong, who did not make the IMO team, was to start here a string of several consecutive AMC medals.

For most of this decade I would visit our major countries Singapore, New Zealand, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Brunei for ceremonies and to meet local organisers. For this AMC I visited two new countries. There had been strong entries from some parts of China, and I visited a school in Suzhou, west of Shanghai, to present a medal. Here is the medallist with his teacher and me.

Entries from Indonesia were starting to grow and I visited Jakarta to discuss this with local organisers. I also attended an Indonesian presentation for the first time. This was held in Bogor, a city south of Jakarta. I am shown here with future Indonesian national director Ridwan Saputra (left), later-to-be-regular-medallist Fransisca Susan Gozali (here she is still a primary student), and at right Mr JJ Herjaya, one of Ridwan's close aides.

2009: Canberra, Academy of Science

The national award presentation was held at the Academy of Science, Canberra, with Professor Kurt Lambeck, President of the Academy as guest of honour. The full medal list, and the first list of primary perfect scorers, can be found here.

There were two girls in the IMO team this year, and both, Stacey Law and Dana Ma, won AMC medals, as did other team member Aaron Chong. Future Olympians on the list were Yanning Xu, Rachel Wong (perfect score), Mel Shu and Alexander Chua. Ryan Kor, a Singapore IMO team member, was winning regular medals and the Malaysian How twins, discussed in my chapter on Asia, were starting to appear on the medal list.

I was invited to Spain to give a keynote lecture on an interesting conference on Chinese students and maths, and missed Singapore and Malaysia for this year. But I was still able to attend the Manila function en route. Above Seanne Ng is with her medal (Dr Simon Chua at right).

In the Philippines there is a tradition of winning students addressing the audience. The student here is in Year 3.

2010: Government House Sydney

The presentation in 2010 was held in Government House, Sydney, presided by Governor Marie Bashir. The full medal list, and the first list of primary perfect scorers, can be found here. No less than five Olympians were in the list, including Aaron Chong, Kiho Park, Sampson Wong, Stacey Law and Angel Yu. Future Olympians included Yanning Xu, and Alexander Gunning, future Gold Medallist, made his first appearance on the medal list.

There were also some interesting medallists from other countries, with Ryan Kor and a How twin again on the list. One of the more interesting medallists was Nipun Pitimanaaree, in Year 10, member of the strong Thailand IMO team and Gold Medallist.

I did not normally travel to Thailand, as the event, not yet translated into Thai, could not be made sufficiently widely available. However in 2010 I was in Thailand anyway as it was the venue for IOI, so I visited Patumwan Demonstration School to present Nipun's and another medal. This was done at a large school assembly. The school, one of the highest academic-achieving schools in Thailand, hires top teachers from other countries and just teaches in English when these teachers are in operation.

Nipun went on to win two more AMC medals in 2011 and 2012, and in 2012 his brother, just one year behind him, also won a medal. He was a prolific IMO student, having won a Silver Medal in 2009, while a Year 9 student, and then Gold in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Another outstanding student was in Manila. Carmela Lao had become the first Philippine IMO Silver Medallist in Astana, Kazakhstan, and had also won a Bronze in 2009. Here she is with Robert Dizon, Assistant Secretary of the Phillippine Department of Science and Technology, a successful engineer who had been brought in for the role, Andrew Byrne Deputy Ambassador at what is Australia's 6th biggest Embassy and former mathematics student at Flinders University with Terry Tao, and me. Australia's diplomats seem to be flooded with mathematics graduates. Their head during this time was Ashley Calvert, a Tasmanian with a DPhil in Pure Mathematics from Oxford and apparently staff admired his logical thought processes. I came across many other mathematics graduates among the diplomatic corps, including Doug Chester, at this time High Commissioner to Singapore, who appears on this site, and a number of others.

Here Carmela addresses the audience.

The 2010 presentation in Christchurch was particularly memorable. It was after the first of three earthquakes, so the Cathedral was still standing, but there was massive damage, particularly around Manchester Street. It was very fortunate there had been no deaths in that one, largely due to the time of day when the quake hit. The function was held at Burnside High School, one of New Zealand's largest and best-performing schools academically. Our national director Gus Gale (left), and NZ member of the Problems committee, Alan Parris (also for a long time President of NZAMT) were locals and were in very good form here, as the above photo shows.

The catering was beautiful, provided by two twin women who were lovely. Gus and Alan described them as "westies" which in New Zealand means they came from Westland and had a lot of rustic charm to go with it. I wish I had a photo of them.

The two medallists who attended, Aimee and Hayley, were shown on the medal list page, but this is another of them proudly displaying their medals.

The 2010 paper had two distinguished guests from overseas in Andy Liu and Paul Vaderlind. Here is a subcommittee of the Problems Committee putting together the paper, back row Andy Liu (Canada) and Paul Vaderlind (Sweden). Front row John Carty (Canberra), Alan Parris (New Zealand), Warren Atkins (Chairman, Newcastle).

2011: Hobart Town Hall

The annual presentation was held in Hobart for the second time. The Guest of Honour was Tasmanian Governor Peter Underwood and the venue was Hobart's historic Town Hall. The full medal list, and the first list of primary perfect scorers, can be found here. This page also has a photo of the Australian medallists with the Governor and key photos from other national ceremonies.

One of the most interesting medallists was Singapore's Jeck Lim. Jeck was one of the highest achievers at IMO, having won a Bronze Medal as a Year 8 in 2009, a Silver Medal as a Year 9 in 2010 and Singapore's top Gold Medallist in the years 2011, 2012 and 2013. Ironically he was to obtain the world's only perfect score at IMO in Year 11 (2012), but he did not quite obtain a perfect score in that year's AMC. He did in 2011 get the very difficult question 30 correct in the Intermediate. He told me the question reminded him of one he had seen in a past IMO and that experience in training helped him. He is a completely superlative student and mathematician.

2012: Government House Melbourne

My final National Award Ceremony was to be in Government House in Melbourne, and the Guest of Honour was to be the Governor. However with a few days to go, the Governor became unavailable and we were told that his place would be taken by the Lieutenant Governor, also the Chief Justice, Marilyn Warren. The name seemed familiar to me and then I realised this was because she went to four of the same squash intervarsities in common with me, as a Monash player, and in fact she had been a member of the Victorian team also. I had told her aide this on arrival and she must have told the Chief Justice, because at the end of the function she noted to me that a lot of the medallists had interest in racquet sports. I am shown below presenting her with an honorary medal at the conclusion of the ceremony.

The full medal list, and the first list of primary perfect scorers, can be found here. There were three IMO team members in the medal list, in Yanning Xu, Kaimyn Chapman and Alexander Gunning. Overseas there were several of the usual suspects discussed above, one of the How twins, Nipun Pitimanaaree, Jeck Lim and Fransisca Susan Gozali.