Homecoming: Citation (Alumna of the Year)

Adele Rowden-Johnson

Lavinia “Adele” Young was well travelled by the time she arrived at Avondale College. Born in Franklin, Tasmania, she attended primary school in Queensland and high school in Western Australia before moving to Avondale to study accounting. “My parents thought I needed some assistance with numbers,” she recalls. “I still need help, so I married an accountant!”

Adele Rowden-Johnson

Adele Rowden-Johnson: Avondale Alumni Association’s Alumna of the Year for 2014.

After leaving Avondale in 1964, Adele found secretarial employment at Sydney Adventist Hospital. In 1970, she and husband John Rowden became missionaries in Fiji—John would die in a waterskiing accident five years later.

On returning to Australia, Adele worked as a medical secretary at Dora Creek Medical Centre. Earning a teaching certificate in 1987 began a career in technical and further education, a sector in which Adele would work for the next 10 years. She would also study, graduating with a Diploma of Teaching from The University of Newcastle in 1991 and a Bachelor of Counselling from the University of New England in 1996.

Adele married Les Johnson in 1997, the year she had her first contact with what is now Southlakes Refuge. “I was only meant to stay for a short while, then return to TAFE teaching. God had other ideas.” She left teaching to become the managing director of the refugee and now credits the difficult times in her life as good preparation for the position. “My prayer has always been, ‘Please God, don’t allow those experiences to go to waste!’ He never has, and I pray He never will.”

The refuge has been acknowledged for its contribution to community spirit, winning a Southlakes Business Excellence Award in 2002. It also gave Adele other opportunities—she served as a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific’s Domestic Violence in Families Taskforce, for example—through which to share the wisdom of her experiences.

The Avondale Alumni Association honours Adele Rowden-Johnson for her dedication in caring for and raising awareness of women and children who are the victims of abuse or domestic violence.—Sara Thompson, alumni relations officer, Avondale College of Higher Education

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