Brendan Simpkins

FORMER Trinity College student Margot Holbert will swap the Adelaide Hills for the St Joseph River, undertaking a Master’s degree with one of America’s top-ranked universities.

Ms Holbert will depart South Australia on Sunday bound for South Bend, Indiana, where she will spend the next few years studying a Master of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame.

She was one of 20 Australians who this year won a scholarship through the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, the inaugural year the scholarship has been offered.

The scholarship will support Ms Holbert with funding of up to $85,000 a year for the duration of her degree at Notre Dame.

Already she has undertaken a Bachelor of Civil and Architectural Engineering at the University of Adelaide following the completion of her studies at Trinity, graduating with first class honours last year.

Ms Holbert lived in Gawler for most of her life until she made the move to Crafers in 2019 to be closer to university. Her grandparents established the Gawler Taxi service in the 1950s.

Ms Holbert said it has been her goal to study historical architecture after discovering her passion during a working gap year in northern England.

“I just loved the architecture over there so much and I just thought ‘I have to have something to do with this’,” she said.

“I toured the UK and was especially taken by cathedrals and churches; they are just my favourite...and I had to specialise in them.”

Notre Dame’s architecture program is ranked in the top five in the field, and teaches traditional and classic design principles to aid with the restoration of historic buildings.

Ms Holbert said the program was “one of a kind”, with a focus on handcraft through drawing and furniture making.

The Ramsay Scholarship is offered through the Ramsay Centre, which was founded by late Australian philanthropist Paul Ramsay.

Former prime minister John Howard is the centre’s chair, while another former PM, Tony Abbott, is a board member.

Ms Holbert headed to Sydney in May for an interview to win the scholarship, which was conducted by Mr Abbott.

She was announced as an inaugural recipient earlier this month.

Another former Trinity alumnus, Lachlan Arthur, was last year announced as a Rhodes Scholar, jetting off to the UK to study social sciences and international health and tropical medicine at Oxford.

The future surgeon was Trinity College’s captain in 2014, the same year Ms Holbert graduated.

Ms Holbert will spend three years at Notre Dame completing her Masters and plans to spend a few years working in America to gain her accreditation.

She hopes to return home one day with a goal to preserve Adelaide’s historic buildings and even design classical architecture in the city.