Student protester to honorary doctorate, actor Geoff Morrell's UOW journey

In his university days - which took place in the first few years of UOW becoming independent from the University of NSW - the renowned actor and artist lay in front of a bulldozer to try and stop the pond going ahead.

It made the front page of the Mercury, with the paper on June 10, 1978 reporting that students with placards had shouted 'Stuff the ducks!"

"Back then, there was just a grassy knoll, and bands used to play there - Cold Chisel played there in the early days, on the lawn," he said

"I was walking around one afternoon and there was about a dozen people who were going to lay down in front of the bulldozer to stop the duck pond being made.

"I'm sure I had my reasons at the time but the intervening 45 years have taken from me the details, so I don't remember why I thought it would be a fun thing to do for the afternoon.

"I was a bit of a radical, I suppose, a bit of an old lefty.

"Now of course, when I visit the uni, I go 'Oh, wow, the duck pond's awesome'. It's all part of that amazing landscape the university is known for."

From a rebellious student politician and arts student, Mr Morrell - who will this week become Dr Morrell after having an honorary Doctor of Letters conferred on him by his alma mater - went on to grace Australian screens.

Over 40 years, he's appeared in many well-known shows including Murder Call, Blue Heelers, Rake, and most recently, Amazon's mega-budget The Lord of the Rings prequel series.

At 66, he's also an artist and musician, working from his home base in Mount Keira on creative projects that take his fancy.

Despite a successful career that allows him to pick and choose the creative work he does, the call telling him UOW would like to give him an honorary doctorate recognising his contributions to the arts and deep connection to the university and Illawarra, came as a surprise.

"I've never imagined getting a call from the Vice-Chancellor of any university to say we want to give you an honorary doctorate," he said.

"I'd seen in the international arena, Van Morrison, Dylan and various sorts of very famous artists, getting honorary doctorates from their universities in Ireland and America. I never thought I was in that league."

However, he said he was proud to see that the career of a working artist held up as an example by an academic institution.

As an actor, he said he's often been asked in interviews, "so what do you do for a real job?" and wanted to show this year's crop of arts and humanities graduates that a career in the arts is a real and valuable one.

"I want to encourage them to believe that it's possible that this is a career and that, in fact the arts and artists are important, and a vital part of a healthy culture," he said.

Dr Morrell delivered the occasional address for the humanities faculty, encouraging the students to continue their education out in the world.

"I want them to not consider that this day of great achievement is the end of their education," he said.

"I didn't study to be an actor. I have got an English/history degree and I was going to be a teacher.

"But I firmly believe that a lot of those skills that I learned just doing a basic bachelor of arts - which people poo poo a lot - have just served me so well in my career.

"It's not teaching, not history, not English - but to be able to research, organise your thoughts, to have the humility to learn from people of greater knowledge than you is a wonderful thing."

With war, division and violence dominating the global and domestic news cycle, Dr Morrell said it was vital these skills were valued.

"Study at a university is not just utilitarian, for the purpose of getting a job," he said.

"To study something in the area of humanities in a world populated by humans seems to me to be a pretty cool, sort of a noble thing. For these students, it time to go out into the University of Life as experts in an area of humanity."

"Out in the world, I see a lot of closed minds, which creates conflict - conflict is at the centre of a lot of things just in this last couple of days, Iran bombing Israel, the knife attack.

"Maybe some people might think I'm drawing a long bow, but the more people who can argue without rancour and research factual stuff, the more we would have a saner society, a less angry society, a culture that is much more productive and safer than I see areas of our culture developing."