When I went to Roscoe Vale primary school I liked a girl called Gayle. She was my partner at the ball. Even though it was a state school they had a formal ball and they had a photo of me all done up with a bow tie and holding Gayle's hand and she was in a ball gown.
After two years I changed to East Mount primary school. I had some good teachers and good times there. There was Mr Dobson in Year Four who used to teach us to answer the telephone correctly. Every week he would set us a challenge, such as: 'Find out about Cleopatra's needle.' We'd have to go and look it up and make a little report.
Mrs Jensen had a tape recorder and I was fascinated by that. This was probably when they first came out in portable form and I used to make tapes of funny horse race commentary calls. For example: 'And here is Chewing Gum, he's stuck at the starting line.'
During my primary school years I used to do an annual magic show for the class using my dad's collection of magic tricks. It later became obvious to me that all the main elements of my work were established at this stage: a sense of humour, the love of creative writing and performance.
Primary school was a very happy experience for me and I set my 'Just' series of books there. Danny was my best friend and someone who would challenge the rules a lot, unlike me. So I used him and drafted him into my books. There was also a girl called Lisa who I liked. So when I created the main character Andy, I gave him this girl as a girlfriend he's always in love with and trying to impress but it's always going wrong. I used her real name. Recently she read the book with one of her children and got in touch to ask me: 'Is that me?' It turns out her husband went to high school with the girl who is now my wife.
Later, I went to the private Yarra Valley Boys' School which was fantastic. It was a reasonably new school established in the mid-sixties and the headmaster was incredibly progressive and liberal. So the creative arts were fostered powerfully and were genuinely valued unlike at a lot of the other private schools in Melbourne which tended to emphasise the sporting culture. For a budding creative writer I couldn't have been in a better place.
