IT must have been a slow news day. Login or signup to continue reading I think I was in kindergarten, or maybe year one, and either at Mum's request or of my own volition, I had taken a bunch of flowers in for my teacher. So had one of my classmates, from memory.
At some point, I remember us both being summoned from our class with the words: "Come on, grab the flowers, you're going to get your picture in the paper." Everyone was excited, but I had no idea what this meant. I'd obviously had my picture taken previously but what was all this about in the paper ? Were they going to take a photo and then wrap it like a present? Anyway, the next day Mum and Dad brought home the Griffith Area News , and there I was with my flowers and my classmate and my teacher, and for the first time in my life, I found myself entranced by the magic of newspapers.
A year or two later, I remember the school held a creative-writing competition, and to my complete amazement, I won a prize. A book about dinosaurs. My parents made a fuss, as did my teacher.
So as a young kid of about seven or eight, I suddenly took a liking to writing. It seemed a lot easier than maths, at the very least. When we moved to an even smaller Riverina town, Gundagai, for my first year of high school, another opportunity arose that probably sealed my ultimate fate.
One night I noticed Dad, a very good cricketer who once played against the West Indies, flicking through the scorebooks and taking notes on pieces of paper. I ask.