Here Comes Fred the Film Star

Burnie High School

In 1973 I started the first of four years at Burnie High School. At the time we were living at Somerset and we were therefore zones to Burnie High School.

Education in Australia is state-based. At the time, Tasmania was a little more innovative than other states. Instead of six years of high school, we undertook four years of high school after which we were awarded a ‘School Certificate’. Those wanting to pursue professional careers went on the College, those pursuing a trade went to Technical College, and those destined to be manual laborers simply left school at that point.

Classes

For the first year of high school we all undertook nine subjects – Art, English, French, Mathematics, Metalwork, Physical Ed, Science, Social Studies, and Woodwork. French, Metalwork, and Woodwork were all new subjects and of great interest as are all things new. I did reasonably well with French, but struggled with bot metalwork and woodwork.

Mathematics

Math was always one of my strongest subjects. That continued into my firt year at high school where I won an achievement award. I think it was probably the only academic award I won while at Burnie High.

English

As part of our English class, we prepared for and competed in a local drama competition. I played one of the lead roles as an evil villain interrogating a cast about the location of a key that opened a safety deposit box related to various railway stations in London. As I recall, it was the only time I performed on stage as an actor.

French

Each class had a Home Teacher who looked after the administrative aspect of the class during a special period called Home Period. Our home teacher was Miss Campbell, who was also our French teacher. She was young, pretty, and a very nice teacher. I responded by taking an interest in teh subject and did pretty well in my first year. Unfortunately that didn’t continue into the second year. During the year she took time off to get married. Several years later I got to meet her husband as we were members of the same Athletics club. Miss Campbell even came to our home for one social avent associated with Athletics.

Sport

At West Somerset Primary we only had one classroom of each grade. This meant that when it came to sport we pretty much all participated on every boys sports team that the school competed in. That meant I was on the school football team, cricket team, and hockey team. I liked sport, so when I started at Burnie High I tried out for as many teams as I could.

Cricket

Cricket didn’t last long. My understanding of the game ws not great. Our coach asked me about my skills. I explained I didn’t bow, but I was a lower-order batsment. Of course, that basically meant I sucked at cricket and I was largely making up the numbers. When it comes to cricket, I wasn’t a batter, bowler, or wicket-keeper. I was pretty good in the field due to my athletic skills, which meant I was often cast into the specialist role of 12th man. I didn’t play sport to sit on the sidelines, so I quickly gave cricket up, at least at high school.

Hockey

West Somerset had fielded its first ever hockey team when I was in grade six. We did pretty well, finishing second, losing the grand-final 2-0. When we started I was attracted to the specialist position of goal-keeper. I was tried on a waing a few times because of my natural speed. I decided to try out for the hockey team, instead of football as my Winter sport. There was one other person who was a goalie, so I opted to play on the wing. As I recall, we won the local Brunie league, which was a four-way competion between Burnie High, Parklands High, Marist (private college), and Wynyard High.

Athletics

Students at Burnie High School were divided up into four camps. They were named after the four rivers in the area – Blythe (yellow), Cam (blue), Emu (red), and Inglis (green). Being from Somerset, I was happy to be part of Cam, the river that flowed through Somerset. During the year the camps competed against each other in three sporting events – Athletics, Cross Country, and Swimming.

At the athletics competition I was selected represented Cam in quite a few events. My best event was the 100 metres where I finished fifth. One place short of being selected on the relay team at the annual North-West Tasmania high school championships. It was a bit of a blow as I had been the number one runner at West Somerset, being one of the few students to make it to the all-school final for 100 metres.

I did also compete in the swimming and cross-country events but my performances were pretty mediocre in both.

Yolla Area School

On of my best friends at the time was Peter Best. her lived a few houses away from me. He was going to attend Yolla Area School, the sme school my mother attended. Over the Summer he tried to convince me to go to Ylla Area School with him. I approached my mum about that but she wasn’t so keen on the idea and dismissed it. I can understand why now. Yolla Area School was located in a rural area and was targeted at farmers raising their children to follow in their footsteps. I am sure my mother had higher aspirations for me.

Yo-Yos

In 1973, Australia experienced a “Coca-Cola yo-yo craze,” heavily featuring Russell brand yo-yos, such as the “Super Slimline” model. These yo-yos were often given away as prizes in promotional campaigns, with a popular 1973 version being a black “Russell Super” model that was a prize in various campaigns, including those linked with Coke and Fanta.

While I would have loved a Russell Super, I had to settle for a much cheaper ctandard coke yo-yo. As I recall, it cost around $0.40, which was quite a bit of money in those day. We would walk around school during lunch breaks and recess trying to perfrom various tricks with our yo-yos. I wasn’t very good at controlling a yo-yo. I could do the basics but many of the other kids were way better than me.

I was assigned to grade 7D. As was the way in high school, we stayed together as a class, rotating through a range of subjects taught by different teachers in different class rooms. In primary school we had the one teacher for all things except music, sports, and religion. And we always stayed in the one class. I was the only person from West Somerset Primary in the class. Most of my friends from primary school had been assigned to 7F. I later learned that this was a special remedial class and West Somerset had a strong showing in that class. I can only assume that the local demographics of West Somerset and/or the standard of education at our new small primary school lead to us having a lot of students with learning issues. Its strnage how at the times you don’t notice things like that.

I had been one of the top students at West Somerset but I didn’t make the transition to high school very well. I relied heavily on my natural talent and rarely put any time into homework, which was something that took on extra importance at high school. My parents never pushed me to study. They were busy working to move our family ahead and my father never saw the point to me doing well at school or extra curricular activities as his mindset was that I should get in and out of school quickly and go on and get a paying job as a manual laborer like him.

Friends

During the year our family moved from our home in Somerset to into our caravan that was parked in the back yard of my uncle/aunt Trevor and Leslie Hyland. This combined with the fact I was the only person from West Somerset Primary in my class meant I would start to change my friend group. One of the people in 7D was Shane Horton. We knew each other, but did not become close friends until 1978 and Hellyer College where we both became members of ‘The Boyz’.

Fred The Film Star

While I was growing up in Tasmania, there were only two TV stations. The Government station (ABC) and the commercial Northern Tasmanian station (TNT 9). TNT feature a quiz show for high school students called Quiz Quest. It had long been an ambition of mine to be on the show one day. Having reached High School age I now qualified. As I recall, they had tryouts to see if you would make it onto the show. I qualified and won my first competition. There were six competitors and the winner went to the final. The remaining five then competed for the second spot. I made the final and won. My prize was something like $5 and six bottles of cordial. I came back for the next round (quarter-finals) but got knocked out.

As the same time there was a series of ads on TV for a cleaning product called Ajax. There were a series of the ads in which the star, Fred, was lways seen to be wearing bright clean clothes after using Ajax, and his work colleagues would use the ounch line – “Here comes Fred the film star”. My colleagues at Burnie High responded to my appearance on TV by calling out “Here comes Fred the film star” when they saw me. For a while I acquired the nickname “Fred”. I didn’t particularly like it, but there wasn’t a lot I could do to push back on it.