Justin Heazlewood

And he helped pick out my first guitar, a classical nylon, when I was in grade five.

And that began my journey of just learning basic things on the guitar.

And then within a few years, I'd actually be writing my own songs.

I entered the Parkland's Higher Talent Contest with this, the Home and Away song.

Yeah, it was like turned on a TV screen and there was Irene and we should never seen her going off at Selena and there's Flamin' Alf with his Flamin' shop and here comes Tug by a carton of milk.

And it was just this little three-chord punk song.

Kids loved it.

Got lots of laughs.

And it didn't take long for me to work out the power that a funny song can have live.

And I thought they were just such a cool thing.

I love the format, you know, three minutes, a few chords.

Oh, well, even in grade 12, creatively, I was kind of firing on all cylinders and I was putting on gigs in the school caf with my original kind of funny songs.

But not a single grown-up ever really talked about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life or whether I wanted to go to uni at all.

So best I could come up with as a plan was I'll go and become a cadet at the local newspaper, The Advocate.

journalism seemed to be the main path to a career in writing.

So that was the whole plan until my favourite theatre teacher, Amanda Murist, gave me a bit of a pep talk, which she essentially just said, oh, just, that's all well and good, Justin, just picture waking up at 6am in the middle of winter in Burnie and going to work at the cadetship in the Advocate

And there was something about that moment.

I sort of wandered along to the career advisor's room and picked up a pamphlet for professional writing at University of Canberra.

And it had Maurice Gleitzman on the cover.

And I went, oh, well, that'll do.