Justin Heazlewood

I've got an uncle in Canberra.

I want to be a writer.

So that was my decision-making process to how I went to uni.

I think through my teenage years, I had this really palpable sense of wanting to reach the rest of the world.

Like, when you live on an island...

You're very isolated in ways you don't even know.

And it's just a different mindset.

And it was the mid-90s and we didn't have the internet.

And I was just glued to Triple J when it came to Bernie.

And I was ringing up the request line and I was requesting songs.

I was recording my own little home albums.

And I'd even sometimes sample the applause from a Nirvana MTV unplugged tape so that they'd be clapping and cheering at the end of my songs.

And I'd be like, yeah, thank you, thank you.

You know, like a weird American accent.

So, like, again, it comes back to a bit like the childhood tapes.

I had this sense of, like, this wider audience out there that I was sort of desperate to connect with, even if I didn't quite know how or where they were.

And I just think this energy...

It was manifesting itself.

But perhaps by the end of year 12, I don't know, my morale had dropped a bit and I'd sort of given up on... I didn't know how to leave, probably.

So the fact I chanced upon this pamphlet... Honestly, I reflect back on it now and I can't quite work out how I left.