Tony Birch

in an insular way of being very protected and being inside a community, not outside.

So if you imagine living in Fitzroy in the early 60s and you're surrounded by Aboriginal families, you're surrounded by

poor white families and certainly mixed families, you know, strong families of mixed Aboriginal, often Irish Catholic families and migrant families who didn't have much either, there was a sense of inclusiveness.

So within the community, you certainly didn't feel a sense of shame.

But certainly I always knew when people were looking down on me

And while I might have some sort of bravado against that, yeah, there were times both as a kid and as an early adult where you would feel a sense of shame that people didn't think you were good enough and you weren't good enough.

And I can say, Richard, that it carried on to when I went to university.

I went to university when I was 30 years of age.

I went to university because I did very well the year before by doing my what was then HSC at night school at Broadmeadows TAFE College.

I got very high entry marks into Melbourne University.

And when I walked through the gates of the university the first day of term, as it was called then, I had done so with absolute legitimacy of doing as well or better than most other first year arts students.

But one, I felt like an absolute fraud that I'd be found out that I wasn't good enough.

When I told my mum I was going to Melbourne University, all I saw on her face was fear.

My mum's always been unbelievably proud of me, but I think she feared that I would fail and that people would find me out.

And what I realised very quickly is that people who do have a class bias

would try to look down on me because I didn't speak as well as they did because they didn't go to the schools that they went to.

And I didn't try to be like them.

I just wanted to be myself.

And to be honest, that only changed when I did better than most other students so that I was a very good student at undergrad level.

I got very high marks.