The total loss of hearing was a process that lasted more than a decade, but it was sufficiently gradual for me to attend Sydney Boys' High School and to profit from the teaching there.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My father went to boarding school in Sydney when he was 14.
I got expelled from every school I went to in Sydney.
One of the reasons I wanted to teach deaf children was because it made me very sad that they spoke so clumsily and that they moved with less grace that I knew was possible of deaf people.
I had to leave school at 14 because my father got injured in the mines and I had to support my family. I was an undertaker's assistant, then a plasterer, before doing my military service in the RAF. All the while, I was doing amateur dramatics and dreaming of getting a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Part of my childhood was spent in Sydney and part in rural New South Wales, at Armidale.
About 13-14 years ago, I went back to my alma mater, Fairfax High School, and ran into the music teacher. She invited me to come speak to the kids about the viability of a music career. When I went into the room where I used to play every day in a big orchestra, they had nothing!
Anyway, when I was a kid, I dutifully went to the Sydney Technical and Fine Arts College.
I started working on a TV show in Australia, straight out of high school, so I missed the whole university experience.
I attended a very small junior high and specially in the end that became a disaster. The principal was pretty senile and a drunk, so the children more or less runned the school.
When I came out of drama school, I was in a shared house in Sydney.