I was born on Easter Sunday 1970 at the Alfred Hospital in Commercial Road. This was probably appropriate as the hospital was later adjacent to two of the better mixed nightclubs in Melbourne and just down the road from the most gay-populated area of Prahran. According to my parents I was a well-behaved child, and who am I to argue. My earliest memory is of visiting my mother in St Vincent's Private Hospital shortly after the birth of my sister Cathy just before my third birthday.

From shortly before my fifth birthday I was sent to Caulfield Grammar School, so I learned to tie a necktie at an early age. I didn't master a bow tie until much later. Shaw House, the junior school I attended, was sold in 1979 to another school and we were moved to the other junior school in Malvern.

Caulfield Grammar celebrated its centenary in 1981 and I was honoured to be chosen as school captain of the junior school in that year. The duty as school captain which I remember most vividly is speaking at the opening of the then new campus at Wheelers Hill. Appearing in the school production of The Mikado was also a highlight of 1981. Mercifully there are no extant recordings of our performance and I'm not about to scan the photographs. I played the Mikado, which is a relatively small role. Koko was played by Chris Scholten, who is still a good friend and later taught at Caulfield Grammar.

I enjoyed school, and didn't realize that this was socially unacceptable until year 7. I was awarded a scholarship to Melbourne Grammar starting in year 7 and attended Grimwade for two years as at the time both Wadhurst and Grimwade offered prep to year 8. I proceeded to Senior School in 1984

I was in Hone House, which at the time tended to lose the sporting competitions but win the debating and music competitions. At the time this suited me well, though we did surprise ourselves by winning the swimming one year while I was there.

I showed little aptitude for sport at school, my only notable achievement being bowling the longest over in a house cricket match (being mostly wides with a few no-balls for variety). Sport was compulsory at Grammar and in retrospect this was a good thing, but there was also an element of understanding from the teachers that some boys really weren't that interested. I first experienced this in Year 8 when in a private discussion the hockey coach explained that some boys were keen to play on Saturdays and asked if I would mind not being selected this week or at any time in the future. I agreed readily as I neither enjoyed nor understood hockey, though I continued to play it for another four years.

From Year 9 we were offered rowing as a Summer sport. I chose it because it meant not having to play cricket (which I found boring, frightening and humiliating at different times). Rowing was the one school sport I really enjoyed and was actually reasonably good at. I ended up giving it up in 1987 in order to do Hamlet, but I have a little regret that if I had kept rowing I probably would have come to weight training sooner.

Melbourne Grammar did a good job of encouraging my strengths and providing opportunities, as it did for many of my contemporaries. I was pleased to have the chance to play a number of instruments really badly, to go to competitions in public speaking, spelling, debating and science with limited success and in maths with rather more success. I was very grateful that I was never made to feel bad for not winning something. I did my best to celebrate participation as much as anything in the articles I wrote each week for two years for the "Newsboard".

The School did two plays each year, plus whatever drama houses might put on, Shakespeare outdoors in Summer and a modern play or musical indoors in Winter. I went in both three times (in years 10 to 12). The Quad Plays (in Summer) were the Comedy of Errors, King Lear and Hamlet each of which was great fun, though being Edgar in Lear was probably more fun (and less pressure) than playing Hamlet. The School Plays were "Don't Drink the Water", "Dark of the Moon" and "Guys & Dolls". The first was a Woody Allen comedy which was the most fun as it was quite a small cast. Guys & Dolls was a much bigger production and I felt rather ill-equipped for singing and dancing as Sky. It was a buzz at the time, but watching the video now makes me cringe a bit.

As for the actual sitting in class learning things part of school which occupied the dull parts in the middle of the day, that seemed to go quite smoothly. I was academically pretty good, though I struggled a bit in Latin since I generally wasn't prepared to put in enough work to learn the vocab.