Past Programs
Education - 2008
2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2004 | 2002
Colin Thiele
11/12/2008
Australian writer the late Colin Thiele began writing fiction for children and young adults nearly forty years ago, when he published his first book The Sun on the Stubble, which drew on his own childhood experience in the German farming settlements in South Australia's Barossa Valley.
Thiele has since written over ninety books, including non-fiction and biography. In this program Colin Thiele talks about his interest in writing for young people, his long teaching career, and his passion for the Australian environment, which has provided the setting for some of his most popular fiction, including Storm Boy and Blue Fin.
Colin Thiele died in 2006
Margaret Gleeson
06/11/2008
Margaret Gleeson was born in 1945, and raised in the model 'garden suburb' of Daceyville. Daceyville was the first purpose-built public housing project in New South Wales, a roomy suburb complete with civic facilities, fair rents and priority to returned soldiers.
There was such an unusual air of security and stability in this largely Catholic working-class community that Margaret grew up feeling sorry for the poor folk who actually had to buy their own homes.
Hermann Black
28/08/2008
Sir Hermann, or HD, Black was born in Sydney in 1904 and claimed Scottish, Irish and German heritage. He attended Fort Street high school and became a teacher himself, before being offered a position, in 1933, at his old alma-mater, the University of Sydney, in the Department of Economics.
Throughout his time at the university, HD Black was also an economic adviser to Treasury, and was a popular presence on the ABC radio program The World We Live In. But Hermann Black's early life was not one abundant with opportunity, nor material comfort.
Betty Archdale
31/07/2008
In this first program in our series on childhood memories, former school principal Betty Archdale remembers growing up in England at the beginning of last century. Her mother was a suffragette, which had a lasting influence on Betty's life. She first visited Australia in the 1930s, when she captained their women's cricket team, but she returned in 1946 to take up the role of prinicipal at Sydney University's Women's College. From there she became the headmistress at the private Sydney girls school Abbotsleigh. She was also a regular panelist on the ABC Radio Program Any Questions.
