I finished my Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences and Humanities with Honours in 1986 alongside Malcolm Crick, Max Charlesworth, Philippa Rothfield and Hazel Rowley. I then got a job lecturing and tutoring at Deakin for a few years, replacing Purushottama Bilimoria while he was on a much-extended stay in the US, also teaching in the inaugural Koorie teacher education program (and learnt much more than I taught, seeing the formation of Tiddas).
My favourite thing was to take my class out onto the grassy embankment and discuss – I was the long-haired barefoot bogan from Tecoma, but in those days Deakin students turned up ready to go.
Some, however had already been around the block. I also did classes in the Flinders Lane Melbourne study centre and some of the mature age students were 40 years my senior, one of them having participated in the battles on the Kokoda Track that we were then reading about in the Imperialism course. Nothing as good as having a participant there to give some character to the readings.
I still have the study guides in a box somewhere for the day I finally get seriously ‘reminsce-y’ and get a break from trying to read the rest of Marx that I started in class back then – and never stopped.
