Unless something dramatic happens, we are getting near the end of the BIOs.

This BIO posting starts with (Keith) Rory Barnes from Adelaide:

I won’t be coming to the reunion as I’m needed in Adelaide where my wife has cancer.  All the more reason for posting a bio.

I enrolled in TPHS in second term 1958 and was warmly if perfunctorily greeted by teachers who looked down at the paperwork and addressed me by my first name. This was not a name I’d ever used, but, for reasons that now escape me, I didn’t kick up a fuss. So at Telopea I was Keith. Everywhere else I was Rory, and still am. I didn’t much mind Telopea. It was just a school: the fairly tedious place you went to in between weekends and holidays.

When I left school I went down to Monash and lived for five years with a girl who subsequently declared herself a lesbian.  I graduated with an honours degree in Philosophy and went to work for the Victorian Education Department, trying to make schools less tedious. I doubt that I succeeded. I went travelling and wrote a novel about radical students and teachers in Melbourne – it didn’t find a publisher until, years later, my friend Damien Broderick re-wrote it setting the action 4,000 years into the future on a planet called Bolte. The University of Queensland Press published it in 1983.

Since then I’ve written or co-written another fifteen novels. None of them has made me rich. If you really want to you can read all about them on my website: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rory.barnes

Otherwise: I’ve held a fellowship at Stanford University, taught Dip.Ed students at Melbourne University and creative writing students at the NSW Institute of Technology. I once delivered a baby. On one occasion when I was hitch-hiking I got a lift in a hearse. I walked from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea without getting shot.

These days I live with Annie in Adelaide as I have for the past thirty years. Our two sons live within walking distance. One’s an audio-engineer, the other designs boxes. If it wasn’t for the bloody cancer, things would be just fine.

To end this BIO posting we have one from Rob Hughes:

After the Leaving Certificate I spent two years at Wagga Teachers College. Apart from learning how to be a good teacher, the highlight of my time there was being a part of the Bruce Lucas Band. Those gigs in pubs and wool sheds inspired me to play music professionally, which I did in a part time capacity for the next forty years.

I was appointed to Bombala Public School in 1965, and I took early retirement from the position of Principal at Holsworthy Public School 35 years later in 2000. There were about eleven schools in between, and I enjoyed every minute of my career in Education.

For ten years from 1990 to 2000, on the weekends, I was MC and sax player at Trethaway Gardens, a function centre at Petersham in Sydney. During that time we hosted more than 1,000 weddings. This was useful experience for my current job.

In 2001, after retiring from school, I became an outback tour guide, driving 4wd vehicles on soft adventure and camping tours to all the usual tourist spots all over Australia. My background in both music and education had prepared me well for entertaining my passengers around the campfire at night with bush poetry, musical saw, clarinet and didgeridoo.

By 2005 I was over the thrill of sunset at Uluru and the corrugations of the Gibb River Road, and I gained accreditation as a Civil Marriage Celebrant in that year. I'm now averaging 35 weddings a year. (see: robhughescelebrant.com). Weddings are mostly on the weekend. During the week I do the Herald crossword, and if the weather is good, perhaps a spot of fishing in Botany Bay or on Sydney Harbour.

For more than forty years I've been an active Freemason. Some will recognise my current rank of PJGW in that organisation.

In 1972 I married Julianne, having met her when we both taught at Mt Druitt school. We have two children, Jillian, 33, and Alison 30. They are both married, and Jill and Matt have two children, Lucy, 4, and Sam, 2. We are enjoying our golden years. Julianne now works as a Life Coach, and whilst we live in Oatley, Sydney, we try to get to our small property in Bemboka as often as we can.

Come on all you ex-students, you've been reading all these BIOs with interest, so now it's your turn to amaze, disturb, interest, fascinate, or as they now say "whatever" other ex-students with your BIOs and photos.