Shaun MICaLLEFTalkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation

”Between the years 1980 and 1983, I studied Law at the University of Adelaide. Ah, those halcyon days. Strolling across the empty Law School pond, past the Henry Moore sculpture (which looked nothing like him), into the fabled Ligertwood Building, ignoring our pigeon holes, picking up some materials from Miss Fantasia at the desk, then upstairs two-at-a-time and into the Flentje Lecture Theatre to hear Professor Horst Lücke, swathed in academic gown, hold forth on some curly question of contract law that I have now forgotten.

Flake and chips in the Helen Mayo Refectory, drinking low-fat iced coffee on the Barr Smith lawns, watching INXS play in the University Bar – it was Brideshead Revisited in Corfu jeans and beige Kayaks. Yes, I picked up an LLB which led my to a satisfying decade as a practicing solicitor but Adelaide University gave me so much more.

It was there I joined the Footlights Club and participated in comedy revues in Union Hall and the Little Theatre; I learned how to write sketches and how to perform for an audience – skills I rely on to make my living some twenty years later. That’s the wonderful thing about this place – you get so much more out of it than just the degree.”

“That’s the wonderful thing about this place – you get so much more out of it than just the degree.”