What our biggest celebrities and sports stars were like as school kids
One got expelled for being a troublemaker, while another swapped fashion for footy. See what these celebrities were like during their Melbourne school days.
Victoria
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They’re all household names today, but can you identify these well-known faces from before they were famous (mostly) when they attended schools in Melbourne and regional Victoria?
And can you guess which celebrity was year 12 dux, which mediocre student became Victorian premier, and which larrikin was expelled for dropping a schoolmate’s pants?
Kylie Minogue
There’s zero truth to the scurrilous claims that Australia’s pop princess lost her virginity in a broom cupboard at Camberwell High in the 1980s.
But that didn’t stop the false rumour getting plenty of traction after it was printed in an unauthorised biography in 1997.
Australia’s pop princess was a shy, quiet schoolgirl who apparently wasn’t too interested in singing or dancing while at Camberwell High from 1980 to 1985.
But by then she had already taken the first steps into showbiz, with a minor role in The Sullivans when she was in primary school.
Minogue’s career took off in her last year at Camberwell High when she landed a key role in The Henderson Kids.
Camberwell High’s principal once noted approvingly that Minogue was “sensible” in the way she juggled acting and study.
By the time Minogue won the role of Charlene on Neighbours in 1986, catapulting her to fame, she had just finished year 12 and her HSC, including studying arts and graphics.
Cate Blanchett
Hollywood film star Cate Blanchett was already destined for the world stage when she was a schoolgirl.
Her drama teacher at Methodist Ladies’ College (MLC) in Kew knew the determined teenager was headed for the big time.
“I’m not surprised at all at the level of her success with acting, but she would have been equally successful if she’d chosen to run the World Bank,’’ Felicity Donnoli once told The Weekend Australian.
Ms Donnoli described her former student as “bubbly, funny, cheerful and giggly”.
Blanchett was elected drama captain of her house every year at MLC from 1981 to 1986 and was directing plays from the age of 12.
The two-time Academy Award winner’s diverse talents were on show in her final year when she adapted the complex 1969 Sydney Pollack film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? for the stage.
According to Ms Donnoli, not only did Blanchett adapt and edit the script, cast the actors and design the set, she even talked the vice principal into providing funding for her to bring her chosen seating into her chosen venue.
“She was really most incredible,’’ she said.
King Charles III
King Charles III’s two terms at Geelong Grammar’s remote Timbertop campus for year 9 students in Victoria’s high country in 1966 proved to be a turning point in his life.
He was delighted to be known as “just plain Charles” to his classmates, though he did cop a bit of teasing for being a “Pommy bastard”.
Young Charles relished the cross-country runs, weekend hikes and woodchopping at Timbertop, where students board together and focus on outdoor education alongside their academic studies.
The future monarch was 17 when he came to Timbertop, much older than the year 9 students he was boarding with.
It was a time of joy after his five hellish years at his father’s old school, Scotland’s harsh Gordonstoun boarding school, which Charles later described as “a prison sentence”.
The king later fondly recalled the Australian part of his schooling.
“Quite frankly, it was by far the best part,” he said. “While I was here I had the Pommy bits bashed off me. Like chips off an old block.”
Michelle Payne
Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michelle Payne was 15 and had just completed year 9 when she rode in her first competitive race in 2001 – and won.
Many of her Loreto College school friends cheered her home on Reigning, a horse owned and trained by her father.
“All my school friends were out there cheering me on and everyone at the track seemed happy for me,” she said at the time.
Payne made the tough decision to leave behind her friends at Ballarat’s Loreto College to pursue her dream of being a professional jockey, like seven of her 10 siblings.
In 2015, Payne made history as the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup, on 100-1 outsider Prince of Penzance.
Hundreds of people gathered outside Ballarat Town Hall soon after to welcome home their hero, including students from Loreto as well as Payne’s former primary school, Our Lady Help of Christians Primary School in Wendouree.
Payne’s primary school librarian, Helen Woods, was among the crowd of wellwishers.
“She was a fantastic student, a real pleasure to teach, and always thoughtful with other children,” Ms Woods said at the time.
“She actually told me she was going to win the Melbourne Cup aged five and I said, ‘well, don’t forget to mention your teacher in your speech’ but she forgot me!”
Jeff Kennett
Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett once admitted he “was never an academically bright student”, but he did enjoy his time in Scotch College’s Cadet Corps Unit.
Kennett never rose above an average academic level and almost left the elite Hawthorn school in form 4 (year 10) as a result, but persisted, and completed form 6 (year 12) in 1965.
Kennett was “a splendid sergeant-major”, according to one school report, while it was once said he “struck terror into the heart of every recruit he looked at”.
One school friend said Kennett was chosen for the role “because he had the loudest voice”, a handy attribute given he was required to bellow orders to the cadet corps on the Scotch College oval.
One school report noted he was confident, at times helpful and sometimes worked hard, but also that he “sometimes irritates”.
Kennett also played Aussie rules for the school, and years later joked his football career there was “stunning”.
“I had a well-defined six-pack that has now become a one-pack,” he added.
“I used to play on the wing a bit and the backline.
“I remember one day I managed to kick a point – for the opposition.”
Nick Cave
Nick Cave demonstrated his love of the spotlight early in life when he dropped his dacks for a laugh at Caulfield Grammar School in 1975.
The internationally acclaimed singer and songwriter was born in the wheatbelt town of Warracknabeal and grew up in regional Victoria.
The future “prince of darkness” sang in the choir for three years at Wangaratta Cathedral.
But he was then expelled from Wangaratta High School at age 13 for trying to pull down the pants of a 16-year-old girl, clearly a repeating theme in his life.
Cave’s mum and dad, who worked as a librarian and teacher respectively at Wangaratta High, then sent him to board at Caulfield Grammar.
He began performing music with a group of schoolmates at Caulfield Grammar in 1973, including talented multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey.
The group later became known as The Boys Next Door, then The Birthday Party, a frenzied, explosive, anarchic Melbourne rock band.
Cave and Harvey went on to form a new band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, after the demise of The Birthday Party in 1983.
“I will be eternally grateful to Mick for leading me to this job, which I just love,’’ Cave once said.
“If I hadn’t met Mick I probably would have succeeded at school and become a painter.’’
Jennifer Keyte
The Channel 10 newsreader had just turned five when she started school at St John Bosco’s Primary School in Niddrie in 1965.
“I was very excited about my first day at school, because I was joining my two older sisters and I felt very grown up,” Keyte once recalled.
“That was, until lunchtime, when I wanted to play with them and they told me to find my own friends!”
Keyte then attended St Columba’s College, an all-girls Catholic secondary school in Essendon.
But her school days weren’t always easy, and while she had good friends, she wasn’t part of the “in” group, and was an average student.
“I wouldn’t say I had a wonderful time, but I found it quite rewarding,” she once told the Herald Sun. “I enjoyed studying.”
It was at secondary school that Keyte decided she didn’t want to be a kindergarten teacher, and would become a journalist because she got her best mark in English – a C.
After landing a work experience gig at radio station EON FM (now Triple M), Keyte was offered a cadetship and quit her uni course to start a journalism career.
Charlie Pickering
Despite his cheesy grin for this 1980 class photo at St Leonard’s College in Brighton East, where he grew up, comedian Charlie Pickering didn’t always have it easy at school.
Pickering, who attended St Leonard’s and then Brighton Grammar, has talked openly about being bullied at school, in part because he was small and smart.
Pickering was so bright he skipped year 5, an early sign of the cleverness that has made him a hit as the host of the ABC’s The Weekly With Charlie Pickering, and team captain on Channel 10’s Would I Lie to You?
Robert de Castella
Before becoming the leading international marathon runner of the 1980s, Robert de Castella was an outstanding schoolboy athlete at Xavier College in Kew.
From 1973 to 1975, while he was in his senior years at Xavier, de Castella had 30 consecutive cross-country wins.
While at Xavier, de Castella was lucky enough to have 1962 Commonwealth Games representative Pat Clohessy as a teacher.
Clohessy became Deek’s coach while he was still a Xavier student, a partnership that continued throughout his career.
De Castella went on to win the marathons at the 1982 and 1986 Commonwealth Games and the 1983 World Championships.
Matthew Lloyd
The former Essendon captain started prep in 1983 at St Martin de Porres Primary School in Avondale Heights.
‘‘I remember being nervous about starting school, but excited at the same time,” he once said.
“I was lucky because my brother, Brad, was two years above me at school, so I had my big brother around to hold my hand and watch out for me.’’
Afterwards, Lloyd attended Essendon’s St Bernard’s College, which has produced dozens of top sportsmen, particularly AFL footballers.
Peter Alexander
Pyjama king Peter Alexander was much younger than most on his first day at Bialik College in 1968.
Born in South Africa in 1965, he moved to Australia when he was a baby.
‘‘I went to school quite young – two and a half into prep – because my sisters were at school already and I really wanted to go too,” he once told the Sunday Herald Sun.
“They said I was too young but Mum insisted. So they agreed on the proviso that if there was any crying or carrying on I was to go straight home. I never cried.
“The school was Bialik College in Hawthorn and I was only to last there until I was about six.
“It was 1968 — that could explain why I am wearing stovepipe pants.’’
Dave Hughes
The comedian was dux of his school when he graduated from Christian Brothers College in Warrnambool in 1988.
But it was a different story when he started school in 1976 at St Pius X, a Catholic primary school in Warrnambool.
“I remember we were meant to put our bags on our own hooks, but I couldn’t read my own name,” he once told the Herald Sun.
“Everyone else could. I cried because I thought I must be the dumbest kid in the class.”
During high school, Hughesy dreamt of becoming a sporting hero.
But after year 12, he moved to Melbourne and briefly studied IT at Swinburne University and accounting at Deakin University before dropping out and seeking a different career path.
Dylan Alcott
Dylan Alcott was already a rising star of wheelchair tennis in his early years at Brighton Grammar, which he attended from year 6 until he graduated in 2008.
He made an early newspaper appearance in 2004 as a 13-year-old year 8 student, preparing for the Junior National Wheelchair Games in Sydney in 2005.
Alcott then made his debut for the Australian men’s national wheelchair basketball team, the Rollers, at the 2006 Wheelchair Basketball World Championship.
He was in his final year at Brighton Grammar when he was part of the gold medal-winning Rollers team at the 2008 Paralympics.
When he was named Male Junior Athlete of the Year at the Victorian Sports Awards in October 2008, Alcott was unable to collect his award in person – he was home studying for the next day’s VCE year 12 English exam.
Michael Klim
Polish-born swimmer Michael Klim was still a student at Wesley College in Melbourne when he was first selected to represent Australia, at the 1994 Commonwealth Games.
It wasn’t his first secondary school – Klim had earlier attended University High in Parkville.
By 1993, 15-year-old Klim was the youngest student undertaking the two-year International Baccalaureate at Wesley.
At the same time, he was also undergoing full body shaves to compete, and training 17 hours a week, including getting up before 5am to swim three mornings a week.
Klim went on to become an Olympic gold medallist, world champion and world record holder.
Bill Shorten
Politician and former trade unionist Bill Shorten spent 13 years in Catholic primary and secondary schools, before studying arts and law degrees at Monash University.
“I went to Holy Eucharist in Chadstone first … but my parents fell out with the local Catholic priest — you get a feeling my parents were willing to stand their ground on matters — so we ended up going to St Mary’s,” he once said.
Shorten and his twin brother, Rob, were then sent to exclusive Xavier College, where Shorten played in the soccer team.
Shorten finished year 12 in 1985, scoring near the top of Xavier’s results.
Travis Cloke
According to Yarra Valley Grammar, Travis Cloke was as passionate about the arts as he was about sport in his years at the school.
The third son of famed footballer David Cloke followed in the footsteps of his dad and older brothers, signing with Collingwood in 2004 while in year 11.
“My first game of football was on Anzac Day – a Thursday – and I came back to school the next day for a SAC,” he later told his old school.
Travis was arts and house captain at the Ringwood school and played the tuba.
In late 2004, Travis, whose mother taught him to sew, modelled a set of coat tails and pants, made from recycled jeans, that he made for his VCE design and technology course.
At the time, design teacher Lindy Spreadborough said she was impressed with Travis’s many talents, including his life drawing.
“He’s a terrific student,’’ she said. ``He’s just so conscientious.’’
These days, Cloke is head coach of the Essendon VFLW team and a development coach at the club.
Marina Prior
At school, Marina Prior didn’t set her heart on being a musical theatre star, but rather an archaeologist.
But her love for Greek and Roman history, inspired by a wonderful classical civilisation teacher, eventually gave way to music.
While at Korowa Anglican Girls’ School in Glen Iris, Prior learnt singing, piano, flute and guitar.
In her hour-long year 12 singing exam, she felt her musical future was riding on her ability to sing scales and belt out Italian arias from the 17th and 18th centuries in front of a panel. She got an A-plus.
No one was surprised when she began studying for a Bachelor of Music degree at Melbourne State College after graduating from Korowa in 1981.
But less than two years after graduating from Korowa, Prior won a leading role in Pirates of Penzance with the Victorian State Opera, beginning her rise to stardom at the age of 19.
While she attended school in Melbourne, Prior was born in Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea in 1963 when her father was working there in the shipping industry.
In 1997, Prior returned to her old school to perform a duet with 10-year-old Rebecca Bates to help launch the “Happy Little Vegemites Awards” for primary schools.
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