Australian Story The Portland Boy/Harold the Kangaroo (1996– ) Online

Australian Story The Portland Boy/Harold the Kangaroo (1996– ) Online

The Portland Boy Rock musician Angry Anderson is the guest presenter for this week's first item in Australian Story. Angry introduces the remarkable story of Pat Comben, a former state environment and education minister in Queensland. Mr Comben grew up in Portland in the south of England. His family background was unhappy and abusive. His parents, he says, seemed to care more about the pet dog than him. He was, he believes on the verge of "seeing the inside of an English Jail" when he met a teacher who turned his life around. Pat had limited schooling and no encouragement to do anything with his life and he had had some brushes with the law over, among others things, the burning down of a school building. Of that incident he says only "I am making no admissions". At sixteen, fired with new belief in himself, he came out to Australia. He worked as a jackaroo on an outback NSW property, and then with a mining company before turning to study. He acquired a degree and went on to become a ...