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‘Schoolies Week’ an Australian Celebration of the End of High School

It’s every parent’s nightmare, for all the right reasons

Maria Rattray
5 min readNov 21, 2023
Let the celebrations begin…
Let the celebrations begin… Photo by Kym MacKinnon on Unsplash

On television this morning, the ticketek read,

“Man accused of killing an eighteen-year-old schoolie.”

The man turned out to be an eighteen-year-old apprentice barber, a boy in fact. Eighteen is little more than a number in this case.

The schoolie, the son of the South Australian Police Commissioner, was celebrating end of school with his mates in a coastal area near Adelaide.

The man, who fled the scene, but was caught, was not charged with being under the influence of alcohol, or drugs, but charged with leaving the scene of the crime, and failing to report the crime.

So we all watch these stories on television and immediately we have our personal judgements in our minds.

Yesterday the man appeared in court.

Like many, I had a vision of how he might look. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

He was just a boy, a tall, handsome boy, who on one day was an ordinary citizen, doing an apprenticeship, then the next day has notoriety thrust upon him.

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Maria Rattray
Maria Rattray

Written by Maria Rattray

Writer, author, teacher, fun-loving poet. Trying valiantly to make the world a better place. Helping you to guide the future. Find me at: https://ponmyword.com

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