Francis Owusu Page 10

In 2013 I was honoured to receive recognition as the ACT Australian of the Year Local Hero Award. This award has opened more opportunities for me to spread my message. It was also nice for ABC TV to do an Australian Story on me, which was partly shot at Eddies and gave me another opportunity to reflect on the great times I experienced there and the fabulous teachers I encountered.

motoringACT Local Hero Francis Owusu with Katy Gallagher in 2013

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Today, my wonderful family surrounds me. My wife Suzi and our beautiful three children are the focus for my life, especially as I continue to pursue my vision for Kulture Break. Part of this future includes providing national qualification training and employment pathway opportunities for young people. I’ve also joined ABC Radio as a Canberra 666 presenter. Looking back, I am incredibly grateful for the education, support, advice, friendships, and even the reprimands, the good times and the bad good times I had at Eddies. All this helped to shape the person I am today.

When I look back, there are way too many memories to recount here. But, to sum up, I also fondly recall the stories behind our school retreat at Tuross; walks to St Christopher’s for full school masses; or singing in chorus the school song with our then Principal’s vain attempts to stamp out our feet stomps after we bellowed out “They were braved and famed men!” – STOMP! STOMP!

This year ushers in a new era for my family connection with Eddies, with my nephew Oscar starting his journey at my old school, and I look forward to seeing him leave his mark!

So for me, where I go and whatever I do, I will never forget St Edmund’s to the Fore!

College Dux Class of 2020 Benjamin Francis

I started school back in 2011, at Canberra Christian School (CCS). I've always been rather inquisitive, so I loved that school allowed me to learn new things and answer questions. My catchphrase for many years was "did you know?", usually followed by a random fact that I had "read in a book". As well as being inquisitive, I was a bookworm, reading any books that I could get my hands on. It was in the school library that I discovered non-fiction books, and it was like candy for my obsession information-loving brain. To this day, I read as wide a range of books as possible, from art history to sports statistics. My mania for non-fiction books actually became a problem, because when I started at Eddies, I realised that it had been so long since I read a novel that I had no idea how to analyse one!

I was very fortunate my teachers at CCS quickly realised that following the curriculum was not going to be a complete solution for me. CCS was a very small school at the time, so they could work with each student in a very tailored manner. I started doing several extension activities and working with other year groups. When I started Year 5, I began doing tutoring sessions, learning Year 7 and 8 maths.

During Year 6 at CCS, I needed to move schools, and so my parents and I decided that I should be accelerated. I enrolled at Brindabella Christian College in Year 9. It was at Brindabella that I was introduced to basketball and the NBA, and I went charging down this rabbit hole. Anybody who knows me well knows that I love statistics, especially those of the sporting kind. I love trying to make predictions, whether it be a team or players performance, or where sports strategies are headed. However, things don't always go to plan… During Year 12 at Eddies, I tried to make a model that would predict the outcome of AFL games to help our tutor group win the O'Brien footy tipping competition. Even though we were pretty hopeless with our picks, my model was worse! It was so bad that I would have been better off picking the opposite of what my model predicted!

After one year at Brindabella, I decided to move to Eddies, and accelerated a year in the process, starting Year 11 in 2019. My first memory of Eddies is being completely lost on my first day, asking multiple students and teachers where various classrooms were – the buildings seemed like a maze. A lot of