m i c h a e l w a g n e r

b i o g r a p h y

1964 – Born in Sydney on the 26^th of February. I’m the second child in my family. My parents had three sons and one daughter. I have an older brother, then there’s me, then my sister, then my little brother. In my first year, I got quite sleepy at various times.

1965 – Spent the year alternating between being cute, sleepy and cheeky.

1966 – Moved to Melbourne where we lived in a Housing Commission flat in Kensington. Our flats were a bit like this, only smaller. This picture shows the flats The Undys are set in. It's in Williamstown, across the bay from the city of Melbourne in Victoria.

1967 –Achieved my crayon license at kindergarten. (he-he) We didn't really have crayon licenses, but if we did I would certainly have got mine ... sooner or later.

1969 – Started primary school in Kensington. Loved reading Dr Seuss in particular.

1970 – Accidentally flooded our flat. The water to our flats had been turned off. Despite being told not to by my mum, I left the tap on and went to school. When I got home there was water running down the stairs and our flat was totally flooded. Oops. Sorry, Mum.

1971 – Moved to Carlton, just opposite the Exhibition Gardens. It was our first house. Yay! We were allowed to live in it for one year. My Dad’s work said we could.

There was only one problem. On the day we moved in, the place was so dusty, the dust got into my eyes. When I woke up the next morning, my eyes were completely clagged shut by dust. After a few scary minuted, I could open one eye, but it took hours to get the other one un-clagged. Yuk!

I also fell out of a tree this year, and landed square on my head. I must have been at least one floor up. As Maxx Rumble would say, 'I was WINDED!' Ouch!

1972 – Moved to Box Hill in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. Our first proper house – one we owned. Double-yay! Also moved schools, to Box Hill Primary.

1975 – Finished primary school. Yay! I hadn’t done much in the last few years anyway.

[Click my photo to see that I'm the only boy wearing the unpopular dark shirt AND the unpopular blazer. Ouch.]

1977 – Started to really blossom as a cricketer. The hair helped a lot. It acted as a helmet.

1978 – My dad won Tattslotto this year. We really did. First prize and everything. There were 3 other winners, so we ended up with about $250,000 which was a very large amount in those days. (warning: this isn't a totally happy part of my story. Keep reading to find out why.)

Soon after we moved to Lower Templestowe because we could afford a really big house. I kept going to Blackburn High School with my friends though. It took two bus trips each day, but it was worth it.

1979 – I’d like to think it was the fashion at the time, but perhaps I was just a bit of dork. Hmmm?

1980 – Failed to significantly penetrate the themes of my English novels. Boo!

I may have been missing the point in English, but at least I was still looking good.

1981 – Moved from our big place in Lower Templestowe to a slightly smaller place in East Doncaster. After a few years, we realised we couldn’t really afford the big place any more, even though we still had most of that Tattslotto money. Boo.

1982 – Started a university degree at RMIT – Media Studies. Yay. Met lots of new and fun people. Yay some more.

1983 – Lost all of that Tattslotto money we’d won, and just about everything else we owned. We got conned in a very bad business deal. My parents split up. I moved with my mum to a really run down house – the worst place we’d ever lived in. Oh well, back to being poor again. Boo.

But there was some good news. Because we'd moved, I met my a guy called Keith on the new bus I was taking to university. Keith and I formed a band. Double-triple-yay!

Took my first flight in a plane. Didn’t like it much, so I jumped out. Actually that’s not entirely true – it was my first flight and I did jump out, but I was wearing a parachute. Eek! My friend, Andrew, and I made a radio show about it. It was bought by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Yes!

We also made a show about embalming – that’s what they do to dead bodies before funerals. Ewe!

1985 – Started my first radio show with a bunch of good friends. It was called the All Out Cricket Show and it was about the humorous side of cricket – only it wasn’t particularly humorous, so it only lasted a couple of years. Still, it was great fun and we got free tickets to the cricket.

1986 – Wrote comedy for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – and got paid! Yay!

The band Keith and I formed became the Grownups at about this time. We were moderately cool for a little while. Yay.

1987 – Started work at Radio Australia where I spent 10 years behind the microphone talking about sport, music, the environment and the Pacific. When I did my first live read, I was so nervous I could hardly see my script. Scary!

Our band released its second single, Into the Beyond. According to the charts in a magazine called Juke, this was one of the biggest selling independent songs in Australia for the year! YAY!

If you'd like to see what we used to look like in the eighties - and who wouldn't? - a couple of our video clips are on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TloNPEvJLM

Travelled overseas for the very first time, spending 10 weeks in Europe and Egypt. Yay!

Started dating the beautiful and talented Jane Godwin. Jane is also a children’s author. Google her and you’ll see how many great books she’s written. Go on. Don't be afraid. Oh, but finish reading this first.

1990 – Jane and I had our first child – a beautiful and talented boy called Will. Lots of yays all in a row.

Won a World Environment Day (WED) Award for my environment show on Radio Australia. The show was called One World. Yay!

1992 – Jane and I had our second child, a beautiful and talented (and sleepy) girl called Elisabeth (or Lizzie). Many, many yays!

1993 – Very tired this year. Two young children. No sleep. Exhausted. Going crazy. Eek!

1994 – Decided to try my hand at creative writing. Bought an exercise book. Opened it up on the kitchen table and stared at it. Oh no! I had nothing to say – not a word! Eek! After a while, maybe days, I thought of something to write. Phew!

1995 – Kids growing up healthy and strong. Here's Will playing a game of corridor cricket - a game my friends and I invented when we were kids. In this picture we're using a ruler for a bat and rolled up paper for a ball, but there are many exciting variations. It looks like Will has just belted someone for a six. I hope it wasn't me!

1996 – Left the Australian Broadcasting Corporation after 10 years. I felt I'd worked in radio for long enough. I wanted to concentrate on writing. Started working for myself.

1997 – Wrote the script for an Australian animated feature film, The Enchanted Billabong, that didn’t quite get made. Click on the picture below to hear a song I wrote with an amazing musician called Craig Bryant. We wrote it for the film and it still sounds pretty sweet after all these years.

1998 – Wrote a couple of episodes of an animated TV series that DID get made – Old Tom (produced by Yoram Gross).

1999 – Did lots of copywriting and media production. Not very interesting work for kids. It involved making CD-ROMs and websites and things. Other than that, partied like it was 1999 - which, of course, it was.

2000 – Had my very first book published by Black Dog Books/Longman. It was an educational book called Ricardo Swaps His Lunch (illustrated by Terry Denton). I was on my way as a writer. Quadruple-yay!

2001 – Travelled to the South Pacific to gather stories for a really cool ABC website called Charting the Pacific. You can see it here: http://abc.net.au/ra/pacific/default.htm. Check out the 'People' section. That's where my stories are. Or click the beautiful faces below for a one minute video of some of the most uplifting singing you'll ever hear. I recorded in Kiribati.

2002 – Coached Will's under-12 football team into the finals (there were only 6 teams in the competition and 4 made the finals - but that doesn't change the fact that the boys played with incredible spirit!). Yay.

2003 – Worked with the The Learning Federation on lots of learning tools for Australian and New Zealand schools. If you are in an Australian or New Zealand school at the moment, you might even have seen some of these. I worked on tools for teaching mathematics. The picture below shows Wishball - it may be a learning tool, but it is also really fun use!

2004 – Had my first trade books published – the Maxx Rumble footy series (8 books), Dog Wars and the Maxx Rumble cricket series (first 4 books). What a big year!

2005 – We went to China and Hong Kong to research one of Jane's books - Minnie and the Superguys 2 (which hasn't been finished yet). Went so far north (to Harbin) during winter that it got as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius (or 4 below in Fahrenheit). Here are Will and Liz all rugged up. Brrrrr.

I worked with an Indigenous community in Australia’s Northern Territory, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Deakin University on the scripts for an incredible series of animations. Each animation tells a traditional Indigenous story. The series is called Dust Echoes. You can see all of the animations online at www.dustechoes.com.au. I’m really proud of this series. It's won some awards and been shown all over the world.

Crunched got short-listed for lots of awards: YABBAs, KOALAs and COOL Awards. Woo-hoo! Don't forget to vote for my books again some day, okay! :^)

2006 – The Maxx Rumble footy grand final book was released. And so was Maximum Maxx!

I also started work on my first series for Penguin Books – The Undys – and wrote the scripts for 8 more Indigenous stories – Dust Echoes 2. You can see all the animations at www.dustechoes.com.au

2007 – My latest book, the first in a whole new series about The Undys comes out. The illustrations are by Gus Gordon and it is published by Penguin Books. Then, about six months after book one, The Undys: Let the games begin, book two, The Undys: Let's get physical, is released.

Stacks of Maxx came out this year too. It has the first eight footy stories all in one book! Yay!