Meet David

G'day! I'm Dave

I remember a time when the local Anglican parish pastor said to me, "You'll go a long way." The comment came when I was experiencing much self-doubt and anxiety, but such few words have had an impression on me.

Born in St Vincent's Private Hospital, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia in 1968, I was the first son of a local taxi driver and former stockman Neville (or Jim as he was better known), and housewife. The pain and hurt my mother Shirley had when she delivered me nearly killed her. You know now why I haven't tried to have kids at all, and probably never will try.

I never met my grandparents, who were of Belgian and Scottish descent. Dad told me that my grandfather used to own the land on which Willow Springs Adventure Park was later built on, and had he held onto it today it would be worth millions. My great, great, great grandfather was a soldier who fought against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. I have an older sister, a younger brother and a younger sister. I had a normal Anglican upbringing and attended Toowoomba North State School from 1974, not long after the family settled into a house in Leawarra Street, Wilsonton in 1972.

A Boy Scout and amateur wrestler, I also learnt how to swim at the school pool, and would go on to attend a swimming club in town with my sisters and brother. Delivering Telegraph newspapers on a bicycle run in North Toowoomba for a few dollars a week, I learnt the value of hard work.

By this time I was a devoted Star Wars fan, and moved onto Toowoomba State High School in 1981, where I was a member of the school concert band, orchestra and cadet band playing the clarinet through to Year 12. In my senior year at Mount Lofty I achieved the first ever '7' rating in Queensland for the new subject area of computer art, and with the help of my computer whiz friend Daniel soon became very interested in computers. Back in 1985 we used the KoalaPad on a Commodore 64 and an Apple IIe computer.

Urged on by my parents to attend college, in 1986 I enrolled at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education (DDIAE) to study the electrical engineering degree, enough to learn how to use and program computers, but not so much their internal workings. An electric shock from a 240 volt 50 hertz power point can kill you, and the electronics staff became very worried when I started plugging things into power sockets. When you connect electronic work with a power point, you are completing the circuit between yourself and the power station. They actively discouraged me from continuing the work, and distracted by all the excitement of World Expo 88 in Brisbane I wisely left the degree.

Not long after I bought my first Atari XT (IBM compatible) personal computer, which was a dinosaur by today's standards. So began a time of computer gaming with shoot-em-up games like Galaxian, Galaga, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, I have played many of the 90's games, and sooner or later I started to develop my own games. I also played around with a voice recognition and synthesis application, and made the computer speak back to me when I spoke to it. This was a challenging time of my life when I had to distance myself from a cohort of somewhat undesirable characters.

In 1997 I started to do voluntary work at a new Toowoomba community non-profit organisation, offering my computer skills to the members where I am still active until this day. I designed their original website in 2005 after doing a short course in web design, and from there started my own small business in David Fredericks Web Design. Not long before starting this business my mother Shirley tragically died and I left the family home to get set up in a rented bachelor pad. Sometime before this I lost my life savings on a Canadian-US diamond share scam that swindled thousands of investors around the world.

A couple of years later in 2007 my father Jim died from Parkinson's Disease. I decided to go back to university to study a science degree in physics, mathematics and computing so I would not become despondent. During this time studying I met Australian-born NASA astronaut Dr Andy Thomas in Brisbane, then the next year in 2011 I flew to Sydney to meet first moon walker Neil Armstrong and managed to shake his hand while he was leaving the Sydney Convention Centre, where the attendees had paid $500 per seat to raise funds for CPA Australia. Neil's father worked as an auditor for the Ohio State Government. It was an immense honour to meet the man himself that I will remember for the rest of my life. Neil died at age 82 a year to the day after the Sydney event.

I took my first trip overseas to Auckland, then returned to start my new small business teaching computer skills to Toowoomba's senior population. At this time I was aged 45. Since I have had this business I have bought a new car, travelled to Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and recently flew over the Ross Sea coastline of East Antarctica with Qantas out of Brisbane. Am planning future trips to Ireland, Canada and Norway to see the Northern Lights. In 2022 I joined U3A Toowoomba and have attended courses on Exploring Antarctica Today, Regain Your Brain and Australian Indigenous History.

Not for a moment do I want you to think that I don't know what unemployment is like. People on the autism spectrum face by far the worst kind of discrimination by employers. I was unemployed for a long time before I decided to become an entrepreneur and start my own small business. Given that I am over 55 I know very well the plight faced by older people in trying to get back into the workforce, even with qualifications and years of experience. For example there is an elderly man in Adelaide with six (6) degrees who cannot find anything, even voluntary work. I would not consider having a university degree as evidence of exceptional ability. Ideally you dropped out and did something.

Excellent thought provoking book:
The Case Against Education - Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Caplan, ISBN 978-0-691-19645-9
"A book that America has needed for a long time." - George Leef, Forbes

I will leave you to contemplate this quote from Calvin Coolidge, former US President.