November 23, 2016
A bursary set up to perpetuate the memory of a South Burnett radio announcer celebrated its fifteenth birthday this year.
Nanango State High School student Emma Franz, who was presented with the Mike Storrien Memorial Bursary at this year’s school awards night on November 2, is the latest in a long line of recipients that stretches back to 2002.
But what is most significant about this unique South Burnett bursary is that it will soon be funding a new generation who never knew the man it is named after, or ever heard him on the airwaves.
And because Mike was a radio man who spent most of his career in the pre-Internet age, his online footprint is negligible and friends are now concerned his memory is fading fast.
So who was Mike Storrien? And how did the bursary come about?
Mike was a popular announcer on Radio 4SB.
Before coming to the South Burnett, he worked at Mt Isa’s first commercial TV station ITQ-Channel 8 as an announcer in the early 1970s, becoming that town’s first TV personality.
But he began his career in the South Burnett as a deejay, before joining the radio station as a salesman and later moving back into announcing.
Long-time friend Barry Green, who worked with him at 4SB, recalled that one of the high points of Mike’s radio career was a weekly cooking show.
“For some reason, Mike couldn’t pronounce the names of several commonly used cooking ingredients like oregano, and his cooking knowledge was pretty thin, too,” Barry said.
“The end result was sort of a culinary train wreck, and the station pulled the show off air after a few weeks because it was so bad they were worried he was upsetting the audience.
“But when the switchboard lit up with calls from listeners saying it was the funniest thing they heard on radio every week, they put it back on air pretty quickly.”
In his private life, Mike was a rugby league referee and a great supporter of junior sport in the region.
He was also an avid sports enthusiast and had a very large library of sporting books, most signed either by the book’s subject or author.
When Mike died in 2002, four of his friends – former Kingaroy High School principal David Ballin, former advertising manager John Cross, former CROW-FM manager Wayne Kratzmann and former Thrashers coach Mike Bishop – came up with the idea of a bursary.
They held a fundraiser to gather the $6000 they needed to establish it, and the bursary – which now rotates through all four of the region’s high schools in alphabetical order (ie Kingaroy, Murgon, Nanango and St Mary’s Catholic College) – was launched the same year.
The Mike Storrien Memorial Bursary is awarded to a Year 12 student who is:
- Completing Year 12 at a South Burnett High School
- Achieving in school, inter-school, or representative sport to the best of her/his ability
- Wanting to further their sporting career, and
- Is of good character, has high personal standards, and is a good example for younger sports people
The bursary continues to be administered by the four founding trustees (David Ballin, John Cross, Wayne Kratzmann and Mike Bishop) and its account is held in a trust administered by Kingaroy State High School.
At present the fund holds $6728 in an ANZ term deposit and the Mike Storrien Memorial Bursary, which was originally $250, has grown to $500.
Each of the four high schools contributes $150 towards it once every four years, and that contribution – plus the interest the funds earn – is sufficient to ensure the bursary will continue to be awarded to future generations of young South Burnett sports people.
Even though none of them will ever get the chance to hear Mike’s “train wreck” of a cookery show.
Recipients to date have been:
Note: Kingaroy State High School also presents an annual Mike Storrien Memorial Award (a perpetual trophy) to a local journalist or media personality who has excelled in schools news coverage.
