{"id":164223,"date":"2016-11-23T19:11:58","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T09:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=164223"},"modified":"2020-09-30T13:00:48","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T03:00:48","slug":"bursary-celebrates-15th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2016\/11\/23\/bursary-celebrates-15th-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Bursary Celebrates 15th Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2016 Mike Storrien Memorial Bursary winner Emma Franz with her escort Connor Flood at this year’s Nanango State High School formal (Photo: clivelowephotography.com.au)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Former Radio 4SB announcer Mike Storrien<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

November 23, 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

A bursary set up to perpetuate the memory of a South Burnett radio announcer celebrated its fifteenth birthday this year.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

So who was Mike Storrien? And how did the bursary come about?<\/p>\n

Mike was a popular announcer on Radio 4SB.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

In his private life, Mike was a rugby league referee and a great supporter of junior sport in the region.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Mike Storrien Memorial Bursary is awarded to a Year 12 student who is:<\/p>\n