Singing Lessons | Student Successes | Musical Experience | Musical Background | General Background | Electronics Patents | Personal Links | Other Links | Back to HOME
Member of the Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing
There have been many changes of career and hobbies during my life before becoming an actor-singer. I have always been interested in music and theatre and started to play flute in the school orchestra. But an old theatre joke say's "don't give up your daytime job". In other words life on the stage is so precarious that, unless you have exceptional talent, full-time employment opportunities are extremely scarce.
So I started out reading Chemistry Honours at London University's North London Campus (now the London Metropolitan University), dropped out of that and got married at age 20. Then I did three years Nursing Training at Chase Farm Hospital. At the same time I fulfilled my military service obligations by playing Principal Flute in the band of the 7th Batallion, Middlesex Regiment, British Army.
Next I got a job in the Semiconductor Research Labs (STL) of STC, the English branch of multinational corporation ITT. Three years later I was a Section Leader-Development Engineer at a competitors factory, Siemens Edison-Swan, starting up transistor development and pre-production there.
Later, back at the Harlow semiconductor factory of STC, I was in charge of a research and development team working on Solar Cells and made the first prototype solar cell in UK with my own hands, also Zener Diodes, and early Integrated Circuits. Those early days of a few devices per chip were a far cry from the many thousands, even millions, of transistors per chip usual now.
During this period I made a number of new inventions which were patented by the two companies. Some of those made at STC were developed in collaboration with my friend Dr Anthony Hyman who was a senior physicist at the research branch, STL.
In 1963 I migrated to Australia with my wife, Kate and five children, intending to work for STC in Sydney, but on the six week cruise the Australian Immigration Officers on the ship persuaded us to go to Adelaide, South Australia instead. Initially I got a research technician's job at the University of Adelaide assisting Dr G S Laurence on a project for the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE). This also led to my first computer programming course in FORTRAN and to further changes in my career direction.
Two years later I had the opportunity to join the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) as foundation Laboratory Manager for the new university. Kate also got a job there as a senior technician. Four years later, having been largely responsible for developing all the UPNG science laboratory facilities from scratch, I was asked by the University of Adelaide to go back to my former Department as their Laboratory Manager, but just before that I got a BSc in Mathematical Statistics by part-time study at UPNG.
Four years later, after completing the Adelaide University Postgraduate Diploma in Computing Science, I found the lure of the tropics taking me to Suva, Fiji as Laboratory Manager at the University of the South Pacific, a fascinating two years during which I learned much about Fijian customs and culture and also the very different Indian Hindu culture, with lots of musical activity as well, playing flute in a trio (with Rina Dekel, Guitar and Bill Zucker violin), helping to found the USP Choir and becoming Music Organiser of the Fiji Arts Club. These events came about largely through teaching flute to some of the children of the Diplomatic Corps. The parents invited me to a party at which I met Rina who's husband was the WHO representative in Fiji.
Then to Perth, my first job in a Computer related area with the Government of Western Australia, Health Department. I led the development team for programming a new Medical Records Computer System and then implemented it into several of the state hospitals, eventually going to work directly for one of them (Fremantle Hospital). I also studied Social and Political Theory part-time at Murdoch University from 1980-84, eventually having to discontinue this as music and acting started to take up more of my spare time.
This period saw the gradual replacement of the mainframes by microcomputers and eventually networks and, a bit later I was able to "give up my day-time job" for real and, in semi retirement, devote all my time to personal computing experiments and music, singing and acting with various amateur and professional theatre companies and as a free lance professional soloist. I also sang with a number of Perth choirs. These included the Perth Oratorio Choir, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO) Chorus, the Perth Undergraduate Choral Society, the UWA Choral Society and the Malcolm Sargent Festival Choir. as well as various ad hoc choirs formed for Festival of Perth performances.
Back in Adelaide permanently, I sang for several years with the Adelaide Philharmonia Chorus and also redeveloped and maintained their web-site until I left the choir a few years ago.
I also registered the domain anats.org.au and built the original national web site for the Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing, a professional organisation with chapters in all states. I was a long time Commitee Member of ANATS in Perth and am now a member of the SA Chapter. At around the same time I registered the domain australian-options.org.au and designed the original site for Australian Options, a political journal.
For the six years I was teaching singing in Perth, many of my students won places in Eisteddfods and other competitions. Although retired, I now occasionally coach selected students for short periods of preparation for examinations and auditions.
With such a wide range of interests I intend to develop a site as a starting point for accessing information on an equally wide range of topics from science to art, links to various cultural and travel sites. This main site will link to musical resources on the web. The content of the Personal Links Page will be revised and updated periodically until the more general objectives are attained.
Singing Lessons | Student Successes | Musical Experience | Musical Background | General Background | Electronics Patents | Personal Links | Other Links | Back to HOME
E-mail me at athomas@internode.on.net