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Rowan Dalgleish (centre, with Shredder) and his house mates at 11 Ra...

UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG STUDENT WINS NATIONAL RADIO COMPETITION

A University of Wollongong student has won a prestigious national radio competition with a story about life in a Mount Keira share house.

Rowan Dalgleish, a 23-year-old Radio Journalism postgraduate, beat a tough field to win the My Street competition run by ABC Radio National’s Street Stories program. The competition, for best short audio, video or text feature, attracted over a hundred entries.

Dalgleish chronicled life at a chaotic share-house in Mount Keira, home to five musicians and two inquisitive dogs: ‘The Pack’.

The judges described the work as ‘a lovely audio story about life, friendship and dogs’ and praised its interweaving of original music, voice and ‘disgustingly enjoyable’ sounds like the loud licking of plates by Shredder (the cattle dog) and Warney (the kelpie). The dogs’ social network create friendships in the street for Rowan and his housemates, but their enthusiastic band practice is less appreciated and leads to an eviction order.

‘It is a wonderful achievement,’ said Dalgleish’s lecturer, Siobhan McHugh, ‘because Rowan had never done any radio prior to July.’ Dalgleish made the My Street feature as part of the Masters in Journalism course. A revamped Radio Journalism course was launched this year in the newly-constructed Radio Laboratory.

As winner, Dalgleish will be paid to make a documentary next year with the Radio National team. He says he is ‘awash with ideas’.

Dalgleish’s feature can be heard on http://www.abc.net.au/rn/streetstories