Early Life and Education
Field was the youngest of seven children, and grew up in western Sydney. He came from a long line of musicians, especially the women in his family. His great-great aunt was "Queenie Paul", known for performing at the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney, and his grandmother Kathleen accompanied silent movies in the mining town of Cobar. Field's mother, Marie, made sure that all of her seven children learned how to play at least one musical instrument. In 1979, while still in secondary school (St. Joseph's College, Hunters Hill, an all-boys boarding school that his great-grandfather Paddy Condon, an Italian immigrant and masterstonemason, helped build), he and his brothers formed the pop group The Cockroaches.
He was inspired by his sister Colleen to study Early Childhood Education, and became convinced that teaching preschool children "was my calling". He was also attracted to the field's freedom, artistic nature, and lack of discipline, which was different from his experience in boarding school. Field put off university when The Cockroaches became successful, but he was dissatisfied with touring and plagued by "perhaps irrational, but very real, feelings of inadequacy and depression". By his mid-twenties, he decided that he did not want to tour any longer, so he took two breaks. His first break was as an infantry soldier, medic, and rifleman in the 5th/7th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, Australia's regular army from 1982 to 1985. He played the bagpipes in parades and on training missions, but ended his military service in July 1985 and suffered from a bad back as a result of his training. He also went backpacking in the U.K., listening to roots music, to children's music by artists like Raffi, and to recordings of children's books.
When The Cockroaches disbanded in the early 90s, Field enrolled at Macquarie University. While at university, he decided to record an album of children's music, enlisting the assistance of fellow student and guitarist Murray Cook, former Cockroaches roadie and vocalist Greg Page, former bandmate and keyboardist Jeff Fatt, and Macquarie instructor and composer Phillip Wilcher, who later left the group.
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