Just 6 years later, when I started university (in a course I didn't much care for as no profession or career seemed of much interest), as I sat at a computer lab PC and started perusing the Windows 3.11 desktop, I saw the Netscape icon, clicked on it, started browsing - finding music lyrics and chat boards, and sporting results and transgressive humour, and thought "OK, this is exciting". Pretty soon I was building webpages and thinking about how to turn this into a career.
The first internet-related job I got was for OzEmail, in 1999, in the building that was previously occupied by corporate-focused ISP Access One (OzEmail had acquired it from Solution6). Access One had been founded by Labtam, a company that was formed in 1972 making/importing scientific instruments, then made PCs in the 80s, then in 1989 developed a world-first RISC-based X terminal and started exporting it globally [1][2]. Once I was chatting with a guy I'd gotten to know at OzEmail, who'd started as an Access One phone support rep then learned about Cisco routers and soon became a network engineer, and he pointed into the server room at the rack where he'd installed the first Yahoo mirror in Australia. All this was going on in a nondescript light-industrial area of Braeside in outer south-eastern Melbourne. There was still a Labtam office in that street when I worked at OzEmail, and old X terminals lying around the office. They let me take one home once and I tried to connect it up to my home network. I didn't get very far, but it was a bit of fun. These days I live past Braeside and occasionally drive down that road and reminisce, lamenting that the people working for the construction and import/export companies occupying those buildings now would have little knowledge or care for what feats of innovation and commerce that had happened there in decades past.
I once had to email Robert Elz in order to apply for a .org.au domain name for a community group I was in. He was cranky that my DNS records weren't set up right, but we got there eventually (he must have been extremely busy and it could often take a long time to get a response; someone once told me gifts of good Scotch could help move things along). I've often wondered what he thought of the way control of the .au tld was given to Melbourne IT, and privatised in a way that enriched the University and also established clients of their IPO underwriters, JB Were. It really didn't seem much in the spirit of the early internet, of which he was such a champion.
Sometimes I think it would be fun to do a bunch of interviews with the people making everything happen back then and make a podcast or video series about it. It was such an exciting time and I feel lucky to have been there when it was just taking off. I'd love to help document it for posterity. (If anybody reading this happens to know of anyone who was at Labtam in the early 90s I'd love an intro.)
[1] https://techmonitor.ai/technology/sun_endorses_labtams_x_ter...
[2] https://www.afr.com/politics/labtam-receivership-after-slow-...