Fun question for people who read Australian YA fiction

Name an Australian YA novel whose protagonist attends a state school.

I put this out there on Twitter this morning. So far, the suggestions include:

- Tomorrow When The War Began and sequels by John Marsden (apparently I'm not allowed to exclude books just because I hated them and didn't finish them)
- Mandragora by David McRobbie (I think -- my copy is missing, and it's out of print. THIS IS SACRILEGE, BY THE WAY.)
- Prices by David McRobbie
- All the Sea Between by Sally Odgers (possibly)
- Loving Richard Feynman by Penny Tangey (possibly)
- Most of Ruth Park's YA
- Likewise Robin Klein
- Thunderwith by Libby Hathorn
-

Pls contribute more! Especially ones written after 2000, since there is only one on this list, and it is a maybe. Bonus points if the book (a) has a protagonist who attends a state school; (b) was published in this century; (c) is set in any state that's not Victoria or New South Wales.

(I think a lot of David McRobbie's books are set in South Australia, the exception to the rule.)

Here is the train of thought that led to this question:

I was sitting on the tram this morning, glowering at the high school students with bags and feet all over the seats. (Kids today, etc.) A bunch, aged maybe 15ish, were reading identical copies of Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta.

This reminded me of an incident about which I'm still JUSTIFIABLY BITTER, in which my 12th grade English class (the supposed advanced class) were assigned Looking for Alibrandi by the same author. It's a coming of age story which does absolutely nothing new or remarkable, but has considerable charm despite the tense changes and POV problems.

I would have been about 13 or 14 when I first read it. For a class of 17 year olds, it was a really unchallenging and inappropriate choice. (It was apparently chosen because it was RELEVANT and TRENDY. Which, if that's what you're going for? Maybe you shouldn't choose the novel where a nun freaks out because one of her students is vogueing in public.)

From there I got to thinking about how weird the portrayal of the state school system is in that book (state school students are DANGEROUS and POSSIBLY VIOLENT, but also RUGGED and GENUINE), and that reminded me of On the Jellicoe Road by the same author is quite a good book, only it's set around this 16-year-old territory war between groups of rival teenagers, with kidnappings and arsons, and every time I read it, I struggle to suspend my disbelief. I mean, even in New South Wales, that ends in outraged town meetings, police interventions, juvenile courts and SHOCKING EXPOSES in the Fairfax press.

From there I got to thinking how I had never actually had an assigned novel in high school whose protagonists attended a state school in Australia. Granted, a lot of our class novels were American, but it seemed like every title I tried to think of, as I racked my brains for novels set in and around the public school system, was either concentrated on a private school, or was aimed at younger readers.

So now we're coming up with titles, to see if this is an actual thing, or just faulty memory coupled with the fact that so far, everyone who has answered was a teenager in the late '90s, and thus isn't necessarily up on the finer points of YA lit (that doesn't involve vampires).

(If this ends with someone writing a novel about vampires attending a Queensland state high school, I will award some kind of prize.)

Additions to the list

- Deadly, Unna and its sequel by Philip Gwynne