Bruce Mitchell
About Bruce Mitchell:Bruce Mitchell had been an unhappy Vice-Principal in a primary school in Victoria when he submitted a simple project to Jacaranda Software for possible publication. Roseanne Gare liked it and they started corresponding. When Gare resigned from Jacaranda, she suggested Mitchell as a possible replacement. He had a preliminary interview with David Smith in Melbourne, before meeting Jacaranda’s management. “I don’t know what they saw in me but by the start of 1985 my family was living in Brisbane and I was in heaven.”
Jacaranda decided to close down its software division in the early 1990s. Knowing that there was a market for the software they had been developing, colleagues David Smith, Steve Luckett, and Mitchell decided to buy it, which they did: “rights, stock and even the computers were dropped in our laps for a risible amount by a very sympathetic financial director”. Greygum Software was Jacaranda Software’s reincarnation, which Mitchell worked on until his ‘retirement’ in 1998. The three have continued to collaborate on projects, most recently on literacy packages for adults.
Other games developed:
Dinosaur Discovery, Wordsmith, Cave Surveyor, Wordswork, Goldfields, The Tycoon Itch, Transformations, Vote 1, Bush Rescue, Vegetable Patch, Terra Australis: Voyages of trade and discovery , Cardsharp, Kraken: A deep-sea quest , Crossing the Mountains, Jacaranda Maths 10 Software, Maths Bingo, Clockwise: Time activities for the whole primary school, Desert Quest.
