Australian Highschool Graduate. What else can I do?

I just graduated from highschool (I am still dressed from the event) with numerous awards and certificates (Cert III in Media and a Certificate III in Information and Digital Media Technology) but while I was there I was speaking to one of the parents who mentioned he works as a system architect and we started talking.

After I mentioned that I want to do web development full time for the next six months before transitioning to part time when university starts in six months (I will be studying a double degree of Engineering and Computer Science) he started to complain about how it is impossible to get a job (I clarified if this was inclusive of internships and he said yes) in any sort of software development role until your third or fourth year and that I should focus my efforts on getting a job at Mc Donalds or similar until then.

Now I know that my public github is a little sparse, however this is due largely to almost all my work for the past 9 months or so has been for freelance clients and I cannot display the source for it publicly. So my question is ultimately I do not know what else I can do to improve my odds of getting a job or internship. I have a portfolio which I won't link here but if you PM I will send it to you, I have a github but I could possibly try and get some more content up on it and I have a bunch of awards and certificates which with the exception of maybe one of the awards I doubt will be any help in getting a job.