Cranebrook, New South Wales -1965
Looking out into the rural darkness from my childhood home, the spoken word of shortwave radio broadcasts entranced me. So much so that years later, on the day of Elvis Presley’s death, I found myself visiting a radio station, leaving behind the physical work of a steel industry apprenticeship.
My first entertainment industry job, at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, saw me don a sporty tracksuit to promote a snack food. Eight hours a day, running up and back with a football: work that out! From there I was onto bigger things – 11 years in radio doing on-air shifts and voiceovers. Firstly a few years at 2WL Wollongong, which included this odd beauty: promoting half court tennis, dressed in a kangaroo suit, playing John Alexander. It didn’t help that it was 38°! So much for leaving behind physical work!
Then seven years at FM radio in Brisbane: more on-air and voiceovers, but now I got to interview rock stars, produce music specials, regularly host simulcasts on television, and present a TV music video show. Malfunctions on-air require swift and improvised solutions: Picture this – live interview, Elvis Costello, mic on, PFFFT! Nothing! Elvis looked from the panoramic view of the studio. I beckoned and he said, “Yeah, I’ll come over there. Interview me sitting on your lap. That’ll work.” And it did. Many other, less fraught, opportunities arose to MC concerts, from pubs to major events, featuring artists as wide ranging as Billy Connolly and Elton John. A side interest of photographing local bands led me to produce the inner sleeve for FM104’s Homegrown Vol 2 album.
The highlight of the next 16 years at Brisbane’s Channel Seven as a writer and station voice was to research and produce Save the Planet, Australia’s longest running environmental campaign. Other high points included the role of writer/producer of an innovative campaign for St Vincent de Paul and creating the lyrics for Channel Seven’s The Great South East.
Freelancing since 2003, ten years in Brisbane then ten in Sydney, my desire to learn more of the insides of character development and storytelling inspired me to study acting, landing roles in numerous short films as well as performing support roles in a 2011 adventure feature film and later in a crime thriller. Freelance voiceover work continued as I collaborated on or instigated various projects in film and television development, the arts and writing: screenwriting, script assessment, creative consultant, actor, artwork designer. As an artist I created and collaborated on several designs for installations and fabricated pieces for the highly regarded Viva Frida Exhibition and Festival at Brisbane Powerhouse.
South-West Cork in Ireland was the ideal place to be stranded in 2020 for a three-month COVID lockdown, especially as the guest of a friend. It was inspirational, as proved on two previous trips. I’d started a novel over ten years before and so in the mornings I continued writing, then outside in the afternoons brandished paint rollers and heaved timber and stone – perfect thinking time for solving storytelling problems while keeping fit, earning my keep laying a stone path in a hamlet. If you don’t go out and do physical work you go mad.
The next trip to Ireland in 2022, a three-month-middle-finger-to-the-2021-travel-restrictions, saw the novel ready for final editing, more renovations, and the next book was started...