‘The atmosphere was electric and the team was probably the best I’ve worked with’
There were only six or seven of us at The News, all news-hounds. The atmosphere was electric and the team was probably the best I’ve worked with in terms of competitiveness and hunger for success. We worked till midnight and wanted to be the best. I learned about the equipment, the pressure, the darkroom and how a newspaper worked – which in those days involved a lot of time in the pub. That was where you got your stories.
Though I continued at The News for several more productive months, my career began to get a little bumpy. Ted Brown took over as editor and he hated me. We just didn’t gel. He would scream at me and I would just tell him to fuck off. He fired me a couple of times, but couldn’t really get rid of me. Tony Aitken, the senior photographer and my immediate boss, hated me too. Everyone else around the office loved me because I was such a character.
In 1987 I won third prize in the cadet division of the Australian Press Awards with an image captioned ‘Polly Wants a Snapper’ – a shot of a cockatoo and a fish. Success of this kind was unheard of for a photographer at a biweekly regional paper. Clearly it was time to move on, and finally a vacancy came up at the Geelong Advertiser. I was twenty years old. The editor at the time, Graham Vincent, had had his eye on my work, and remembers bringing me on board. I was a little rough around the edges when I arrived, but Graham saw my total commitment.
I trod on a few toes, certainly, but I think Graham admired my flair. He knows that I took some criticism in the early days about my attitude and that it hurt me, but that I dealt with it. He loved my outrageous behaviour. He also realised that underneath all that bravado and bullshit was a fairly complex character. He always knew that I thought about things a lot more than some people gave me credit for. He loved that he could sit at a news conference at five o’clock in the afternoon, see that he had nothing for the next day’s front page and call me. I would ask what he wanted, he would reply that he didn’t know and, invariably, I would come back with a front-page image. I always produced the goods and wasn’t worried about what I had to do to get the splash.
My first major scoop was a shot of the Queen, a brilliant image that Graham Vincent ran across the whole front page of The Addy – something that had never been done before. Leaving the scrum of the official photocall behind, I managed to hide myself in the middle of a flock of sheep at a shearing demonstration during the Bicentennial celebrations and popped up and nailed a fantastic picture of Queen Elizabeth. She was throwing her head back and laughing at a dog wearing a watch. Pretty fucking surreal all round! The boy from the one-horse town had scooped the whole royal rat pack. Although I was covered in sheep shit I was delighted, and so was the paper. The shot is known as ‘My Queen of Hearts’. It relied on my patience and tenacity, and my desire to be the only person in the right place. Graham thought it was a sensational photograph and says that like all good photographers, I see things differently. I wasn’t afraid of anything – be it royal protocol or a perilous environment.
Though I had many close friends on the paper, my attitude would have annoyed some of the staff. Ondrej says that my arrogance really started to show at The Addy. He remembers me often striding into the office, flinging down some prints and announcing, ‘That’s it – I’ve got the front page!’ Those on the team who knew and understood me liked me; the ones who didn’t thought I was a real smartarse, which was no biggy; I knew I was a smartarse!
The Addy was fantastic and slowly I moved up the grades. I was known as ‘Scoop’. I was also big into the nightclub scene in Geelong at that time. One day I went to the Golf View Hotel (the first hotel in the area to have a revolving dance floor!) to do an advertorial and happened to meet the owner, George Ramia. We hit it off instantly, both being Leos. Then I started DJing for him with George Toppa. I also helped George with the night club renovation and began living at the hotel. This was at the risk of offending my parents who were anti drink and anti nightclub. Whenever my father was given booze for Christmas, he poured it down the sink. He had such disdain for alcohol. My mother’s parents had battled alcoholism, so she couldn’t bear the stuff either.
It was girls, beach, tinny, DJ, picture, and giddy up! In many ways I was at the top of the social ladder in Geelong. My connections with the newspapers, radio and nightclub gave me some serious cachet, and I was having fun. I could have had a wonderful life and a very good career there, but I had bigger ambitions. I talked to two buddies, George Ramia and Don ‘Mad Dog’ Dwyer from the local radio station. They said, ‘What more have you got to do here? Everyone knows you.’ Though he was a very well-known figure in Geelong, Mad Dog had cut his teeth in radio with the BBC in London and when my situation started to change he was a real driving force in encouraging me to break out of my comfort zone and follow my dream. Graham Vincent encouraged me, too.
I had several reasons for wanting to leave. The main one was that I had always been desperate to make it on Fleet Street. That was where the world’s biggest-selling newspapers were and it’s where I wanted to work. I’d also lost my driver’s licence for drink driving after one night at The Addy’s Christmas party. Working in Geelong was going to be hard without a car. Fleet Street had always been a magical kingdom in my mind; the ultimate dream and test was to make it there. It wasn’t just the big league – it was the World Cup final.
While I wasn’t flush, it didn’t take me long to get the money together. None of my jobs paid big money, but I had plenty of them. The night I left The Addy, I took a big cheque with me – my final payout was around $1400. One hour later I was on the end of a serious beating at a card game and was left with about $500 – my total budget for a new life. However, I was armed with a determination to take on and beat the world’s best: ‘If you can dream it, you can do it.’
I left in September. The good weather was coming to Geelong and I was moving to England for the winter. I was going to have to get used to a rather different climate! It was 1988 and I was twenty-two.
I couldn’t help looking back as the plane thundered on and I don’t mind admitting that I cried as I flew out over the northern coast of Australia. There’s an emotional bond that holds you to your country, and I was testing it.
The plane seemed to crawl its way to Los Angeles. Immediately upon arrival, I collected my gear and went from LAX to a horrible hotel in Orange County. I was on a package deal and had no choice; we were bussed in like prisoners. I was only in LA for three days and had to make sure I used my time wisely. I was on a mission.
I had come to LA to go to the legendary Samy’s Camera, the cheapest camera shop in the world, where I knew I could pick up some really good second-hand equipment. I was there browsing for a whole day, like a kid in a candy store, wishing I was rich but knowing I would have to choose well as my budget wasn’t going to stretch far. Despite my financial restrictions, I was able to get some great stuff – a photographer’s jacket, lenses and a beaten-up Nikon FM2 body, and a Quantum Turbo battery-flash. All this would get me through my first month in the UK. Once I had bought as much camera equipment as I could, I decided to visit Disneyland. I hated it – thought it was crap. London was calling and I was more than ready to leave La-la Land behind.
My plane flew into Gatwick and I cleared