“I worked my arse off at a little patisserie called Black Star in Newtown with an amazing pastry chef. It was such a beautiful place to work and I worked heaps. I met someone who was doing working in the Top End and asked, How possible is it to do this drive and can I do it on my own? He offered to do it with me so I worked toward that goal.
I left Sydney and within 48 hours I was sitting in a tent in Gangan in North East Arnhem Land. I was working as a cook for a buffalo hunting company and I was a vegetarian. It was the end of the dry season so September 2011 I think. They needed a cook for the 3 or 4 weeks and then the camp would be packed up. You’d have to get out before the rains came. There was a huge crocodile living in the river called Conrad. I swear someone is going to get eaten by him one day. They fed him buffalo legs and he knew there was food all the time. It was so terrifying because the tents were set up so close to that river. It was so very hot. It was so weird to go from drinking coffee in Australia St in Newtown and then I’m in the middle of nowhere with Conrad the Croc close by (laughs).
I’ve documented that whole time but I’ve never developed the film because it was all the shooting of the bulls and then the dressing of the beast where they take the head off, boil it, you know, and I was Vegetarian at that time and I’d have to cook it. I’d be like, please don’t get a Buffalo today, even though they were destroying the wetlands and I knew they had to be culled, it was still so heavy. They were killed by gunshot but you have tourists who essentially pay thousands to go there for the experience of killing a bull and getting a trophy to take home. It’s so weird and I was really trying to understand it and I find that side sickening. There’s so many different sides to it because I have friends in the territory who kill to eat and I did start eating game meat when I was there. We were catching our own fish but I still kept wavering between it all. Factory farms and abattoirs are awful so surely if I want to eat meat this is a better way to do it. I just found it so physically hard to do it. It got me thinking about these people who came to shoot an animal for power and fun. Yes, they are doing something good for the wetlands and Buffalo are an introduced species but I couldn’t get my head around the power that you feel when you kill something and that really disturbed me.
One of the other camps near Katherine was a pig hunting one on a cattle station where pigs were a massive problem but there were also wild horses and donkeys which they used for bait and that killed me. I’d grown up with horses and they were my best friends. I thought this is so f*#!ed and so cruel. So that’s why I can’t develop the film.
I then went to Darwin, travelled to the West and down the coast. I was travelling with the person I left with but I try to forget about that. There was a very brief relationship which was very wrong. I remember saying to him, I want to be a Photographer, I want to be an Artist, and he said – That’s a f*#king joke! I remember sitting across from him in Broome and I said, You kill animals for a living and you think being a Photographer or an Artist is a joke.
I stayed in Darwin for a while and in that time I got my teacher number. I was working in Hospitality and I met a Photographer who worked for the NT News. He asked me to come in for a week which I did and I asked to stay another week for experience so I did. I got to shoot during that time and I loved the news room and the camaraderie. It was such an amazing place and I loved it. NT News was hilarious. Everyone had a sense of humour there. I got a call from Brad the picture editor and he said, This is your lucky day, one of the Photographers is going on Maternity leave. Bring in your portfolio which I didn’t yet have. I had to go and shoot one in 3 days. He flicked through it and gave me 3 months to prove myself and I worked my arse off. At the end of the 3 months he said, your work is still terrible but you’ve improved a lot. I decided at that time that I would take every photo job I was offered. I put everything into Photography. Long story short I was in. I worked with incredible Photographers that taught me everything, like Dan Hartley-Allen and guys like Michael Franchi. We were all a tight group and I worked like that for 7 years. I got to really experience the Territory which is what I was craving for. I had this incredible access because there was no other media up there. Queens of the Stone Age came and of course I could photograph them, anything, you just had access to everything that you would never get in Sydney first year in. They were hard on us to do a better job but I really needed it and I’m a better photographer because of it. You have to be open to criticism.
Darwin is such a friendly place where everyone welcomes you with open arms which was hard coming to Lismore because I thought Lismore would be like that but I found it more closed. It was a really hard decision to leave Darwin but it’s so hot and I worked outside and I had no aircon. I felt like I was living in an oven for 8 months of the year. I was so drained after 8 years and I felt like I needed a big change. Fairfax had just made their Photographers redundant and Newscorp held on but I didn’t want to hang around for that. I was feeling uninspired and I wanted to make it as a Freelancer. It was a terrifying decision.
I had a real yearning to be closer to family but didn’t want to go back to Sydney. Darwin was so far away too and I wanted a new adventure. I spent time as a kid in the Northern Rivers and I kept getting drawn back to this area so I spent a year coming here to make sure it was right. At the end of 2016 I made the decision to come here so on my birthday which is December 19, a friend messaged me asking what I was doing. He was living in Lismore and his relationship had ended. I thought he’d gone back to Sydney. We decided to catch up in the February of 2017. This was the same person I had dated in Sydney who had broken up with me and I was devastated. I had let him go and he was with someone and I was happy for him but then we were both single…it runs pretty deep for me. We met up and got back together for a long distance relationship for a while as I was still finishing up in Darwin.
The 2017 flood happened in Lismore and I was seeing the news come through in the NT which was full on. I moved here but I knew I could go back every year as I photograph The Darwin Festival but I was heartbroken to have left Darwin. When I moved here I was so excited though, A year had past and Greg and I had really started to be something. We’ve known each other for years and now we’ve had 2 kids, Emmylou and Valentine.
I put the feelers out to everyone that I was Freelancing and I got work in the PBR (professional bull riding). I’d shot for them in Darwin so I got to do the tours with them telling the behind the scenes story of the bull-riding scene. I did that for 2 years and was there till I was 8 months pregnant, all over the country. After the bub came I’d strap Emmylou on and she came with me everywhere. I really like that I can do that as a freelancer with my kids.
I love that I can make a living from it now. Greg’s a chef and I love being back in Lismore. It definitely feels like home now and we bought our house in Lismore Heights. I was here through the 2022 flood which was full on. I was 8 months pregnant with Valentine and when I knew Lismore was going under I contacted the Herald and asked if they wanted it covered. It needed to be documented. I completely underestimated how catastrophic it was. There was only 3 of us here from media sources to shoot this disaster and we felt this heavy responsibility to get these images out. I should have been resting but how can anyone rest? That was not an option. I could only take photos and I couldn’t help because I was so big but I needed to get those images out. It was so important for documentation. The SES wouldn’t risk taking me so I ended up in a dinghy with a couple of blokes. We saw this big dog swimming and they got him in the boat. When they dropped me off I found myself carrying this big dog with my cameras wrapped in plastic and it was pouring. I was so heavy with soaked clothes with a big wet dog and I was so fat and heavy, I started crying…Where was the army?
Because I had teachers that encouraged me and made me believe that I could create and make a living, I teach Year 12 Photography now at Richmond River High. I still Freelance for the SMH and other publications but I love teaching. I love teenagers, they are so beautiful at that school. I just wanted one day of regular work so I can do my other work all week and I finally get to use my Dip Ed doing something I love.”
