“ We met Trish Strange who lived in Tuntable and told her we were looking for somewhere to put our 12 foot caravan. After a while they offered us the garden house because we said we would make it a community and would offer it as a resource. It had the only bath with a wood chip heater and it had a roof (laughs). We would open it on Sundays. It was a dreadful old house but we made it nice.
It was the habit of all the kids to run in a pack and there was a flood. Bonnie was only 3 and she fell in the creek. Fortunately she’d been a swimmer since 2 because in Adelaide, in the little creek there was a smooth stone seat and I could sit her on it and the water would come over her head. She learnt to breathe with water. She pulled herself up on a rock in the flooded creek. I’ll never forget the sound of Mick Hamiltons gum boots thumping down to the creek to grab her. Soon after that she was out with all the kids and I went to the nearby house with a family of 4 children, looking for Bonnie. They were stoned and said…It’s cool! So I left. My kids had bedtime and story time and some routine. Alan and I separated while we were in Tuntable. He was a good man.
Roger Hopkins had bought a house in Sibley St, Nimbin. He built the craft gallery on that land but he didn’t want the house so he asked if I’d like to live in it for next to nothing. That house became Nimbin music house for people getting ready for gigs and eventually Roger sold me the house. In 1985 the culture of Nimbin started to alter. I had done a lot of informal journalism about the experiences we were having in Nimbin. It was all about how idyllic Nimbin was with the music and dance, the colour and charm and home made houses and simplicity. Those stories then resulted in a lot of disaffected youth from Newcastle going…you can do what you f#@king well like in Nimbin. A lot of original Nimbin hippies had come there to leave their habits in the past but when smack came to town, some of them fell backwards and a lot of new people came in. It disrupted Nimbin. There were turf wars in the street at night over speed and heroin, a lot of madness. There was a bit of madness among the original hippies which was contained so compassionately. There were only half a dozen but they were cared for gently.
My children were becoming teenagers and at that time there was no high school in Nimbin. I was with Harry at this time. We didn’t marry till 1986 but we were together. He was working full time in Lismore and I was working with a guy called Gordon Lang who set up this thing called Educational Smorgasbord and my job was to promote it for an hour a week on 2NCR FM. It was good because it brought me out into the community.
Over a period of time I worked for NRTV News which I didn’t like. It was too shallow. I also worked for 2LM as a news reader and then I got a job with ABC as a newsreader and I did some work casually as a Producer. When I started working with The Echo I was still reading the news at 5.30pm. When I left the Echo and travelled overseas I gave the job to the perfect person, Matthew Eaton. Matthew is now running an ABC studio in Brisbane. He was lovely.
In 1988, 2 years after I moved to Lismore, a film called Blowpipes and Bulldozers came out, made by Paul Tate and Jenny Kendall in Borneo. It focused on a character called Bruno Manser who’d been a shepherd in Switzerland and decided to go to a warmer climate in Borneo to do some caving. While caving he came in contact with some of the tribal people in Sarawak. He lived with them for 7 years drawing attention to the plight of these people whose homes and jungle were being destroyed by loggers.
Jenny and Paul made this magnificent film about Bruno. 18 months after it was released I couldn’t get it out of my mind so I decided to go over there and lend a hand. Part of that was writing about what was happening for a much wider market. I got things published in the States and the UK. I came back and heard Bruno was getting out of Sarawak. He’s been shot at and had to escape many times because he was Persona non grata. He was going to Japan to meet with a woman called Beth who wanted to help and he had a conference booked in Honolulu. I negotiated with Beth that he would come to Australia in between and I would take him on a speaking tour to all the major capital cities, which happened. This is a man that had spent 7 years wearing a lap-lap in the jungle. I was his assistant.
We met David Suzuki in Sydney and he wanted to take Bruno to Canada after the conference. He wanted to interview him for a program called The Nature of Things. Suzuki took us to this festival day in Hollywood. It was insane. We saw this helicopter come down and this tiny little man comes running onto the stage and onto a rostrum so he could reach the microphone and it’s Tom Cruise welcoming everyone and raving on about the environmental crisis. He said, ‘I’m staying here with you and we are going to fight this battle, I’m not going anywhere.’ He jumped off the stage, back into the helicopter and flew away (laughs). Suzuki said, Ok Jennie you need to work the room and introduce Bruno to people. I’d never done anything like that and then I saw Olivia Newton John and I could say we’re neighbours. She was so beautiful. The next night we were invited to dinner at her place. It was such a delightful night.
I came home from that adventure and my friend Graham Askey called and came over with Nicholas Shand and David Lovejoy who were the Editors and Publishers of the Byron Shire Echo. They said, We want to start a sister paper in Lismore and Graeme reckons you’d be up for being the founding Editor of it. I said…Would I what! So we did it. Without Graham it wouldn’t have happened. That was the highlight for me, having the opportunity to do this. We had the best team. I advertised for an advertising sales person and Gwen Trimble called and I said, Why would I give you this job? She said, Because I give great phone. She was sensational. Trish Strange was our office manager and Jacqueline Wagner was our Photographer. She’d been a Nurse and was doing weddings and calendars and she had a dark room. She’d never done news but from the first week she was a genius. We are still collaborating years later. Alex Clarke with his chest length dreadlocks at the time was our Graphic Artist. I loved it so much. My kids were older and it was a wonderful time.
On a personal level I went through a bad bout of depression and I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t go to work. It was really bad and I had to give it all up. Eventually I went on the casual list at The Northern Star where I’d worked before. I loved it there and it was a great newspaper. I ended up getting a bit of casual work back at The Echo for a while too. I retired 12 years ago at 64. I got TB in 2020. When everyone else had Covid I got TB which I caught in Borneo. 2 years ago it became active after carrying it for over 30 years. I’m all clear now.
All the way through I’ve always loved music. In fact one of the best jobs I had in England was at a very famous folk club in Soho called Les Cousins. It was an underground dive which went from Friday nights and all night Saturday. I had the only job in the place serving dreadful instant coffee and tea and sandwiches. I loved it so much. All the best musos played there, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, John Martyn, loads of people we know well now. I was looked after there. I had a massive armchair and I had this dog Natasha who would cuddle up to me. That was the beginning of my commitment to music and we still have house concerts in our home which has run alongside everything else.
My daughter Bonnie lives next door which is so lovely and I have my beautiful granddaughter Chloe who is now 25. I love my house, I have my lovely dogs Dolly and Emmylou and I really love Lismore.”
