“I was born in Yallourn, Victoria. It was a total designer town. It was built to have a death date. It had beautiful, landscaped gardens and buildings, swimming pools, a theatre with a sealed crying room up the back to take your kids if they were crying and it had great facilities. It was purpose built but was always going to be dug up. It became Yallourn open cut mine which is Yallourn Power Station now. So where I was born doesn’t exist anymore. They’ve done studies which show that people who lose their birth place often get fascinated with objects or things to remind them.
We moved to Morwell, 10 kms away for Dad’s work when I was about 5. My little brother and I thought it was ugly after Yallourn being so beautiful. I was always an artist and I got obsessed with making tiny villages out of seed pods and things in the garden. They even had little cemeteries with little dead people, whole villages. I was probably a weird kid.
I was an extremely shy person and the way I communicated was visually, by drawing or painting. I became interested in clay through high school so studied ceramic design in Melbourne. I got into one of the best places to study ceramics in the world and did that for a year but felt too confined so I went overseas.
My Dad’s American, my great aunt was living in Boulder, Colorado and my aunt and uncle lived upstate New York, so at 20 I packed my bags and went to The States. I lived in New York mostly and then I got a job at The United Nations for the general assemblies. Our section was Administrators versus being Couriers so our pay level went up. I stayed for 2 1/2 years in New York and I worked the hours no-one else wanted, 2 – 10pm, working in the English Verbatim unit. I was working with the different language units and got to meet some really cool people and I could go out after work. So many clubs in New York and I would go out every night dancing. For a young person it was fantastic. I was offered full time work in New York to become a Computer Technician but there was a harshness to New York at that time and it didn’t feel right for me to live there. It would have been a great job but I remember being in a train with a very pregnant woman and no-one gave her their seat. That wasn’t unusual at the time but I didn’t really want to live in a place like that. I’m sure it’s changed now but there was no eye contact with people in the street either. It’s an interesting place and I did love it though.
I came back to Australia when I was 22 and got a job at La Trobe Valley regional Art Gallery which was amazing but I became restless and decided to travel around Australia. I was ready then to be somewhere nice so in 1988 I saw a brochure for Northern Rivers College (Southern Cross University) here in Lismore and I applied to get into the media course. I didn’t get in but I moved to Coleman St in Lismore and experienced my first flood just after the move. The following year I studied Visual Art and went sideways into the video section. You had to be a muso to do music video which I’m not. I sat in the classes and finally begged Michael Hannam if I could get in which I did and I opened it up to all the other students, so music video became open to all Visual Art students.
During that time I was travelling to Sydney and getting involved in community television through CAT TV. It wasn’t licensed at that time, there was no channel for them. It was so exciting because it was before the internet, just people making their own television and it was a lot of people coming together with different shows and broadcasting them. The diversity was amazing and I thought..Wow! This is the way to change the monopoly on media because at the time it was all owned and run by the big boys. I thought..I’m going to start community television in Lismore.
Everyone said I was crazy. For 5 years I worked 80 hour weeks on LINC TV which I started. I did team up with Linda Perry and the first test broadcast we had all these, mainly amazing young women, and it was so exciting. Ian Slade helped with the bus on the hill. It was a lot of work. We had over 500 volunteers. I became exhausted. LINC TV eventually went to the uni and I really wanted a job where I got paid.
I went to Sydney and got a job with Metro Screen. I’d been teaching channel free youth video workshops and ended up becoming a technician in the facilities department. The thing I forgot to tell you is there was a fight with all the community TV stations against the big sectors for access to the 6th channel so the 6th channel was a parliamentary enquiry and I was on the national committee for that. We had to put in a submission which LINC TV did. It was huge and I had to go to parliament and address the questions. Community TV won access to the 6th channel against education and sport, etc. It was big. That meant we could get full time broadcasts instead of only 6 weeks a year.
A job came up as a National Co-ordinator for Community Television. I went for it and I got it which was amazing. That was during the roll out of cable. It was an intense and interesting time. I’d go to meetings and everyone was a Lawyer except me. I got to learn a lot about digital TV too. I was one of the first people to start integrating video and projection in 1989 but being regionally based and a woman, you don’t get a lot of recognition.
I returned to Lismore and that’s when Martini nights stepped in which was the best time. The Gollan was on fire at that time. Ryan O’Sullivan organised the event and I was doing the projections. I was earning $50 a night back then but it grew and grew and Martini ended up in Byron so I was making a living out of it. That’s still how I make my money, doing projection installation with slides or moving image, VJing and working with layering of fabric. I do Tropical Fruits and festivals nationally but I still do my Arts projects often working with performers.
I moved to Brisbane and got a residency at Family nightclub. The Bickels owned Family, the Empire and Cloud-lands nightclubs. It was full-time and I loved it. It was being an artist all the time and I had full control of what I did. I then had an exhibition at QLD Centre of Photography and I was included in what I thought was a student exhibition and I’m so glad I didn’t see the flyer till the night before because it was with Judith Wright, Daniel Crooks and the whole list was Creme de La Creme and I was the newbie at the bottom. It was huge! Now the story turns.
I had access to this huge 3 level warehouse in Brisbane. I lived there and shared it with Judy Watson, a famous artist and a mentor as well. They brought in the tunnel so the warehouse was to be bulldozed and I had nowhere to live. I forgot to mention that when I first moved to Lismore we got the dodgy home-fund loan with super high interest of 17% and bought this house I’m in now in 1989. I was so broke for years but managed just. Long story short, I bought out the girl I had bought the house with and took it on. I was grateful when I had to leave the warehouse in Brisbane I could come back to my house in Lismore.
I left the exhibition and was on my way home to Lismore. I had blown up my car in Brisbane so I was in a hire car and I hit gravel. Suddenly I was skating, oversteered, flew over those metal poles in mid air and took out 3 of them, flipped over in the air and when I opened my eyes I thought I was in the oncoming lane and was going to be rammed into. I had actually ricochetted across and went through the sound barrier wall, bounced back and into it again so there was holes in it for months. The airbag didn’t go off. The ambulance appeared, they cut off my favourite dress, put me in a neck brace. I thought I was ok and was worried about getting to work the next day. I was working on a NORPA production at the time. The car was a total write off. My head was burning and they X-rayed me. I was bruised and went to work. A colleague said, you shouldn’t be here.
My behaviour had changed, I’d be walking along and fall over. This was about 4 weeks after the accident. I was sent to a counsellor who thought it was physical and sent me to North Coast Brain Injury service. I’m going to get emotional because I’d be dead without those people. They are based in Lismore and they are incredible. They said, You have a brain injury and they paid for this $2,000 test. I’ve always had a great memory and was top at school in Maths and Science. I was a bit of a geek and never had to study. I was doing memory puzzles and getting exhausted half way through. They wrote a report and it took me a long time to take that info on board about how my life had changed and how I had to live differently.”
