“ I was born in Twickenham, England which is on the Thames. My parents were hippies in the 60’s. Dad was right in the hip scene, he flatted with Eric Clapton and knew all the bands in London. He was a bit of a dude and everyone loved him. He did art school and in February 1975 when I was 4 we migrated to Australia and my brother Duncan was about 1 year old.
We arrived as 10 pound poms and Dad got a job straight away as an art teacher at one of the roughest schools on the South Coast, Berkeley High. It was sort of like Puberty Blues, that kind of vibe. Dad was very handsome and charismatic. He had the gift of the gab so he could win people over. We rented farm houses at Berry, Kiama and Jambaroo was the longest stint. It was so beautiful coming from London to that. I had a great childhood being a feral, wild, bush kid exploring nature.
At the time there wasn’t an art gallery in Wollongong, now there is the Wollongong City Art Gallery which is one of the more well known regional galleries in the country. That was built while we were in Jambaroo and they advertised for a Director. Dad who was pretty much fresh out of art college in London and had been teaching in a high school was just so gutsy and applied for the position and got it. He worked in that position for a few years.
When I was 10 years and my brother was 7 my mother decided to leave the family and that devastated Dad. None of us saw it coming as we never heard them fight, it came out of left field. I went from being a free kid in the bush to holding the weight of my dad’s grief and having all this responsibility and life changed instantly.
Dad had another meteoric rise in his career and went for the position of Assistant Director of the West Australian Art Gallery and got it. We packed up our lives into a 2 1/2 ton truck and the 3 of us drove across the Nullarbor to Perth. It was a wild adventure getting there with the Duncan and I strapped in one seat belt. We arrived in Perth and the gallery had a house for us, a pretty daggy suburban house but across the road from the school which was good.
Dad worked long hours so Duncan and I pretty much free ranged through the week and then he’d take us on great adventures on the weekends. Duncan and I would go down to the corner shop and get a bag of mixed lollies for 10c and come away with a bag as big as your fist. We had this classic green Kingswood with the gold stripe down the side and he would take us into the desert in that thing, no 4 wheel drive. I’m really good at getting cars out of the bog, I learnt when I was 12.
There were girlfriends who came and went in Dad’s life until he met the love of his life, Anne, who is my step-mum. Anne also had a son Rob who I’m very close to. Rob was an awkward kid when he was young and I know he would’t mind me saying that. When he a baby in utero there were lots of issues and his teeth didn’t develop so he had these false silver teeth initially and he looked like moonraker. He’s actually this really handsome, gorgeous, cool dude in Melbourne now. He’s a DJ with a record store. I took him under my wing when he was little.
We ended up moving with Anne into a beautiful old timber and sandstone house with gardens and we stayed there for a couple of years until Dad had the next rise in his career where he became the Director of Curatorial Services of the Art Gallery of NSW. My brother and I were put on the India Pacific train to Sydney and we went and stayed with Mum for a little bit until Dad and Anne packed up.
I went to Randwick girls High while I waited to get into Fort St High which is a selective school. Anne came into my life at a critical time in my life. Just before my first period, she was amazing and she stepped into that role. Apparently I gave her a really hard time when we were first together which I don’t remember. She was so open about all that stuff. They bought a house in Balmain so I spent most of my teens living there which was the best years to live there. It was so good in the 80s. There was music every night of the week. It was grungy and edgy. I loved it. You didn’t walk around Erskineville at night back then as it was skin head territory.
My Dad and I started not getting on when I was 15 and we clashed big time. He’s not a fighter but he is a patriach and I was raised by Anne who is a feminist to a point. One night there was one big fight. It was so big that a couple of light bulbs blew. It was so weird, we were screaming at each other and a couple of light bulbs went boom boom. Dad picked up the phone, rang Mum and said, Your turn! I had to move out and I hadn’t lived with Mum for 5 years. She lived on Bourke St in Darlinghurst just down from Taylor Square so I was like…Yeah… I wanna live with Mum (laughs).
I lived the last 3 years of my teens in Darlinghurst and in those 3 years my life changed dramatically. I got heavily involved in the LGBT scene, half of my friends were drag queens and the other half were heroin junkie goths. My life was very colourful. Not many of the people I knew then are still alive. Most have passed either from AIDS or overdoses.
When I was still in high school I had the opportunity to go to Bundagen, the community near Coffs. My Stepbrother Rob’s father lived there in a bus and Anne wanted him to spend some time to get to know his father. He was 7 and needed someone to go with him. I was 15 at the time so they put us on a train to Repton and I spent time at Bundagen. I’d had a really awful time in high school. It was damaging for me, nasty stuff with lot’s of psychological bullying so when I went to Bundagen I met a lot of like minded people who were a bit older than me. During school hols I didn’t want to stay in Balmain so I would hitch all the way to Bundagen. Sometimes I’d get the train and sit in the back carriage where everyone had surfboards and guitars, smoking joints and it was the party carriage all the way up the coast.
I finished my HSC and I did pretty poorly because I was hanging out in party scene. I passed but could have done much better. My best friend was a junkie and I was hanging with junkies all the time. I loved my friends but I wasn’t interested and nobody ever pushed me either. They could see that wasn’t my vibe. I used to smoke pot but that was it. I hate needles. I did try smoking it once just to see what the hype was about and proceeded to vomit for 20 minutes and went Yeah! Nah!!
I’d been raised listening to Dad’s travel stories. He’d hitched around the world as soon as he finished school and it was inspiring. The last few years of school I worked after school in a printing factory where my Mum worked. It was at the end of Everleigh St in Redfern. I’d catch the train from Petersham to Redfern, walk down Everleigh St which was hectic. I did that every day for 3 years and saved every cent. I got to know all the mob in Everleigh St and one of the Elders would meet me at the station and walk me down the street to make sure I was ok. Through him I got to know everyone. I got to see the beauty of Everleigh St.
I had saved enough to head off overseas and my grandparents bought me a ticket as a surprise to fly to England. I visited all my family around England. I hitched all around Italy, Germany, Austria and most of Europe. I got a job in a cocktail bar in Venice and learnt how to be a mixologist. After a year I ran out of money so had to get back to Rome and I didn’t have enough for a train fare. Long story short I met a guy who was in a circus troupe so he said, just come and do some support acts with us (laughs). I just held props and earned enough for my train fare. My ticket was return so I got back to Australia and went to secretarial college. I do have regrets that I didn’t pursue the degree I would have liked. I wanted to do a degree in Anthropology and then Primate Ethology but life got in the way sadly.
When I got back from overseas, I did some exploring of the Eastern states here and went back to my parents house who had left my bedroom as is with a little old B&W TV. There was a program called Blackout which was an Indigenous affairs program. There was an elder called Peter Costello. He was Peter Costello before the other Peter Costello and he was in his 80s. He was in Cape York and taking white people into the bush teaching about bush food, bush medicine and the connection to country. I was transfixed by him and he had these piercing blue eyes and at the end of the story he was looking straight into the camera and it felt to me in my 19 year old self that he was saying…Come. I thought right I’m heading to Hopevale. I told my parents I was hitching up to Hope Vale. I would get the lifts with truckies who I got to know. There was a truckie in Brisbane called Big Daddy Macca and he would tell me to tell all the truckies to say I was his granddaughter and I was always safe. I got to Cairns and overheard a bunch of Indigenous guys talking about the Aboriginal Lands Council and I told them I was looking for Peter Costello. One of the guys Frankie said, that’s my uncle. He said, he’s down here at the moment so I get in the car with 8 Murri guys and we head off. Frankie took me to his family home in Yorkies knob and this old bloke comes out onto the verandah and he says…You took your time. So weird. I ended up spending 6 weeks out in the bush with him. We stayed in touch until the end and it was so amazing. I lived in far north QLD for 3 years in another shack in the rainforest. I was 21 when I left there and I came away a very different person.“
