“I was born in Melbourne which is where Mum is from. My parents were a bit non- conventional and kind of vagabonds and they travelled up and down the coast a lot. My mum was determined to find just the right climate and she ended up staying in Sydney. My dad being the airhead artist that he is thought that she’d left him. So they drifted apart because nothing was established. Apparently you don’t communicate directly in the 60s or 70s. Dad had my brother and Mum had me because I was the baby. Isn’t that funny? Separated purely from being disorganised I think.
I grew up in Darlinghurst and when I was four we moved to Taylor’s Square. We had this huge warehouse and Mum’s a Dressmaker so she had a big studio overlooking Oxford St. All the bedrooms were ad hoc, lofts above stairwells and theatre drapes. It was a bit different, not your classic cul de sac upbringing. I went to Darlinghurst Primary School.
My teens were fun. I went to Glebe High School which was pretty rough and quite far away. You had to catch two buses to get there. A lot of low income families fed into that place, which I love and I never feel quite right amongst the gentry anymore. Darlinghurst was kind of wedged between the CBD, the Cross and Redfern so pretty gritty. Our house was the one all the teenagers came to because my Mum was “cool” and Darlinghurst was our playground.
I left school early. I was 15 and got out on foot asking all the cafes and restaurants if they needed staff. I just didn’t have any money at all and I was at that age where I needed an income. No-one was keeping me at school so I just drifted off. I worked in hospitality and did lots of partying. I had a pretty solid partying history. Because of the parties and knowing my close friends who would host them I would end up helping and then I realised I was actually pretty good at it. You know, the lights should be warm tone over here and why did we play Drum and Bass at 2am when it should have been such and such. I was particularly fussy about the lighting so I ended up working as a lighting person for ages. I worked in film and did a couple of super hero movies. Basically just rigging and operating lights. I realised to get any further in lighting you really needed to be quite smart and very good at Maths. I told myself I wasn’t smart my whole life. I know I am now, at least I’m wise now.
I fell into management roles in events. I ended up doing site management, production management, stage management kind of roles which is a lot of elbow grease and being able to do lots of things reasonable well and to wrangle humans as well. We would work up to 16 hour days leading up to event day. I really like it. Socially it was great because you are working with all these like minded people. I’d do repeat events each year so you go back and work with this team and you’d bond with them and then you might not see them again until the following year and it was like you were old mates.
At the end of my lighting stint I was working on Wolverine which was produced by Hugh Jackman. He’d just stroll around site and he was so sweet. He’d give a gift to all the workers and invariably would be a man’s t-shirt or jacket. I was the only woman in our particular team of 40 and he bothered to get the jacket in a woman’s shape for me which I have worn non-stop and will keep forever. He’s a really good guy.”