Writing

This is the HQ of my publicity service and samples of journalism and other writing.

I provide a varied service, from simple writing of bios and press releases to intensive ongoing promotional and marketing campaigns. I have the considerable experience of 20 years as a journalist, and about the same amount of time as an internationally touring musician, underwriting this business. As well, in 2010 I completed a degree of Honours in Media at SCU, Lismore.

Please peruse the writings published here in the Blog, which include freelance journalism jobs and general meanderings.

BIO

Working backwards, currently working as a freelance journalist in Sydney. Recent publications include The Saturday Paper, Sun Herald, SMH Arts and the Womens Weekly as well as the NoFibs website and Aidan Ricketts’ Activists Handbook. For two hectic months in 2015 I was Press officer for Rohan Boehm, Independent Candidate for Barwon NSW in the state elections.

The last few years have been flat out with gigs and travel, going back further I did nine months as A&E editor of the Norther Rivers Echo in Lismore. Prior to that I was studying Honours in Media at Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW. More precisely, researching an exegesis on digital niche marketing for independent bands – to wit, mine, the Re-mains. Have had the dubious privilege of managing and fronting that band for fourteen years.

Meanwhile I was writing publicity profiles for various acts. Clients include, James Cruikshank (Cruel Sea), Leah Flanagan, Liz Stringer, Marshall and the Fro, Spikey and Friends, The Tendons, The Dennis Boys, Christian Pyle, Ghost Mountain, Kathryn Hartnett, The Sideshow Brides, Karen Hanna, and Dallas Frasca, Reuben Barkly (JamSpeak app), Glory B (Bryson Mulholland), Kathryn Jones and Hannah Gillespie. The years dating back to 2000, when the first Re-mains lineup crystallised in Nimbin, is a fog of endless gigging and travel across Australia and Canada.

Prior to that, worked out of the UK for several years as freelance writer for TNT and SX Travel magazines, also doing stints as Deputy Ed, SX, Travel Ed, Sports Ed, News Ed, staff writer etc.

Worked as Editor and Arts Editor for the Sydney Hub somewhere in the welter of those years. Before that, environmental activist with the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) and Big Scrub Environment Centre.

Previously, student in Canberra and Wagga Wagga, musician of sorts in various bands around the country. Also, in various stints and incarnations, Youth Worker, landscaper, jackaroo, roustabout, prawn-trawler deckhand, hitch-hiker, poet etcetera.

 

DECIDED TO INCLUDE SOME POETRY HERE

HEREWITH – OUTBACK

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OUTBACK

You never reach the Outback, some say it don’t exist

There’s always some place further west that’s more Outback than this

Coasties claim it starts at Bourke, they’ve been there in their travels

But the closer they approach it the more their theme unravels

It’s a hundred miles further on, more probably a thousand

Where shadows whisper ever long, where big miners are browsing

Remoteness is the yardstick, but that distinction can be hard

What’s one person’s Outback can be another one’s back yard

‘Cos people live in deserts, in dugouts underground,

You can find ‘em in old humpies, not making any sound

Outback might mean something very different to such folk

They’re more often in than out and they might not see the joke

You can reckon it at Broken Hill, once you’ve made it past Cobar

But Broken Hill’s not Alice Springs, if you ever get that far

And you make it to the centre, to the Pitjantjatjara lands

People call it desert but the Hunter Valley’s not so grand

When you’re in spinifex country you can feel you’re resurrected

Never felt closer to the source, spontaneously genuflected

But that’s not the full story, there’s still Western lands ahead

Where explorers looking outback usually wound up dead

If you make it all the way out west, to the coast where dwell strange beasts

Then you’ve come full circle and the Outback’s all gone east

Maybe you’ll look northwards, up to the Kimberley

They’ll tell you in Marble Bar to go find the Inland Sea

Broome’s as distant as the moon, but distance ain’t the issue

By now you’re sick of driving and you’re reaching for the tissues

So you settle on someplace that feels Outback to you

Some mysterious location that seems remote and true

That might just hold the mystery, the question and the answer

Maybe the key to heaven and the cure for cancer

But Outback’s not a message, a destination or a cure,

It’s not an orchestral theme or indeed an overture

It’s a state of mind, a memory, a figment of your schemes

A place to put the Outback architecture of your dreamsof 2 2

And no-one’s better qualified to go Outback than you

You’re the one whose going Outback is the thing you have to do

So if you get out back of Broken Hill, and that’s a job of work

Now you’ll find that Sydney’s back the other side of Bourke

And Sydney’s now the Outback and so is all the coast

You can see where it gets tricky, cos the Outback’s just a ghost

The Vanilla Frontier

Thank god for the soldiers defending the vanilla frontier
That protect our sacred values and keep our consciences clear
That are entrusted with our secrets and know what’s for the best
And how to keep the Others in their furry little nests

For the frontier is endangered, it’s a vulnerable place
There are bleeding hearts out there who just can’t hack the pace
Who say we are entitled, we’re racist and uptight
Who don’t understand the burden of the people that are white

These ingrates and these traitors, so un-Australian,
So dead against Gallipoli, so immune to the Somme,
So fixated on a history they say is irrelevant,
So hopelessly devoted to the loser’s lost laments

We’ve proven our proud birth-right, our sporting pedigree
We hunted them but not enough, unfortunately
Still they come in marches, in airplanes and in boats
Pestering our brave leaders with logic and with votes

Thank god for the vanilla frontier, it keeps the world at bay,
It protects us from the brownies, the moozies and the gay
We’ll keep them from our suburbs if we hold out long enough
It didn’t work out for the Commies, they just weren’t the right stuff

If we keep the faith it’ll keep us safe and justice will prevail
All the imams and the wimmins will not hide behind those veils
And the lifestyle blacks in trakky daks will pay for their mistakes
Will have to show good reason why they take up such real estate

Will have to buckle down to our time honoured ways
That brought them into the light of Christian user pays
They’ll be forced to take their medicine, to swallow back their tears
That’s the price of transgressing the Vanilla Frontier



THE CIRCUS ON PURPOSE
What do you do with the circus on purpose?
A ballet of puppets and cannon and horns
Where the jugglers choreograph to divert us
The audience wishing they’d never been born
When the big tops erected and the pledges neglected 
Festivals cancelled ‘cos of the storm 
The circus on purpose becomes more perverted 
And the newsreaders speak of what we were warned

For the goings on in the circus on purpose 
Are not for our benefit or edification
You’d be forgiven for looking on totally mirthless
And reaching for expensive medication
It’s a celebration of the inane and the surplus 
designed to convince you resistance is worthless
to distract and redact and deduct from your balance
To replace tolerance with envy and malice
To divide and deprive you of all the good stuff
To keep you down if you’re doing it tough

It’s a long weary night in the circus on purpose 
Where the ringmaster whips the big cats for a laugh
Where town planners turn into plumbers and sherpas 
They’ve seen the grand plan and the app and the graph
You’d best get provisions and do long division
For the elephant’s dancing with precision and grace
And nobody cares for your facts and opinions
While the acrobat’s picking off pie from his face

Now here’s a question for the clowns of the circus
Is it simply about all your envy and malice?
Or do you have any clarity, meaning or purpose
To make us want us to drink from your poison chalice?

Let’s pull back the curtains on the circus on purpose
This endless debate about immigrant hate
Making a mockery of all the hard workers
And free speech in this, our nanny state
A celebration of spivs and grifters and shirkers
Who pretend they’re doing it for our own good
About the intangibles designated as worthless
And setting things right in the neighbourhood

They appointed a golf playing buffoon as chief shirker
A frontman to profit from chaos and death
A man who hates puppies and flowers and burquas
They’re blowing up everything at his behest
He only eats fish cakes with soft buns and gherkins
But he’s making a billion with every foul breath
And despises those who wear thobes and turbans
And is getting the recalcitrants all hooked on meth
But only if those people are not in the room
If they’re close by he’ll giggle and shuffle and croon
And remind them of something he made up that morning
That never quite happened, but might be a warning

‘Cos part of the point of the circus on purpose
This parade of imposters talking manure
Is making things different to what’s on the surface
Designed to divert and distract and allure
There’s a million cameras and alarms to alert us
But they’re only setting us up to desert us
To every fake danger devised by the shirtless
And that includes those with different opinions
Who should be content with their status as minions
And second grade citizens banished to work
in mines or in kitchens without any perks
And if they get ideas above their station
They should be subject to defenestration
And if they show too much joy and elation
Then just read them the bible, about the Creation

When the clowns in the Circus are brought to bear
And the ringmaster is finally strapped into the chair
They’ll look at each other and chuckle and wonder
How anyone could ever make such a blunder
Then they’ll turn around and do it all again
With someone less bumbling, who’s on vitamins
And has a somewhat more functional diet
And doesn’t look at everything wanting to buy it
Who has a more agreeable bone in his body
And whose ethics and morals are not quite as shoddy
Who believes in something apart from himself
Doesn’t get his opinions from the porno shop shelf
Who might be persuaded to do something about
The poor and downtrodden and the bullying louts
Though in honesty that’s just a job description
Of the point of the Circus, oh what a prediction.