Category: Uncategorized
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Erasing my career, one newsroom at a time
I’ve started to wonder if someone is quietly erasing my working life.It began with my first workplace, The Examiner in Launceston.For more than 160 years, it sat in the same building in Paterson Street — a place so tied to the paper it might as well have been part of the masthead. Then it moved. Just…
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Of bludgers, grudges and falling walls
My most vivid memory of starting out at The Examiner newspaper in Launceston is not my first byline, nor even my first mistake. It’s a wall. It came down without warning during a newsroom refurbishment in the late 1970s. Not a metaphorical wall — a real one. A temporary partition collapsed on to the chief-of-staff’s desk. The…
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The man with no ears and the man with no fears
I never met Mark “Chopper” Read, but I have sat on his barstool. It was at the Royal Oak in Launceston in the late 1970s when I was 18 or 19. I was pleased because I had found myself a prime position at the bar. Then someone burst my bubble. “You can’t sit there, mate…
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My life story recycled by an op shop
Here’s another old column from Son, give me back my trousers. In my defence, I’m busy writing my next novel. I KNEW MY old neckties would come in handy one day. My eight-year-old son came home from his school holiday program last week and asked me if I had one or two to spare. Apparently,…
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The Burpers, The Farters and The Punk
The punk with the green mohawk and a safety pin through his nose examined his bloodied knuckles, then started sobbing. He had just smashed the thick window beside him on a London Tube in 1980. Broken glass was everywhere. Over his leather jacket. Over the seat. Over the floor. And I was the only witness…
