Working on big issues

I’d reconciled myself to the idea that journalism was essentially my trade. Some people are plumbers. Others are nurses. My trade was journalism, and there were worse things to do. Having wondered, in 2003, if I’d done my final interview, I headed out again with a notebook and tape-recorder for a magazine feature. Despite some early misgivings, it wasn’t so bad. I felt like a footballer who’d missed a season with a bung knee and then found he quite liked being out on the field again, chasing a kick. Meanwhile, I’d also started volunteering.

It was planned as a one-off excursion on a weekend morning, nothing more. I took my youngest son to the Collingwood children’s farm, just a few kilometres from Melbourne’s business centre. Our outing went OK, though Gus had seen quite enough animals after an hour or two. Before we left, though, and without much thought, I’d scribbled down some details under a notice headed Volunteers Wanted.

So I became a part-time farmer. I helped weed the veggie garden; I shovelled shit, working my way around paddocks with a wheelbarrow; I bottle-fed newborn lambs; I learned to milk a cow (badly). I enjoyed myself, coming home filthy but pleasantly tired.

The fact that I was earning nothing for my labour didn’t bother me. On the contrary, it was immensely liberating not to be putting a monetary value on my time.

My time at the farm turned out to be perfect preparation for working with Big Issue vendors, with their myriad problems. Ironically, I had to give up one to do the other. I left the farm on my last Friday afternoon with considerable pangs.

My contribution to the farm was minor: one afternoon a week only goes so far. But that time helped shape some of my thoughts about work. In retrospect, much of that period between leaving The Age in 2003 and starting as editor of The Big Issue late in 2006 was spent doing some hard thinking about what I really wanted to do.

Working for nothing at the farm, or as a fortnightly proofreader for the magazine, made it easier to go backwards (in terms of salary) when I took on the editor’s job. That wasn’t hard; after all, if money was what mattered most, I would never have left The Age. Staying somewhere just for the pay has always struck me as a slow death.

Looking back on a career path distinguished by several detours and a dead-end or two, it is clear that I’ve always been ambivalent about the nature of full-time work. And I’ve never been as concerned about pay as I probably should have been. Earning buckets of money has never been a priority. In fact, it has always seemed to me that huge salaries come at a high cost. It’s simple: if someone is paying you ridiculous sums of money, they have the right to believe that they have bought you.

The summer of 1977-78, before I started at The Age, was spent as a labourer/beach-bum in Mallacoota, near the Victoria-NSW border. I was helping a bloke who ran some holiday flats and did some abalone-diving. In return for odd jobs, supplemented by shifts at the local abalone processing plant, I had free board in a tiny caravan without wheels at the back of his property. For transport, I had a bicycle; for clothes, I needed nothing more than tee-shirt, shorts and thongs.

This was my life when a message was relayed via my employer: ring The Age. I made the call from a public phone in Mallacoota’s main street. I was being offered a coveted cadetship - on the strength of cuttings I’d sent in from the uni paper. I understood that my life was about to change dramatically, most likely forever. I was going to enter the workforce.

I got used to it. Sort of. Down the track a little way, after marriage and fatherhood, I went part time - first to look after a child, then for good when I realised I preferred working from home to working in an office. And that’s how it’s been for much of my time since. Let’s just say that in 31 years I’ve only once stayed long enough to earn long-service leave.

It may also be significant that my first day back from that long-service leave was the day I quit for good. A bit of perspective can be a very dangerous thing. I returned to my old desk, looked around, and at once it was perfectly clear: I didn’t want to be there any more.