What it was like to work at ‘The Queanbeyan Age’ in the 1990s
Long before Q! News and Queanbeyan Noticeboard Group there was a newspaper that everybody in town read to find out who’d been born, who’d died and who’d got hitched.
The Queanbeyan Age was a tri-weekly paper that featured netball, footy and hockey write-ups, council news, entertainment and social photos. Unfortunately, we couldn’t cover ‘loud bangs’ as the news would have been three days old by the time the paper came out.
I started as a cadet journalist at the local rag within days of finishing high school. One of my first jobs was to cover the HSC results of students in my very own year (QHS Class of 1995). I had to interview and take photos of my friends (and enemies) from school, who’d all lined up at stupid o’clock at the Australia Post depot in West Queanbeyan to get their results. It was mortifying.
But I loved writing about Queanbeyan (still do, can you tell?) and so I stuck with it. The formidable Barrie Gillman was my first editor: a classic newspaper bloke in brown slacks and beige dress shirt, with huge black-framed glasses, a side part, and fingernails stained yellow from his pack-of-cigarettes-a-day habit. Barrie could smell a good yarn a mile away.
Within months I was covering a bit of everything: Rotary Club cheque presentations, new hairdressers opening, Country Women’s Association meetings, champion BMX riders and the new Kindergarten classes at every bloody public school in town (note: the more people we had in the paper, the more copies we’d sell).
I’d write my stories on a cream Packard Bell computer with a massive hard drive and a tiny screen to the sound of the Heidelberg printing presses whirring in the background.
One time, I headed out to Wamboin to cover a story about a pair of champion Dalmations. They were worth an absolute fortune these dogs, and they’d won some national award or other. Trying to get them to sit nicely for a photo was a nightmare. But the worst of it was when I left in the Age-branded Mitsubishi Lancer and accidentally backed over one of them. It was horrendous. Broke the poor thing’s leg. Fair to say it didn’t win any awards after that.
Another time, I went to the launch of Clean Up Australia Day in Glebe Park, Canberra. It was a very special job: we rarely, if ever, crossed the border in our quest for news. I was late to the launch, of course, because who can find a park in Civic? So I sidled up to an old bloke waiting near the stage. ‘Which one of these big wigs is Ian Kiernan?’ I asked. (Ian was the founder of Clean Up Australia Day and a massive deal at the time.) ‘Ah, that would be me,’ he replied. Whoops.
I was paid $30 a weekend to take photos at local events: from 21sts, 40ths and 50ths to engagement parties, sporting presentations and even couples and groups of friends just having a quiet froth at one of the local pubs and clubs (super newsworthy). People would see me in Woolies and ask if I could come to Steve and Lisa’s engagement party or Kevin’s 80th the following weekend (which, of course, I did). For about 15 years after I’d left the Age people would say ‘Are you still taking photos for the Age?’
Crowds would hang around the front of The Queanbeyan Age office, where we had a corkboard packed with the mostly black and white photos we’d taken in the past week. You could buy the photo if you liked it. A few bought my social and new baby photos, but most bought the epic sporting pics taken by Lionel Maddams and later David Beltrami.
Our office had a direct line to Mayor Frank Pangallo and Councillor John Wright had a lot to say. Regular visitors to the office on Crawford Street included the hilarious Gary Bradley, and Tex the Cowboy, who’d bale up the front office girls for hours with amazing stories like how the Amazon Rainforest was being decimated at an astounding rate.
The perks were amazing: free tickets to shows at Canberra Theatre, movies at the Cosmopolitan Twin Cinema in Woden and Electric Shadows in Civic, and the gorgeous cabaret-and-dinner shows at The School of Arts Cafe.
So much of what I’ve mentioned in this post no longer exists. The organisations, the businesses, the venues. The Queanbeyan Age itself. But here I am, 30 years later, still finding a way to write about the city I love. I’m still that cadet journalist at heart.
About the Author: Bree Element
Part bogan, part wannabe plus-size model and part journalist, Bree's the woman behind Q! News. She's a pop culture obsessive who's deeply in love with her hometown, Queanbeyan, and the neighbouring capital. A born storyteller, she's been writing locally, nationally and internationally for more than 25 years.
