Reminiscences from a career in graphic art and design. Here's one from the pre-digital age.
In 1973, while still at school, I started my first ‘real’ job — working Saturdays as a Copy Boy in the offices of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun Herald newspapers.
"BOY!" the sub-editors would bellow across the plain of desks that covered most of the 5th floor.
Or sometimes "COP-EEE!!!" would ring out, and one of us would rise from our vigil in the messenger’s pen — soon to be dispatched on another legwork-based task somewhere in the Publisher's sprawling Ultimo edifice.
A friend of the family landed me the job. I was 14 and under the legal requirement, but being tall has its advantages and nobody ever bothered to ask.
When I first signed on to the John Fairfax and Sons payroll as a casual employee it paid $2 per hour. Cash. Saturdays, 8am to 5pm, with breaks — and the job influenced a lot of my later life and career, to this day.
The Teleprinter Room
After a few days of indoctrination and working in the general messenger pool, I was posted to the teleprinter room. A narrow space filled with a dozen telex machines and yards and yards of perforated ticker tape.
It was run by Phil, the supervisor who simply didn’t care, staffed by me and one other messenger, and an older lady typist who came in towards the end of the shift and rarely spoke. She just ran ticker tape. We though she was a spy!
Phil used to put up a barrier across the end desk, in front of the window and sleep behind it for a lot of the day. He was occasionally messed up too (not that I knew it then), but he inevitably bucked up when he had to hand over to the straight-laced night supervisor. He was mainly there in case one of the machines malfunctioned or if the cables went down. I saw it happen once and he dealt with it all admirably.
After 30 seconds of training, I needed no supervision anyway. Green and keen!
'Everybody called him Bullet - because he walked like he had been shot in the butt'
The other messenger's name was Dallas. Much older than me, and everybody called him 'Bullet'. He really did have this big mullet, droopy moustache and clenched-cheeks-stride-thing going on.
The job was simply to read the header label as it emerged slowly from the telex roll, stylishly rip the completed story from the machine — with points for extra flourish — stack, sort, compile and deliver the pages to the appropriate department and its sub-editor's IN tray: Sport, News, Entertainment et al.
Occasionally we got something to roll up and put in a capsule for the interdepartmental vacuum tube system that ran between floors.
There was a lot of corridor-running too, but $2 an hour in junior high was good money. Mum was widowed and me not needing pocket and after school money helped.
And it sure was an education, to say the least, Jimmy Olsen.
The amount of porn in the lockers made me uncomfortable and everyone got pranked - hard.
They got me a beauty. Lessons were learnt early and the hard way, particularly the one regarding the air bubble for the spirit level.
I left working in the Teleprinter room not qute as naieve as when I had started.
The Art Department
After a while, I was 'promoted' to be the Messenger for The Sun Herald Art Department — and a die was cast.
This was a sought-after job that involved a lot of running to the staff canteen to get coffee, morning tea and lunch orders for the commercial artists, cartoonists and photo editors on the weekend's skeleton roster. Some of the canteen girls were well worth a visit and a chat.
The main task, however, was preparing the finishing line shots of the day’s horse racing - or the bits the artists were 'too busy' for.
Hot from the adjacent darkrooms, and just in time for the Late Final Extra, the strips of photo finishes were handed to the Spotter, who wrote the horse’s names in ink on the pic.
My job was to get the bromide sheets with all the horse’s names clearly printed in 10pt Helvetica Narrow.
Run the sheets through the waxing machine and then sit at the cutting table with a scalpel and steel rule to knife them all up.
Then I’d affix the printed name over the top of the Spotter’s handwriting — and maybe tidy up his arrows a bit.
That thrill of seeing my work in print has never worn off — no matter how insignificant it was.
Once all that cut and pasting — literally! — was done for an eight-race programme, I was allowed to dick around with the airbrushes and pens and ink, and eventually to use the freelancer’s drawing boards until knock-off time. The staffer's kit was out of bounds.
I drew hot rods. A lot of Big Daddy Roth homages. And I discreetly watched the cartoonists work with pen and ink, in awe.
They were very kind to the kid too. It was a mostly happy room. Depending on who was rostered on, but usually it was popular music on the radio and old-school creatives jiving in their element on double time pay. I was a sponge.
They taught me how to mask the subject of a photograph with an airbrush, a paint brush-handle with a wad of cotton wool affixed, and spit.
The Master Key
By my last year of high school, I had made 'Senior Messenger' and was working Saturdays, some Sundays, and occasional double and triple shifts.
There was a completely different crew of permanent Messenger staff working Monday to Friday. On the Sunday papers we were all part-timers and casuals, either way, the senior messengers were trusted with the master key to the entire building.
You reckon I didn’t sit at “Perry White's” desk with my feet up for a moment?
My job was to go downstairs to the printing presses, put a bundle of 60 of the latest editions of the Sun-Herald on a trolley, and then proceed to leave a copy on all the desks and archive files in the (mostly vacant) executive suites and corporate boardrooms.
I’m 17-ish — you reckon I didn’t sit at “Perry White's” desk with my feet up for a moment?
By the time I made my way back down to the Editorial department on the 5th floor, the journos were clamouring to see how they had been edited in print. I was like Radar handing out the mail on MASH.
Most were really nice. A few, I suspect, were bent by 9am.
An Insert
The best news was when we heard there was 'An Insert tonight'.
I always tried to score a double shift where possible, it paid double time. $4!
On Saturday nights there were often no-shows at work – so I’d do the 8 hours to midnight, then head downstairs and join the throng of itinerant workers hoping to get a spot on the Insert crew.
All the advertising, brochures and catalogues that came wrapped inside the Sunday papers were inserted manually back then.
If accepted at the midnight sign on, the job was to grab a bundle of 60 papers, go to a bench piled high with supplements, open up the newspaper and insert four or five catalogues, brochures and colour features in the middle.
Finish the pile, dump the completed 'Serts on the conveyor - and repeat, until the shift was done.
Mind numbing - but lucrative. I was on triple time and could pull over $80 for the three-peat. Not bad coin for a kid in 1976. I didn't always get picked - and often just worked a single shift.
If whatever shifts I'd done finished in daylight, I’d walk up Broadway to Central Station and catch the train and bus home.
Sometimes after the triple I’d wake up at the Cronulla train terminus, a dozen stations past my stop.
If I finished at midnight the paper would find me a lift, or the Chaplain would run me home. Different times.
It was all worth it though. Experience, grounding, learning — and the cash!
The Rewards
I bought myself a nice car as soon as I got my licence (with some help from my new step-dad).
The low-mileage 1964 EH Holden wagon he suggested was a beauty, and before long I was busy hotting up the old three-on-the-tree with a mild 192 cube long motor, chrome wheels, suspension and a decent sound system.
I also bought an old Honda CB450 twin behind my folk’s back (and paid a price for it) but by the end of high school I had 'a fleet' and the motorcycles thing got real. The surfboard was retired and the bomb Honda soon made way for much nicer bikes.
To that end I kept working at the Herald after I left school, and was holding down two jobs for a while. But it got to be too much and I eventually moved on.
One of the supervisors talked to me about a Journalism Cadetship, which with the benefit of hindsight, I really should have followed up, but I was almost 18, a party animal, and had dreams of working in the theatre dontcha know.
On or off stage, it didn’t matter. I really wanted to do lighting, but we all know how most of those dreams turn out, hey.
After a few different and varied careers along the journey, I ended up building a business as a graphic artist, features writer and photographer - and playing with lighting.
That's another story too, but it did prove that the die that was cast in that old-school commercial art room, all those years ago, was a good one - just now it's a fully encrypted digital version.
And nobody has bellowed BOY! at me since.