THE EVOLUTION OF A MAGAZINE THEY CALL
WORDS BY DOUG PELL I have often been asked why I started this magazine, and the answer was and has always been simple. Here is my story. Back in 2007, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I decided to move to the Bass Coast, I had previously visited Inverloch earlier in the year prior to the cancer diagnosis and fell instantly in love with the area. This wasn’t hard to do as I had been living in Mulgrave, with a view of the busy and noisy Springvale Road, an old sewer in front of the fence and one of those massive overhead power line structures in my back yard. The moment I moved into Kilcunda, I was in love with the area, the rugged coastline, the Killy Pub, and people would take time out to talk to you and not ignore you as they did in the ‘burbs. In 2008, I began my radiation treatment and other treatments that I needed to battle this awful disease. My PSA was 91.5, I was supposed to be a goner, but for some good people at Peter MacCallum’s Hospital I am still here to tell the story. I also met my future partner in 2008 and sadly we have since parted but have remained good friends and Maree has always been an enormous help with the magazine and always good for a chat and support in the tough times that we have all endured with covid-19. A funny thing happened after the cancer treatment, I suddenly developed my old creative self again, I had shelved this part of my life for many years, but I thought about running a magazine. My aim was to do this in South Gippsland, probably because I hadn’t travelled past Foster, and it seemed a logical and easy way to start. The first edition came out in the Autumn of 2009, we had no writers, we did however have a photographer, but we had some very loyal clients and some of them are still here today. Notably, in the first edition we had a feature on David Tree. David was the man behind the Sam the Koala story of giving a koala a bottle of water to drink from after the fires had devastated the bush. David was reluctant to tell the story as he had and was continued to be pounded by the media for this amazing happening, and he insisted that I run a feature predominantly on his snake catching abilities.
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So here I was, deep in the Mirboo North forest, following David through the bush as he picked up Tiger snake after Tiger snake like a Mum picking up her child’s toys. I can vouch that I was not keen on taking photos of snakes within inches of their fangs, so David was able to do this for me, he had this hypnotic effect on the snakes, and they would sit still long enough for him to take the pictures before they slid off into the wild. For the first four editions we were learning the craft, the biggest edition was No. 4 which was 56 pages. The first edition was 40 pages, hardly any competition to our already established rivals, but you must start somewhere. We then upped our standard with a designer, not just any designer but a Walkley award winning designer who was running the newsagency in Mirboo North at the time and saw our magazine and wanted to tidy it up. He was contracted for two editions and then he and his partner eventually moved to Geelong. Then from Edition 7 to the present time we found after many unanswered phone calls our man. The unanswered phone calls was because our soon to be Creative Director was in Bali, a place I know he dearly misses thanks to covid-19. Alex Smirnakos, who wishes to remain anonymous but sorry Alex, I must tell your story as well, because without you we would not have this beautiful magazine that we present to the public. Suddenly we found someone who knew what we wanted, he was polite, enjoyed a joke, didn’t lock us out from conversation for a month while he designed the magazines, innovative, always friendly, and apart from that a bloke who I call a friend, my bro, now a lifelong friend and his vision and creativity has put the magazine where it is today and has done so since the winter of 2011. Many writers have come and gone, some have come back, but our mainstay of permanent writers is impressive and again the loyalty factor is there, big thanks to Danielle Ralph our first journalist who left to see the world and then came back to us, Chris West, my good friend for over 30 years, professional to the core and Anita Butterworth who I chased for months on linkedin and finally I persuaded her to write for us.
