Hanging in the Wind - 40 Years of Townsville Bulletin Photography

Hanging in the Wind 40 years of Townsville Bulletin Photography

umbrella studio contemporary arts

Michael Chambers Michael commenced working at the Townsville Bulletin in 1982 after a two-year stint at Shepherd Baker Studios, the No1 commercial and industrial photo and cinematography studio in Western Australia.

Working in the newspaper industry was mostly enjoyable as every day was different and challenging and the contrasting assignments in one day could (and most often would) be extreme. One may start the morning photographing the Prime Minister at breakfast and end the evening photographing less well off people sleeping in the parks. In between those jobs there may be a quick helicopter ride to land on a warship cruising off the coast, a few photo finishes at Cluden Park, a Cowboys or Crocodiles game or whatever else that was newsworthy on the day. During the ‘80s when lottery results

and winners’ details were faxed to all news outlets we often had the pleasure of knocking on some lucky punter’s front door to inform them they had won the lottery. I will never forget the disbelief and/or the surprise and excitement these winners displayed.

Michael left the Bulletin as Chief Photographer at the end of 1998 to pursue freelance photography in Townsville and North Queensland.

Glenn Campbell Glenn Campbell’s photography career began when he met a bloke in a pub...that bloke was Terry Butts, so taking a 2/3 cut in pay, he started working at

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the Bully as a 3rd year cadet in 1995 after a plethora of jobs in the Gulf, including mining, prawn fishing and pig shooting.

He then moved on to the

Australian for five years, travelling the world and the country for the national broadsheet.

Bored with chasing businessmen, appalled at city life and faced with either a stint in Canberra or a desk job, he chose neither and went

to the Territory for the Fairfax Press and now is a contracted contributor to the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Financial Review based in Darwin.

“The Bully was then and still is a great paper and I am forever grateful to my Editors, Warwick Wockner, Mary Vernon and Rory Gibson for bringing me out of the bush and into the morally culpable and faintly anarchic world of newspapers....”

Mike Hilburger Mike started his two-year tour of duty at the Bully in 1990.

Fresh out of Art College he

was thrust into the rough and tumble world that was press photography as a final

year cadet - hanging out with photo legends like Garry Schafer, Mick Chambers and Johnny Litster, smoking in the darkroom, tasting the chemicals to make sure the developer was

Wes Monts

Indiana. He attended university in Western Kentucky, studying photography from 2005-2007.

He moved to New Zealand in 2007 to undertake a sixmonth internship with Listner

Magazine, covering news and current affairs jobs. On completion of his internship he continued working at the same publication for 18 months as a photographer’s assistant. Wes

Wes got into photography at age 16 when he was attending high school in Bloomington,

developer, always under the watchful eye of Big Les, our gun-toting security guard, and working under the notoriously tough editor, Warwick Wockner.

They were fast living, big drinking days, we worked hard and partied harder, good times!

Having mellowed somewhat, Mike now runs his own production company, MHP, directing and shooting TV ads, and he has no doubt that those formative years spent in Townsville lay the basis for a successful career behind the camera.

arrived in Australia in January 2010 to also study photography at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, graduating in late 2011. When a job became available at the Townsville Bulletin in early 2012, he applied and was the successful candidate. He enjoys the fast pace of the daily newspaper style and is looking forward to polishing his skills as a photographer during his time with the Bulletin.

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Gary Schafer Gary came to the Bully from Queensland Country Life in the 1980s, when the paper was a broadsheet with black and white photos. Photographers used Nikon fm2s with Ilford FP4 and HP5 films and developed them by hand in Patterson tanks.

Twenty years ago insanity, or mango madness, set in and he left FNQ for the nation’s freezer, Canberra, and a job at The Canberra Times. He’s

still there after all that time, covering a bit of everything - sport (wearing two pairs of thermal underwear), news and features.

Gary has a couple of good memories of his time in Townsville: watching the Young Endeavour sail in to Townsville, enjoying an early morning speedboat ride to get a great picture. The other photo highlight was Townsville Sky Show, an annual fireworks display from a barge in front of the Travelodge Hotel on The

Strand set to music and heard over radio.

Gary’s desire to get the best shot eventually paid off, but not without some travails and an embarrassing tow back to the office later after he dropped the car keys in the drink.

Not to worry, the Editor liked the photo. He was not fired or made to pay for a tow truck and next morning the photo stretched right over the Townsville Bulletin front page with a headline “Townsville take a bow”.

Udo Weitz Udo was born and educated in Germany. During uni he started as a wirephoto operator at Associated Press (AP) in Frankfurt in 1979. Wire pictures were all black and white back then and transmitted over telephone lines. One picture took 15 minutes transmission time; they ran about 60 pictures a day to newspapers all over the world.

After a year Udo was named photographer, first only in Germany, but soon travelling all over Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.

Highlights included the fall of the Berlin Wall, release of Nelson Mandela, Tiananmen Square uprising in Beijing, the bombing of Tripoli, three trips 4 Hanging in the Wind

Ned Kelly Ned was in Army PR as a photographer. He came to the Bulletin as the first Chief Photographer in 1979 and stayed for 18 months before moving to Adelaide for a year.

He moved back to the Bulletin in 1984 and continued as a photographer at the paper until 1995 when he moved to the Bundaberg News Mail as chief photographer, staying there for three years. He rejoined the Townsville Bulletin team in 1998 and retired from working in the media industry in 2005.

Ned covered many events including the first international flight by Qantas out of to Afghanistan during the war and many more. During the revolution in Romania Udo met his wife Barbara Walton, then also an AP photographer. They married after a year and moved to New Delhi, where they were based. After another year their daughter Zoe was born and

Townsville to Los Angeles, enjoying the journey as well as the photographic challenges.

In 2001 he also ventured north to East Timor, covering the Australian troops in the region.

He now works at Bunnings in the retail trade.

Lori Neilsen they took a half-year break in Australia. Not too long after they settled back in Australia and after two years Udo spotted an ad for a photography position at the Bulletin and applied successfully, in August 1994. He stayed for five years, until May 1999.

Lori Neilsen-Carr worked for the Townsville Bulletin for 12 years, starting as a darkroom technician in 1994 and going on to be offered a three-year photography cadetship. After winning numerous state and national photography awards she left in 2006 to run her own professional photo studio “Lori Neilsen Photography�.

Highlights of her time at the Townsville Bulletin include being part of the progression from a black and white broadsheet paper shooting, developing and printing photos to be published by hand to a full colour tabloid paper using digital cameras and computer editing. Stand out jobs include photographing a variety of famous and prominent people including

Prime Ministers and rock stars; large sporting events such as the Davis Cup, 2004 Olympic Torch Relay and Olympic Hockey Matches, Rubgy World Cup, and news events such as the Patricks port dispute and the Australian Fashion Awards.

Most of all she loved the variety of jobs on a daily basis.

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Scott Radford-Chisholm Scott’s love of press photography started in his primary school days, where he had his first photo published in a local Brisbane newspaper.

He acquired his first 35mm camera at age 12 and built his own darkroom at his parents’ home (much to his Mum’s dislike to losing her laundry every evening!). After constant knocking on the doors of the local paper, he was finally offered part time work, where he was able to see first hand exactly what the media industry was all about. His passion continued through school and then on to tertiary education where he studied photography

at the Qld College of Art. He started working part time for Quest Newspapers in Brisbane in 1987.

After two years of study, Scott was offered a cadetship at Sun Newspapers, Brisbane, in 1988. The unfortunate closure of this newspaper three years later saw Scott looking for work elsewhere.

He stayed a further six months in Brisbane, working for the Brisbane edition of the Sydney Sunday Telegraph. From here he moved to Northern New South Wales and worked for three months with the Northern Star in Lismore, in a relieving role. Scott moved north to the

Townsville Bulletin in 1993, where he is still currently employed. He made his way up the ladder to the position of Chief Photographer, which he has held since 1998. In all,

Scott has been associated with the News Limited group for some 25 years.

Over the years, he has been rewarded with many Press Photography awards.

Scott’s dedication to his work and determination to succeed has been rewarded in many ways by News Limited, travelling nationally with the Townsville Suns Basketball (now Crocodiles) & North Qld Cowboys Rugby League teams, two assignments to East Timor, a career highlight of being a part of the News Limited photographers team at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, and covering Australian Army personnel in the Solomon Islands.

Stewart McLean January 2000 - March 2006 Stewart started at the Townsville Bulletin at the start of 2000 after moving from Western Victoria and in the following six years he worked on assignments of all types for the Bully. Not knowing 6 Hanging in the Wind

the north at all, Stewart says he found the subjects new and exciting, and in March 2000 Cyclone Tessi hit just out of Townsville, giving him a taste of how dramatic this area can be. From returned soldier parades on The Strand,

Evan Morgan Evan joined the Townsville Bulletin as a photographer in June 1999. Before that he worked as a shooter and journalist with the South West Times Group south of Perth and also spent two years with the Bundaberg Guardian. At different times he has been the Pioneer World Policeman and also the convict at a Perth theme park, a film technician, an audio visual production officer and played Bugs Bunny in a holiday program at a Perth shopping centre.

Since joining the Townsville Bulletin, Evan says the highlights include travels in western and north Queensland with Bulletin journalist John Andersen and the opportunity to photograph top level sport.

He has also covered Cyclone Larry and Cyclone Yasi and was sent to Kathmandu in Nepal last year to report on Townsville Professor Ajay Rane’s visit to the city to conduct a surgical workshop.

But he says the most

Charters Towers Music Festivals, tropical islands, big crocodiles and Rugby League (Go Cowboys!) the variety of assignments in the North was a dream come true.

After 2006 Stewart worked from Townsville as a freelance photographer for five years and from July 2011 has been employed as a staff photographer at the Cairns Post.

rewarding experience was a trip to Afghanistan in October last year with Bulletin journalist Emily Macdonald to cover the deployment of Townsville soldiers to the country.

This included going ‘beyond the wire’ to Forward Operating Base Merwais and going out on patrol with soldiers from Delta company, 2RAR and Afghan National Army soldiers.

Bryan Lynch Bryan started his professional photography career later in life.

He first came to the Townsville Bulletin as part of his “Work Experience” while studying photography at James Cook University in 1997. It was not long after this that Bryan was called upon to fill in for the social photographer.

Within weeks of this he was working as required for the Townsville Bulletin in News, Advertising and the Sun newspaper. In 1998 Bryan became the full time social photographer when the position became vacant and still holds this position today. Bryan is based in the Burdekin and is often called upon to cover events ranging from accidents and emergencies to festivals, race carnivals and everything in between.

As the social photographer, Bryan says he enjoys meeting a wide variety of people and being a part of many great events in the north such as the opening of The Strand, Olympic Torch Relay, Centenary of Federation, VP60 celebrations and the Townsville 400 V8 Supercars, to list a few.

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Megan Taylor Growing up in country Victoria, Megan was inspired to become a photographer after looking at slides and photographs her father had taken while he was younger. Megan landed a job at the local newspaper working in the darkroom printing news photos sold to the general public. After spending many, many hours poring over other news photographers’ work and deciding that news photography was exactly want she wanted to do Megan moved away from home to boarding school so she was able to study photography.

Megan landed a job as a cadet back at the local newspaper working with photographers who had inspired her while she was a teenager. Thrown into every job imaginable Megan learned quickly and in two years was promoted to Chief photographer. In 2006 after nearly a year of teaching cadets and managing the photography department Megan and her partner decided they wanted to expand their horizons and move 8 Hanging in the Wind

away from Victoria. Megan landed a job at the Townsville Bulletin and has spent the past six years coving the vast array of events in Townsville including favourites such as Cowboys, V8s, NBL and even natural disasters.

Watching Townsville grow and events become bigger and bigger every year Megan and her partner Steve decided to make Townsville their long term home and married on The Strand in 2010 and now are excited about welcoming their first child into the world.

Fiona Harding Fiona Harding has worked as a photographer from the age of 17, when she was employed at a newspaper in her hometown of Brisbane aimed at university students. She graduated from the Queensland College of Art – Griffith University with a Bachelor of Photography, and headed up North to start her career as a full time photographer with the Townsville Bulletin. Since those early days her job has taken her across the globe, always to return to Australia.

Working in Scotland for Scottish Radio Holdings as their chief photographer for a number of years, Fiona travelled around the UK before heading home to Brisbane.

There she worked for the Gold Coast Bulletin, and freelanced for various media outlets.

With a number of photographic awards under her belt, Fiona’s work has also been featured in a

long list of exhibitions spanning the years, the latest a solo show in 2010 for Arts Kingaroy and a collaborative exhibition in 2009 ‘Bridging the Gap’ - a photographic exhibition held at the Robina Arts Centre on the Gold Coast in conjunction with the Gold Coast African Communities to promote awareness of African migrants and their integration on the Gold Coast, to raise money for community efforts.

John Litster John started work at the Bulletin in 1968 as a compositor. In

1974 he decided to move to The Age in Melbourne but after a short, year-long stint knew it was back in the north where he wanted to live. He did a few

Troy Rodgers Troy served 16 years in the Australian Army as a Rifleman and then as a Photographer/ Video Cameraman, including in Bougainville Island, East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq.

be covering major events like Cyclone Larry 2006, Ingham Flood 2009 and finally when he and journalist Jessica Johnston

manual trades and worked the railways until 1983 when a job as a compositor at the Bulletin became available again.

In a career change, he swapped

typesetting for use of a camera and joined the editorial department where he continued until 1995.

John remembers meeting some well known faces such as Spike Milligan, Prime Ministers and famous sports people and covering many national and international news, sports and current affairs assignments.

He is now a carer and has enjoyed a few trips overseas over the past few years.

organised the first media visit by staff from the Townsville Bulletin to Afghanistan in 2009.

After leaving the Townsville Bulletin in December 2011, Troy tried a career change in order to spend more time

with his family, however that was shortlived as he ended up spending more time away from them. Now he spends quality time with his beautiful girls as a ‘Mr Mum’ and still pursues his love of photography and video production.

He started at the Townsville Bulletin, thinking he was going to have a less hectic job than he enjoyed in the Army, but discovered he was wrong … Troy started on March 20, 2006, the day Cyclone Larry hit Innisfail.

The highlights during the five-and-a-half years would Hanging in the Wind

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Zak Simmonds Before Zak became a photographer he worked as a Greenkeeper/ Landscape Horticulturist for three years.

After a work injury, Zak became unable to pursue that line of work and so he decided to go

in to something else he loved – photography, in particular, sports and news photography.

Zak started at the Townsville Bulletin on January 4, 2012 as a Cadet Photographer and has loved every second of it, and every day can not wait to go into work.

Zak’s favourite job so far would have to be sitting court side and taking photos of the Townsville Crocodiles game against the Melbourne Tigers as this is something he has always wanted to do since he started going to Townsville Suns games as a little kid with his Dad.

Leo Thomas Leo was born and grew up in at Culcairn in the Southern Riverina area of NSW. After school he worked with the Dept of Public Works for four years, taking up photography as a hobby.

He then joined the Border Morning Mail, Albury as a relief Press Photographer, moving on to work as staff photographer with The Area News, Griffith.

After five years at Griffith he was asked to join the staff of John Fairfax and Sons mostly working the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun-Herald.

While in Sydney he met and married his wife Margaret 10 Hanging in the Wind

Michael Pratt Michael worked in Townsville in 1982-ish and finished there in 1986-ish. He worked at the NT News for a year followed by four years at the Sun Newspaper in Brisbane, followed by 20 years at Quest Newspapers and now working as a freelancer on the Gold Coast.

Memorable jobs in Townsville include covering Cyclone “Charlie” and the Reeflink boat fire (early ‘80s). Awards include: Carlton United Brewery (CUB) National Racing Photographer of the Year for picture titled “Bottoms Up” in 1989 and

numerous commendations in “NIKON” awards.

and they had their first child, Pauline.

After an accident in 1980 he was given medical advice to move to a warmer climate and so the family moved to Townsville where Leo worked with the Townsville Daily Bulletin.

Margaret and Leo had two boys after coming to Townsville, Andrew and Steven.

In 1991 Leo left the Bulletin to set up his own business, North Queensland News Bureau, working with recently launched Northern Servicers Courier Defence Community Newspaper.

Leo retired because of his back injury late in 2009, since then he has been putting together a

library of defence pictures, a family library, and another collection of motor sport pictures.

He has also started a collection of model racing cars he has photographed over the years.

Jason South Jason South’s career started in New Zealand at the Sunday News in 1988. He went to the Waikato Times in Hamilton from 1989 to 1993 before joining the Townsville Bulletin for two years and moving on to The Age in Melbourne, where he still works today.

During his time at the Bully Jason covered an array of news and features assignments, most notably the Laura Aboriginal Festival and the beginnings of the Cowboys rugby league team’s early years in the NRL competition.

Jason often travelled with the Cowboys and the Townsville Suns to their away games around the country.

Since joining The Age Jason has covered assignments from tsunamis to politicians in more than 15 countries. He was twice the winner of the Nikon Walkley Photographer of the Year, in 2003 and 2009, and winner of the Nikon Photographer of the Year in 1999.

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Hanging in the Wind Scott Radford-Chisholm, chief photographer for the Townsville Bulletin curates an exhibition of photographs from 20 photo journalists coinciding with the Queensland Festival of Photography. The exhibition celebrates the last 40 years of highs and lows in our great city and the world.

GLENN CAMPBELL MICHAEL CHAMBERS FIONA HARDING MICHAEL HILBURGER NED KELLY JOHN LITSTER BRYAN LYNCH STEWART MCLEAN WESLEY MONTS EVAN MORGAN LORI NEILSEN

MICHAEL PRATT SCOTT RADFORDCHISHOLM TROY RODGERS GARY SCHAFER ZAK SIMMONDS JASON SOUTH MEGAN TAYLOR LEO THOMAS UDO WEITZ

13 April - 20 May 2012 Umbrella Studio contemporary arts 482 Flinders Street, Townsville (07) 4772 7109 | www.umbrella.org.au Open Mon-Fri 9-5pm & Sun 9-1pm

umbrella studio contemporary arts

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