My Work Life in Melbourne

World Traveller Series II: Events & Incidents ~ Episode 6

by Brett Hayhoe

I do not like moving. Not homes, not jobs. The disruption required, the leaving behind, the starting again from scratch — none of it has ever appealed.

Which makes it all the more ironic that the shape of a life can be measured, in large part, by the moves it has required.

In sixty years I have been employed exactly four times. A galvanising works. Two radio stations. And a website. That is the complete list. For a person who dislikes change, it is not, in retrospect, a particularly unstable record. Four employers across six decades suggests less a person who cannot settle and more a person who commits — sometimes, as it turns out, for longer than the situation deserves.

The Radio Years — Act One: 4AM

My first foray into media was a radio station in northern Queensland: 4AM. The four denoting the state, the AM standing for Atherton and Mareeba — a station that served the Tablelands with the quiet conviction of local radio at its best, certain of its own importance to the community it broadcast into.

I was employed initially as a salesperson. I ended up on air. I ended up embroiled in someone else’s scandal involving the station manager. The timeline from arrival to departure covered roughly the same arc as a minor theatrical production: promising beginning, complicated middle, messy exit through no particular fault of my own.

When I left 4AM, I opened an entertainment agency. It was exceptionally successful — for a time. The model was solid, the relationships strong, the work genuinely enjoyable. It ran well until clients made the entirely logical discovery that they could hire people directly, without the use of a middle man. The agency closed. The lesson was filed. Life continued.

The Move South

Leaving Cairns was not a dramatic decision. It was the accumulated result of several smaller ones — the luncheon club that evaporated overnight, the social world that had run its natural course, the growing sense that the next chapter was not available in the same location as the previous one.

I stayed for a time with my middle sister. Met someone online — as one does, in that particular era of tentative digital courtship when the whole enterprise still carried a faint air of novelty and mild transgression. Eventually moved to Melbourne to be with him.

Although I had been having gay sex since I was seventeen, being openly gay was still relatively new. Each experience carried its own charge — exciting, fascinating, experimental. The world had not changed. I had simply, finally, arrived in it honestly.

Within a week of arriving in Melbourne, I was employed by JOY 94.9.

The Radio Years — Act Two: JOY 94.9

JOY 94.9 was the country’s first gay and lesbian radio station — a fact that carried genuine significance at the time, and still does. To be part of it felt meaningful. The work was engaging. The environment was, for a while, everything it should have been.

The pattern, however, was familiar.

Another scandal. Another station manager — this one pathetic, ill-equipped, under-achieving, and possessed of the particular kind of insecurity that expresses itself as a vendetta against anyone who dares to disagree. The result was the same as before: a situation not of my making, a departure not entirely of my choosing, and a dream that had been, once again, quietly crushed by someone else’s smallness.

I am, as I have noted, apparently a slow learner when it comes to recognising this particular dynamic before it has run its course. The arc at JOY covered roughly the same duration as the arc at 4AM. Entered as a salesperson. Ended up on air. Ended up in someone else’s story, playing a supporting role I had not auditioned for.

Two radio stations. Same script. Different city.

The Phone Call

Then, like a well-timed intervention from a universe that occasionally demonstrates a sense of narrative structure, the phone rang.

It was Tom. There was a startup. Would I be interested in being part of a founding trio?

The startup was Q Magazine.

That phone call was the beginning of twenty-two years.

Q Magazine — The Full Account

For a time, Q Magazine was marvellous. There is no other word for it. Adventure, access, a certain proximity to celebrity, the genuine excitement of a concept that was finding its audience and expanding into the space that audience created. The money was flowing. The venture was working. Everyone involved was, to borrow an expression that suits the moment, as happy as a pig in mud.

That was not to be permanent.

At some point after it became solely my publication, Q Magazine shifted — by degrees, almost imperceptibly — from business venture to hobby. That was my first mistake, and I own it fully. The passion never diminished. The commercial discipline did. There is a version of this story in which those two things are kept in better balance. I did not find that version.

I still operate the online edition today. The reasons are passion rather than financial viability, and I am clear-eyed enough to know the difference. People read it — in the multi-thousands, which is not nothing, and on most days feels like something worth continuing for. But readers who do not subscribe are invisible to advertisers, and advertisers who cannot see an audience will not buy space in it. The model is broken in a way that goodwill alone cannot fix.

The Website, and What It Cost

Before I arrive at the present, there is the matter of the website venture — a chapter that requires honesty rather than discretion.

I joined as a partner. Or so I was told. The arrangement ended when my services were no longer required, in the way that these arrangements tend to end: abruptly, with the kind of language that dresses a decision in administrative clothing.

What it cost — physically, emotionally, financially — I have never fully communicated to the people involved. The devastation was of a kind I had not previously experienced. Recovery has not come. Given where things currently stand, it is difficult to see how it will.

The Present Tense

I struggle. That is the honest sentence, and it deserves to be written plainly rather than softened.

I struggle in ways I have never struggled before. The money situation — as with many people in private enterprise — has been a roller coaster across the years, with more ups than downs until recently. The recent downs have not been followed by the expected correction. Health has been failing for longer than I care to detail. And sitting here typing this, I am, quite frankly, more miserable than I have been at any previous point I can clearly remember.

People have always had the impression that I was wealthier than I actually was. I have never corrected that impression with the directness it deserved. Whether that is pride or stupidity is a question I leave to the reader — both answers are available, and both contain some truth.

My inability to ask for help has, in the most literal sense, paved this road. The blame sits squarely with me, and I own it. That ownership does not make the road shorter or the walking easier. But it is honest, and honesty — as has been established across several episodes of this series — is the value I have consistently placed highest, even when I arrived at it late.

I keep hoping that something will happen and all will be well. Logic says it probably will not. Hope and logic have never been particularly comfortable companions, but I carry both, and I keep moving.

What else is there to do?

The World Traveller Series II: Events & Incidents is written and produced by Brett Hayhoe — publisher, editor and administrator of Q Magazine.

Read more at Q Magazine Blogs — Ask Brett Podcasts & YouTube — Ask Brett Podcasts | Hayhoe Channel