Laurel Edwards 4KQ: Reflections over a 25-year career
FOR 25 years Laurel Edwards’ voice has rang out on local radio station 4KQ. But long-time listeners may have no idea they were with her during her toughest time.
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TAKE a step back in time to 1992. Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus was top of the charts, prime minister Paul Keating was dubbed the “lizard of Oz’’ by the British press for touching Queen Elizabeth II and one of Australia’s first reality-TV series, Sylvania Waters, hit our screens. And on Brisbane radio station 4KQ, the voice of 25-year-old Laurel Edwards was broadcast for the first time.
This week, Edwards, 50, marked 25 years on air as breakfast host with the AM station, making her one of Australia’s longest-running announcers with the same show.
From a young age, Edwards dreamt of becoming a singer and was determined to break into television. But her childhood nickname of “Mouth’’ for her tendency to “never shut up’’, was perhaps the earliest indicator that a career in radio would be her perfect match.
In her breakfast show role (she co-hosts with Gary Clare and Mark Hine), Edwards has interviewed countless celebrities, including musicians and actors as well as prime ministers such as Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott.
There have been difficult times too, with Edwards revealing she worked through a long and traumatic period of post-natal depression after returning to the airwaves only a month after the birth of her son, Clay, now 18.
Brisbane born and bred, Edwards grew up on Lytton Rd, in inner-city Balmoral, then a blue-collar worker stronghold, as the youngest of three girls. Sisters Alita and Shauna are now 56 and 54 respectively.
Her father, Ray, now 84, worked as a boilermaker and sheet metal worker at a Colmslie (now Morningside) factory, and played representative rugby league for Valleys, as did his father, Arthur “Fatty’’ Edwards, before him. Her mother Dell, 77, did part-time work when the girls were older as a smallgoods demonstrator and mature-age model.
Edwards attended Bulimba State School and Balmoral State High (where she was school captain) and spent much of her childhood riding horses around the farmland and paddocks of the area. She was finally given her own horse – a bay gelding she called Ned Kelly – when she was 11.
“My childhood was unbelievably happy,’’ Edwards says. “It was lovely having a stable family. We lived in a standard chamferboard house, which was the family home for 50-something years. It was on a busy road and we were under the flight path but it was fun. We had a street full of kids to play with.
“I used to work part-time for pocket money at the sale yards at Cannon Hill. I’d round up cows and take them from the pens over to the abattoir across the other side of Lytton Rd. Dad bought a little 21-foot sailing boat and did a lot of work on it and we’d all go out on it on weekends on Moreton Bay. I’ve got some really wonderful memories of sailing, fishing, crabbing and exploring.
“My parents have been married almost 58 years and they still hold hands. As a kid, I took it for granted that everyone was happy … we just thought that was how families were. Looking back now, we were very privileged.’’
Edwards has in turn forged a 20-year marriage with country music star Troy Cassar-Daley, 48, who she met backstage as a performer at the Gympie Music Muster in 1993. They had crossed paths at the same venue a year earlier, competing against each other in the muster’s talent quest (in which Edwards beat Cassar-Daley).
They married in November, 1996, and have two children, Clay, and daughter Jem, 16.
The family lives in Brisbane’s eastern suburbs and also owns a 3.3 hectare farm near Ipswich, which they escape to as often as possible. Edwards now has two horses – a quarter horse called Oakey, which was a 40th birthday present from Cassar-Daly, and “a big blond thing’’ called Didgi (short for Didgeridoo).
“We love it out there … quite often we’ll have friends and members of Troy’s band stay overnight,’’ Edwards says. “We all congregate in the kitchen and we’ll have a big cook-up and sit out on the veranda and play music till all hours.’’
In 25 years, many things change and times have undoubtedly improved for working mothers. And this is where Edwards finds regret.
In an era when there were very few females on-air and no extended maternity leave scheme in place, Edwards, who was told “don’t let your seat get cold for too long’’, returned to work only one month after the birth of Clay. It was a move, she says, that triggered a long-lasting bout of post-natal depression that left her struggling to cope.
“I really wish I’d had more maternity leave,’’ she says. “With Clay I was not coping at all. I’m absolutely certain now that I had post-natal depression. Troy was just starting out; he was hardly getting a wage back then, so we couldn’t afford for him to just stay home. There were no payment plans for anyone to have 12 months off and we just wouldn’t have had an income.
“I must admit there was a bit of pressure to return. I felt guilty when I was at work, I felt guilty at home. I didn’t really bond with Clay and I didn’t seek help because I thought everyone sat around and cried all the time.
“I wanted to be seen as someone who was coping … but I was expressing milk in the toilet at work. I would go to the toilet and cry while we were on air. I was crying out for sleep and doing 4am wake-ups. They were all men working around me.
“I just didn’t embrace being a mother. I just didn’t like it at all. I loved Clay to death from the moment he was born but I didn’t really cherish those moments with him. I get upset thinking about it now. It was a very difficult time.”
But, says Edwards, it slowly went away. She started to get a grip on things when Clay was two.
“Thank goodness I had an incredible mum living around the corner. And my sister would help out,” she says.
“With Jem it was very different … I had three months off but I was more in control then. Now I see girls in our office having 12 months off with no pressure and it’s just an understood thing. I think that is wonderful. I don’t hold any grudges because it was just the way it was then.’’
Growing up as the “loud and precocious one’’, Edwards regularly performed in variety concerts, talent quests and TV telethons. At age 13, she landed a role in a Warana Festival pantomime, performed in the City Botanic Gardens, alongside Jamie Dunn, who would go on to find success as a presenter with radio station B105 with his puppet character Agro.
Edwards describes Dunn as “an amazing influence’’ in her career, giving her various chances to appear on television shows Studio One and Wombat, in his roles as producer. Dunn, in turn, now works with Edwards’ son Clay at indigenous country radio station 98.9, where they host a breakfast show called The Dunn and Daley Show.
After high school, Edwards worked in a stationery store called The Pink Printery, followed by a stint at music retailer Brashs at Garden City shopping centre at Mt Gravatt, all the while singing at nights in venues around Brisbane including the Port Office Hotel, The Underground and The Toucan Club.
She landed her first TV host role on a Channel Nine kids program called Ok For Kids in 1987, while her first taste of radio was volunteering for the first shift of the not-for-profit Radio Lollipop at the Mater Children’s Hospital in 1990.
“That’s when I realised I liked the immediacy of radio,’’ Edwards says. “I also realised I knew radio intimately. I got my first transistor radio when I was seven and it was stuck to my ear always. I grew up listening to Lee Cornell, Wayne ‘Waynee Poo’ Roberts, Paul J. Turner and Ray McGregor … in those days radio announcers were rock stars.’’
In 1992, Edwards auditioned for a presenter’s role at 4KQ but “messed up and walked out thinking that was it’’. However, she was given another chance to audition and this time, she nailed it.
A week later, she was in London – her first trip overseas – broadcasting for the 25th anniversary of the release of The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
“It was an incredible trip but I was so damn nervous,’’ Edwards says. “I honestly thought I’d have the job for a couple of months and I’d be out looking for another job.
“You’re always hearing how the entertainment industry is so fickle and at first I used to panic and get nervous. But it’s become part of my DNA and I just can’t really imagine doing anything else.’’
Technology has changed dramatically in her career, from manually inserting CDs into a CD player to a period of three months in 2010 when Edwards broadcast her part of the show live from Nashville via the internet.
Highlights for Edwards include interviewing all the acts she grew up watching on (music television series) Countdown including Brisbane’s “original rock chick’’ Carol Lloyd and childhood idol Daryl Braithwaite.
Since 1997, she has also appeared regularly on Channel Seven’s The Great Day Out (formerly The Great South East) and is the only original presenter still on the show.
After 25 years on breakfast radio, Edwards is regularly approached by fans who used to ask for her autograph but now want selfies. Ever obliging, Edwards says listeners feel like part of the family and sent her hand-knitted bunny rugs and clothing when her kids were born and condolence cards when her grandmother and cat passed away. Despite warnings AM radio will die out, the station, which typically attracts older listeners, is finding new audiences thanks to apps such as digital radio service iHeartRadio.
“With digital radio now we’ve got listeners all around the world and there are so many young people who listen that way. We are finding our ratings are going well,’’ Edwards says. “I get young hipster guys telling me they love the station because it’s retro … they love The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, the classic hits. I’ve also had a cool 6ft young guy tell me I did his fifth birthday call on air and he listens all the time.
“We never wanted to die out as dinosaurs so it’s wonderful to still be considered relevant and hip. I might make 30 years, you never do know.’’
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