Celebrities reveal: ‘The first time I made the paper’
Every great Queenslander had to start somewhere, and The Courier-Mail was usually there to cover it. We invited seven celebrities to walk down memory lane
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Every great Queenslander had to start somewhere, and The Courier-Mail was usually there to cover it. We invited seven celebrities to walk down memory lane.
KATE MILLER-HEIDKE
IT’S hard for Kate Miller-Heidke to forget her first article in The Courier-Mail.
In April 2002, the then 20-year-old singer was part of a budding group of four young folk-pop musicians called Elsewhere, who had just released an independent EP, performed at a festival at South Bank to launch National Youth Week and were about to head out on tour.
“I remember that whole era. It was my first band and one of those boys was my recent ex boyfriend and things got kind of messy and we broke up not long after. It was kind of a cliche,” Miller-Heidke, now 39, said. “We went down the same route as Fleetwood Mac.”
She added: “But I remember it being a total buzz to have my photo in the paper, my family cutting out the articles and keeping scrapbooks.”
While Elsewhere didn’t last long in the music scene before Miller-Heidke took off on her successful solo singing career, she remembers the band getting their start at the Woodford Folk Festival.
“We’d do a show and sell 100 CDs. They were a brilliant investment and I’d kind of never seen that much money before,” she said. “Part of the reason why there’s a lot of successful Brisbane artists is you get to come up in a smaller scene away from powerbrokers and people pulling levers down south.
“You get to come of age as an artist undisturbed. I just remember wanting to get better and play as much as we could.”
Almost two decades on Miller-Heidke has released five studio albums, represented Australia at the Eurovision Song Contest and has five Helpmann Awards and 14 ARIA nominations to her name – and her mother and grandmother still have their scrapbooks of article clippings.
She relocated her family, husband Keir Nuttall and son Ernie, back to Brisbane from Melbourne last year and is giving back to the local industry as an ambassador for the Queensland Music Trails.
“I’m at the point now where I could live anywhere in Australia. There was a deep yearning to be close to family and the greatest beaches in the world.”
LAUREL EDWARDS
RADIO veteran Laurel Edwards has an ad in The Courier-Mail to thank for her long-running broadcasting career.
On a visit to The Courier-Mail head office at Bowen Hills last week, Edwards, one of the announcers on the top-rating 4KQ breakfast show, found a copy of the first time she appeared in the paper – on the cover of the then TV guide Scene on TV in 1988.
“I had just left school and applied for a show from an ad in The Courier-Mail. I didn’t get that job, but a couple of months later I got a call to come to audition for another show,” she said.
That program was Go for Kids on Channel 9 and opened the door to her distinguished career.
“It was super exciting to see my photo in the paper. I would race down to the local servo as early as they opened and get five copies,” she said.
“We also got our clothes supplied (for the shoots) and I got my hair done by Stefan – which I still do.
“I’ve always been a big collector and archiver of these types of memories.”
ANNASTACIA PALASZCZUK
A LINE sung by The Beatles is what springs to mind when Annastacia Palaszczuk reminisces on one of the first of many times she would appear in a newspaper.
It was August 2006 – just weeks out from a looming state election – and the newly preselected Labor candidate for Inala was snapped on a zebra crossing with her father and outgoing MP Henry Palaszczuk.
The photo – which ran in The Courier-Mail – has a striking resemblance to that famous cover shot of The Beatles as they crossed Abbey Road.
“As The Beatles once sang … when I was younger, so much younger than today,” the now-Queensland Premier says, reminiscing about the moment. “That’s my first thoughts looking back on this photo! “Dad loves The Beatles so that photo was us re-enacting that famous album cover, except it was taken outside the Inala Civic Centre, a long way from Abbey Road!
“It was also lovely to have my Dad there behind me and supporting me on that next journey, a long and winding road that’s led me to where I am today. He’s had my back the whole way.”
Ms Palaszczuk would go on to win the safe Labor seat, securing a massive 69.1 per cent of the primary vote in an election that would see Peter Beattie returned to his final term.
DAVID CRISAFULLI
IT WASN’T a political victory or even a sporting win that secured David Crisafulli’s first mentions in The Courier-Mail.
It was 1999 and readers were introduced to a 20-year-old Mr Crisafulli – the defending champion of the spaghetti eating competition at the Australian Italian Festival in Ingham.
“I just love spaghetti; I have a bit of a passion for it and when I get started I just go,” he told The Courier-Mail prior to that year’s challenge.
Looking back at the moment, the now Queensland Opposition Leader says his mum cut out a clipping of the story and laminated it.
“And I think she’s still got it,” he says.
“Everybody’s got a story worth sharing. Not everybody’s story is about eating too much pasta.”
According to one story that ran in the paper, Mr Crisafulli had a special eating technique that left onlookers in awe – able to down plates of pasta in less than 30 seconds.
Paying tribute to The Courier-Mail on its 175th anniversary, Mr Crisafulli says the paper has engendered a sense of what it means to be a Queenslander.
“In the process it has kept governments at all levels and of all political persuasions on the straight and narrow,” he says.
MICHAEL ZAVROS
GETTING his first review in The Courier-Mail in 1999 was a big thing for artist Michael Zavros.
Now, aged 46, he is regarded as one of Australia’s most exciting contemporary artists.
His shows at Philip Bacon Galleries in Brisbane sell out and his works attract six figures.
But back in 1999, when he had his first solo show at Schubert Galleries on the Gold Coast, he was just thankful for any attention.
“In those days getting in the paper was all important,” Zavros says. “That’s the thing you aimed for, to get your work featured in the paper.
“If you were in print that was the platform you wanted.”
Writing in The Courier-Mail at the time of that first solo show, critic John Millington was enthusiastic about Zavros’s work.
“When some of us despair that young contemporary artists are increasingly turning their backs on the body of knowledge, disrespecting the past and losing the conventional crafts and skills of their art, along comes a new young artist like Michael Zavros to dispel at least some of the concern,” Millington wrote.
He added that Zavros appeared “well equipped for the long haul” – and he was right.
Zavros now has an international reputation and is in all the major Australian galleries.
PETE MURRAY
PETE Murray’s first article in The Courier-Mail, declaring him one to watch in 1999, was also a lesson in the importance of knowing the music industry.
Music journalist Noel Mengel called the budding singer-songwriter in December that year, having been impressed by his demo tracks, later penning a Christmas Eve article that began: “Murray only picked up a guitar when he was 23 but when you hear him perform you know he has found his calling.”
“I remember this article from 1999 very clearly. I was at home watching a movie one afternoon,” Murray, 51, said.
“I had never heard of Noel before and really didn’t think too much of it. To be honest I kind of brushed him off and said that I was really busy.
“Noel organised another time to call me back. Once again, he said that he was really loving my songs and that he thought they sounded really fresh and exciting.”
After speaking for around 15 minutes, Murray quickly put the interview out of his mind until the article ran on Christmas Eve.
“About a week later I had friends and family calling me and telling me about this amazing article that was in the paper,” he said. “I had some of my music friends calling and saying did you see the article that Noel Mengel wrote about you? He is the big music journalist in Brisbane!”
Murray’s career took off soon after.
LORNA JANE CLARKSON
WHEN Lorna Jane Clarkson reflects on her first appearance in The Courier-Mail as a budding fashion week debutant back in 1997, she thinks only “hold on tight”.
The Brisbane activewear giant was 32 and was featured in the newspaper in April that year as one of two Queensland designers headed to Sydney to show her collection at the Mercedes Australian Fashion Week, having just won a handful of awards in the RAQ Fashion Awards in Queensland.
“It was the first time that I had actually had to design clothes for and organise a runway show,” said Clarkson, now 56. “It felt like I had stepped into an alternate universe and I had to keep telling myself to stay calm and act like this was just like any other day for me.
“My designs were featured on the front page of the paper in Sydney the morning after the show and I was on cloud nine for at least a week.”
Since then Clarkson built the Lorna Jane brand into a multimillion dollar juggernaut, making her name in the booming athleisure market.
“I feel like telling my younger self to hold on tight because you’re about to go on one hell of a ride,” she said.
Clarkson, who recently sold her two Los Angeles homes to spend more time in Australia, is now serving as a business mentor on Nine’s new season of Celebrity Apprentice alongside business magnate Alan Sugar.
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