Blue Murder: Lo Carmen celebrates brave whistleblower Sallie Anne Huckstepp

Aussie actor/singer Lo Carmen – who played Sallie Anne Huckstepp in the cult docudrama Blue Murder – celebrates the courageous whistleblower on police corruption and other trailblazing women in her new book.

Drunk punters at gigs and policemen, felons and friends, they all want to talk to Lo Carmen about courageous whistleblower Sallie Anne Huckstepp.

More than 25 years after the acclaimed actor and singer portrayed Huckstepp in the cult docudrama Blue Murder, Carmen remains inextricably linked to the woman who was murdered in Sydney’s Centennial Park in 1986 after blowing the lid on police corruption in NSW.

Actor, singer and author Lo Carmen. Picture: Supplied

In her new book Lovers Dreamers Fighters, Carmen celebrates Huckstepp who was demonised with the “shame labels” of prostitute and heroin addict after bravely outing notorious criminal figures, including disgraced policeman Roger Rogerson and notorious hitman Neddy Smith, after the murder of her drug dealer lover Warren Lanfranchi.

Arthur Stanley “Neddy” Smith after being found not guilty of the murder of Sallie Anne Huckstepp. Picture: NSW Police

Carmen is determined Huckstepp should be formally recognised for her bravery in outing police corruption in the media and a statement to the Police Internal Affairs Branch.

Huckstepp’s activism and murder were influential in the initiation of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption and the explosive Wood Royal Commission.

“Back then there was no trusted body she could go to, there was no safe place for her,” Carmen said.

Sallie Anne Huckstepp blew the lid on police corruption and was murdered in 1986.

“I became so synonymous with Sallie Anne because Blue Murder became so popular, and I was constantly having conversations about her and was a bit bothered about people saying ‘Oh, she had it coming’, or “she was a bit naive’.

“She had been judged by the disparaging view of her as a junkie prostitute that the police had fed the media to discredit her, and all of that showed me her whistleblowing had not been seen or appreciated, so it really is time to rethink who she was.”

Lo Carmen as Sallie Anne Huckstepp in Blue Murder. Picture: Supplied

Sallie Anne Huckstepp was murdered on February 7, 1986. Picture: Supplied

The chapter on Huckstepp opens Carmen’s book, part memoir, part cultural history and a tribute to the trailblazing women who have influenced her including Chrissy Amphlett, Renee Geyer and Robyn Archer.

She also seeks to amplify the tragically underrated Australian blues and soul pioneer Wendy Saddington, who fronted seminal band Chain in the late 60s and then Jeff St John’s Copperwine in the early ‘70s.

Singer Chrissie Amphlett.

Singer Renee Geyer. Picture: Getty

Her solo career comprised of just one single, Looking Through The Window, released in 1972 and while she faded from the charts, she played in the ‘90s fronting her own band and then in a duo with Carmen’s father Peter Head.

“In the magazines of the ‘60s and ‘70s, she was the most famous woman in Australian rock’n’roll but when she disappeared, her value disappeared as well,” Carmen said.
“But people who had seen her play, the way they light up with excitement and say they’ve never seen a greater artist in their lives … she was such a role model for so many people like Chrissy and Renee.

“She gave so many women in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s permission to be tough and to be sensitive and do all the things you weren’t allowed to do then and I look at her now and see her as like a Grace Tame of her time.”

Singer Robyn Archer. Picture: Claudio Raschella

Singer Wendy Saddington.

Carmen, who has starred in beloved Australian films including The Year My Voice Broke, The Nostradamus Kid and Red Dog and released seven solo records, also writes of the trials and tribulations of her own career, juggling young motherhood with her creative ambitions.

Ben Mendelsohn, Loene Carmen and Noah Taylor in a still from the 1989 film The Year My Voice Broke. Picture: Supplied

She had her daughter, the pop artist now known as Holiday Sidewinder, when she was 20; and has two sons Dutch and Chester with actor husband Aden Young.

In the book, she proudly boasts she can write a song while doing the dishes.

“It’s how my brain works. One side is always doing the dishes or the school run or at the supermarket and the other side is just constantly writing songs and I feel they kind of operate independently and at the same time.”

Lovers Dreamers Fighters by Lo Carmen is out now, published by HarperCollins.