Last ‘Marty’s Bird’ Kim McKay still flying at The Australian Museum

Australian Museum director Kim McKay did not think much of a friendly request from The Australian’s picture editor in 1989 to feature as the revived, and ultimate, ‘Marty’s Bird’.

Kim McKay, director of the Australian Museum, was the last ‘Marty’s Birds’ to appear in The Australian. Picture: John Feder

Australian Museum director Kim McKay did not think much of a friendly request from The Australian’s picture editor in 1989 to feature as the revived, and ultimate, “Marty’s Bird”.

The column, which portrayed “beautiful, intelligent and generally rather high-powered women” ran for some two decades before the “sheilas in the office, buoyed by the rising tides of feminist feeling” put an end to such “sexist exploitation”.

It was resuscitated for the paper’s 25th birthday for one more “single, nostalgic, sexist” week to “brighten the morning of male readers” – as that week’s author, one of the many “Martin ‘Marty’ Collins”, put it.

Ms McKay was pictured with her hand under her chin and smiling with the classic “Marty’s” twinkle in her eye.

The photo was taken by Ray Strange, a serious news photographer who shot the famous photo of Bob Hawke lighting a cigar on a private jet during the 1983 federal election campaign.

Ms McKay was the last ‘Marty’s Birds’ to appear in The Australian.

The column introduced then 30-year-old Ms McKay by name before noting only that she “runs her own public relations company in Sydney”.

But Ms McKay was not just a PR business owner with a twinkle in her eye. She had just founded with Ian Kiernan the first Clean Up Australia Day, which would become a national institution. Twenty-five years later, she would be named the first female director and CEO of the Australian Museum in its near 190-year history.

“It was a lovely moment in time,” she recalled. “I was doing some interesting things, had a business and was successful.”

She called the first Clean Up Australia Day “one of the best days of my life”, which, she said, was strange “because it was about garbage”. “I have never seen community spirit like that.”

Ms McKay was always working on causes that needed promoting and thought the Marty’s Bird column would be a way to do that. “It was the revival of that column, which originally, I imagine, was steeped in sexism more than anything else. But 25 years later, I didn’t see it that way. It was an opportunity to promote my cause.”

Ms McKay remembers the day distinctly, arriving at News Corp headquarters in Sydney’s Surry Hills in a green polka-dot shirt and black pencil skirt – something she would ordinarily wear to work. She said the 30-year-old in the picture was “as determined then as I am now” but “probably a lot more bolshie”.

She knew she “definitely had to push harder” than men to get ahead, but it didn’t really bother her. “The ’80s were a particularly unique time … Women’s issues, of course, had come to the fore but you still had to put up with a lot of sexist comments … in the workplace.”

Back then, she believed she could make Australia a better place. She still does. “It’s the sort of do-gooder in me – always the volunteer at school. It’s carried on throughout my life. To try to make a difference, I suppose. I’ve always believed I’m a member of a community and that we all should do our best to make Australia a better place. I’m a fierce Australian in that sense.”

Ms McKay ran and promoted Clean Up Australia Day for a decade. She moved to the US in the late ’90s to work on the Discovery Channel and the phenomenon that was National Geographic, which took her all over the world.

On returning to Australia, she opened up “a little consulting business” focused on sustainability projects, co-authored five books on “ways you can contribute to a healthier planet” and worked on the Shackleton Epic Expedition with explorer Tim Harvis. “As a joke the other day, I said ‘it’s always about men with impossible dreams that I made happen’,” she said.

She joined the museum board before becoming its director, something she said the young woman in that photo “would not have thought was an option”.

“I just knew I had greater capacity to do something bigger again … And so suddenly, I got the remit to transform the museum,” she said. “I haven’t finished yet. And in 2027, we turn 200.”