Genesis of My Career

Monty's News Agents, Bourke Street Melbourne 2000

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.

My first media job was working for Rupert Murdoch when I was about 14. The job required that I pick up my allotment of newspapers - The Herald - from this newsagents each day after school and walk up to my corner where I sold the newspapers to passing commuters. My corner was just up the block right outside the famous Windsor Hotel bar which was both good and bad. Good in the sense that on most days I could count on selling a fair number of newspapers to the clientele; however, bad because on some days - generally Friday's - the (much the same) clientele were dead set on pounding as many beers down them before the six o'clock closing time. On these days the bar was virtually impassable; thus, I learned not to bother entering if I couldn't see the bar from the door.

This image is from 2000 was taken on my first trip back to Melbourne since we left in 1977 and it was nice to see the newsagent still in the same spot. The bar is now gone and I was unimpressed that it has been replaced by a Hard Rock cafe.

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