Bitten by The Big, Bad Wolf

It started in Moulamein. I was six years old, dressed as the Big Bad Wolf in a production called Mixed Nursery Rhymes, and something clicked. Not a small click, a full-body, tunnel-vision, this-is-what-I'm-here-for click. For the next two decades, everything I did was pointed at a single destination: acting. How could I turn away from the adrenaline of being in front of an audience who clapped and laughed on queue? What a feeling!

I skylarked through my teens as a self-appointed stuntman, trees, rooftops, silo towers – anything that would make onlookers go “Wow”. Never broke a bone, somehow. Graduated from Acting for Screen and Stage in 1998. On an opportune night out in Wagga in 1997, Russell Crowe and I got pissed together at The Broadway where he was performing in his band 30 Odd Foot of Grunt (post Quick and the Dead, and pre-Gladiator). As we chatted about acting I told him of my lead performance in Cosi, and the reviews were horrendous. His advice? Don't get waylaid by the fish and chip paper. I've carried that line ever since.

I worked. Water Rats. All Saints. Breakers. Commercials for Optus, AAPT, McDonald's. Then in 2002, reality TV hit the marketplace and the rules changed. So I pivoted into real estate. Turns out it wasn't so different: you audition constantly, handle rejection daily, and only get paid when you win. I raised a beautiful family of three with my high school sweetheart, Melinda, now my wife and business partner, and built a life. Is it possible to have both? A career in the arts and be commercially or financially viable enough to make a living and raise a family?

In 2012, Backyard Ashes came to town. I took a small role, and I couldn't go back.

That led to an Associate Producer credit on Mark Grentell's next film, The Merger, in 2017. By then, WAGGAWAGGA.TV was running. I learned to shoot. I learned to edit. By 2020 I'd shifted into corporate documentary work and landed real jobs as a DOP under the tutelage of the talented Tommy Lawrence, five episodes with Fredbird Productions that taught me more than I expected. In fact, shooting with a cinema camera, a drone, 6 to 8 GoPros, at least 5 audio packs and a long day on a highway somewhere was the best but most exhausting training ground I could have wished for.

Here's what I've learned from all of it: a career doesn't move in a straight line. It moves in pivots, and the pivots compound. Every apparent detour, real estate, editing, camera work, was actually load-bearing. I just couldn't see the structure while I was inside it.

Right now I'm relaunching, more focused than I've ever been: producing TV, film, factual content, narrative drama, reality formats, game shows. Working side by side with Melinda across WAGGAWAGGA.TV and Vortex Entertainment. Busier than ever, but clearer too.

I'm starting a podcast soon about building an audience while building a career in entertainment. I'll also be sharing, for the first time, my real challenges with mental clarity and physical exhaustion. This column will continue weekly: life, entertainment, producing, creating, and the ongoing project of balance. I hope some of it will be enlightening, some may spark an idea or a collaboration and somewhere along the way, it could just lead to the next big thing. Who knows? Isn’t that part of the thrill?