Meet your vendor
I was born in Bankstown hospital. I grew up in the Bankstown area. I went to St George Girls High School. I was lucky enough to be able to get into a selective school, so therefore my education sometimes shines through. Some people don’t like it.
As a kid, I remember going to Franklins with mum shopping, and there’d be little things that she’d pick off the shelf and put in a little plastic bag that would be weighed at the checkout. I do remember as a child going into a delicatessen and there were rabbits in the window, they were hanging up. I have a very vivid memory of that.
I had about a 15-year hiatus from The Big Issue. I started out in Melbourne in about 2000. I was living in a boarding house and visiting the Sacred Heart in St Kilda every day. They said they had a couple of reps coming out from The Big Issue, and I started from there. My pitch was St Kilda, outside Luna Park.
Because of September 11 in 2001, I got a bit frightened. That was enough for me to head to the hills. When I came to Sydney, I thought, “Oh, I choose Sydney”.
I worked in Sydney on and off, trying to get hospitality work – just little bits and pieces. I was a cleaner in a brothel and I’ve done peer education through Scarlet Alliance, the sex workers industry. We did law reform, decriminalisation of sex work, communication. I wrote for sex workers outreach for 10 years on various issues.
My new pitch is at Museum Station. It’s all about starting up that pitch and building the clientele up again. I’m saving to get some new glasses and a few other things that I need.
I also do a bit of Radio Skid Row every now and then. Today we talked about the cost of petrol, and I just said you’ve got to consider that it costs money to get the ocean liner here, to feed the crew, and they’ve got to be paid, then the transfer to the tank truck, they’ve got to be paid too, the whole thing. So my point was, what we’re being taxed goes back into the community, yeah?
I read quite a bit. Reading is my relaxation, my hobby. If there’s a book I really like, I go back and get a hard copy. I’m reading Germaine Greer at the moment. I love her work. She really gets into the nitty gritty of it. William S Burroughs, I would have to say, is one of my favourite writers. I’ve read several books by him. One that struck me as quite informative was Junkie. It has him lining up and getting methadone. That’s been around for dog’s years now, but people don’t realise that in the war years and the Depression people were still being junkies.
I also took on a small philosophy project based around Plato. It becomes quite intrinsic into my writing – writing is a passion. My reading of Plato is that there’s only one layer of man and three layers of woman. When I’m writing about a male, I have to get myself into that character.
I’m really happy that people like my writing. I learned how to put together a story when I was in Melbourne with The Big Issue. We had a guest author, and my article was seen as good and was published. That’s going back a long time. Now, I’m writing a lot of life experience through fiction.
Julie sells The Big Issue at Museum Station, Sydney
Interview by Tim Hall
Photo by Brent Lewin
Published in ed#761
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