Assignment Papua New Guinea - 1968-75
Advertising was not my first career choice. I’d wanted to be a traveler and a journalist. But I couldn’t get a job in journalism because I didn’t have a university degree. Advertising was my next choice - it was creative and better paid than journalism but I never got to the “better paid part”. I spent five years in the ad business learning copywriting and media and printing and design and finally I was an account executive selling the American dream that had become Australia’s. I felt a dark cloud descending. And as it thickened around me I struggled to find a way to escape. I thought about inland Australia. Mining companies paid well and life was rough in the desert. I considered joining the army, something to initiate and toughen and help me escape the malaise I felt. But the war in Vietnam was in the headlines every day and Australians were dying in a distant land, that made no sense and I quickly dropped the idea. And then, one day an old school friend s