by Gary Ramage
The last time I’d switched from being a photographer and field leader into a full-on Canberra-based manager, it had been a debacle. I had disliked the experience intensely and the people I’d managed didn’t think much of it either. In many respects, the editor positions in the media are more stressful than the operational jobs. Their phones are always on and they have to make many decisions – big and small – with the margin for error getting smaller as you approach deadline. These people aren’t usually noticed for all the good decisions they make, but they sure get targeted for their mistakes.
I had bigger decisions to make: to keep doing the Sydney tabloid work or go to Canberra and Parliament House, where the job would be politics. I had no view on that. I didn’t know anything about politics, I didn’t know about parliament and I had no idea what the culture was with the media in Canberra. So I was neutral about the work, except that I really liked the Tele tabloid culture and pace. But it was the management thing that got me. While I was ambitious, I didn’t know if I wanted to manage again.
This all coincided with a massive life-change on the romance front during 2006. Ali – the friend I’d made at Herford in Germany – came back into my life like a whirlwind. After I left the army, I’d taken some time in Scotland to see my family, and Ali – who was back living in Scotland after her Germany posting – had invited me to have a few drinks in Edinburgh with her good friend Tim. The Edinburgh Festival was on and we drank at these amazing pubs along the Royal Mile and around the Grassmarket, pubs older than white settlement of Australia. It turned into a big night and Ali’s friends took her home while I wandered, drunk, around Leith. Six months later she was in Sydney to see a friend and we went for dinner. And whammo! It turned out we weren’t just friends. Ali is an intelligent and beautiful redhead, and I’m lucky to have her by my side. It amazes me now that I supressed my attraction to her for so long. It also turned out that we got along on a new level now I was a mainstream media operator. The media types have their own way of communicating and socialising and now I was in that. So while I was negotiating with Darbs and other managers about the Canberra position, I was in love and trying to work out what to do with a new girlfriend who lived in the UK. Halfway through 2006, we met in Thailand at a beautiful resort and I clarified things by proposing. It wasn’t terribly romantic, but it was effective. I still had some hang-ups about previous failed relationships and I did not carry out the proposal as I should have. Ali still gives me shit about my feeble attempt and rightly so. She said ‘yes’ and we agreed to get her out to Australia and have the marriage before the end of the year.
I went back to Australia, got back to work, and the discussions went on: Darbs said I could go down to Parliament House for 10 days and have a trial. So I went down and was shocked at how many rules the photographers operate under in the parliament. It was a new world and at one point I was looking around the Press Gallery, wondering if this place could handle what I bring to the job. It was a pensive drive back to Sydney but really the opportunity was once in a lifetime. A senior position in the Press Gallery isn’t offered to everyone and when I got back to Sydney I told Darbs, ‘I’ll do it.’ So now all I had to do was inform Ali of the decision. Which I may have left a little late for her liking. When I told her she’d be coming to Canberra, not Sydney, there was a long pause (perhaps a phone malfunction?) before she entered into a robust discussion on her involvement in the decision. As it turned out, she supported my new role, on the basis you only get offered such a job once. Canberra turned out to be a great move for us both because she scored a job at the ABC’s Canberra newsroom. Ali arrived a week later, and we got married on 9 December. I organised the whole thing by myself, and even found an old hall – that looked vaguely like a Scottish castle – for the wedding. And why did I need a ‘castle’? Because I got married in my kilt. Why I kept the ponytail, I have no idea, but back then I thought it was okay. If I had the power of time travel I would definitely have it chopped off.
New wife, new life, and a whole new learning curve.
Learning curve? It was like climbing a cliff. One moment I’m chasing crims through Western Sydney, and the next thing I’m photographing suits at question time. When I arrived to become the new bureau chief photographer, I hadn’t really acquainted myself with the rules of photography at Parliament House. Worse than that, I didn’t give a shit. I was there to take photos for the News Corp newspaper group, which meant distinct styles and regional interests served out of one photographic bureau. In my conversations with the senior people at Holt Street about this job, I’d initially complained that it looked bloody boring, and they said, ‘That’s why we want you there.’
So I had a clear mandate to lead a charge from the front, but there were so many rules. There’s a difference, for instance, between how you can photograph the House of Reps and the Senate. In the Reps you are restricted to a square cut-out through which you can photograph the chamber and the MPs. I can’t go into the public galleries in the Reps. When I first started there in 2007, the rules said you couldn’t shoot photographs from the Press Gallery – that is, you couldn’t shoot from where the journalists were sitting and listening. Andrew Meares and I got that changed a few years ago, so now I can shoot from the centre of the chamber, while my News colleagues Kym Smith and Ray Strange can be shooting from either side. The Senate has another set of rules for photographers which says we can’t shoot a senator who doesn’t have the call and is not also on their feet. And we have to shoot with wide angles in the Senate: we have to include the whole chamber, not just an individual, while the in-house TV broadcast can shoot whatever they want. So much for freedom of speech. In the Reps we can shoot anyone, at any time.
Access to politicians was also a minefield when I first started there. I was used to the way photography is done in Sydney: take what you can and worry about the lawyers later. But with the federal politicians, it was entirely their call. There were designated areas around the compound – courtyards, entranceways and gardens, mostly – where we could shoot politicians. Everywhere else was off limits. In those days, John Howard had a confident and assertive way with the media, and his ministers followed his example. Rudd was also available to the media, but it got worse from there: Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull all have – or had – a very controlled media apparatus, with more ‘messages’ and less communication. A lot of people didn’t like Howard for their own reasons, but boy, he knew how to communicate his ideas.
I’d been at Parliament House for a few months and we were leading to an election. The ALP had a new leader, Kevin Rudd. Rudd had enjoyed a few cycles of strong polling and he’d been enjoying himself in question time. Then one morning the latest poll bounced for Howard and he was back in the lead. I found an angle on Howard so his face would be in line with Rudd’s back, and I waited. He smirked at Rudd and very quickly pushed his glasses up his nose with his middle finger. I got the split-second shot where the smirk and the finger came together and the team at The Australian went nuts for it, ran it big on the front page the next day.
The Prime Minister was not amused, apparently. My predecessor, John Feder, once took a shot of Peter Costello leaning back and Howard leaning over him as if he was … well, it was done with tongue in cheek, and it was a little naughty and very funny. It got sent all around the media world by an unnamed source, only to arrive at the office of the Prime Minister the next day. They were not amused.
Peter Costello, by the way, was a real warrior when it came to the media. For days after I took that shot of Howard lifting his middle finger at Rudd, if I was up in the gallery Costello would eyeball me, give that famous smirk, and push his middle finger up across his eyebrow. It takes a stirrer to know one.
***
Barely had I started at Parliament House than we were into 2007, which really meant the federal election and Kevin 07. I was put on the Kevin Rudd campaign, which I assumed was going to be a lot of getting on and off planes and buses, and spending each night in a hotel
. I got a few insider tips from people about how it was going to play and how I had to prepare. But I wasn’t prepared for how fatigued you get living like this, and after a week on the trail I had a new respect for campaigning politicians. You learn quickly that for someone to be a prime minister in this country they have to have stamina way beyond the normal. They have to cover a continent, and wherever they go they have to be charismatic, and it often isn’t just their own barrow they have to push but that of the local member who they’re supporting in the campaign. I’d worked some really bad hours in some really bad places by the time I covered Rudd in 2007, and I can tell you that man was a cyborg: armies of advisers, photographers, TV crews and journos were left exhausted in his wake, and you’d see Rudd standing there in the lobby of the hotel at ten o’clock at night, briefing some hapless journo on how his story could have been better weighted.
I spent six weeks with Rudd on the campaign and I still have my Kevin 07 flag signed and hanging in the office. I never really got close to politicians, but Rudd seemed like a good bloke. He was always nice to me. When travelling on the VIP jet he would wander down the back and ask me what I thought was my best photo of the day. His wife Thérèse was lovely, as was his daughter Jessica. Rudd would eventually be put through the wringer by his own party, but I never heard him say a bad word about anyone, and his family always treated me warmly, even at the end of his reign.
The election in November 2007 was my blooding, and then I was into the job and running. I had a slightly different approach from some photographers at Parliament House. For me the photo call was merely the time when the politician would be standing in a specific spot. I liked to control the shoot and the images, and I found that some of the politicians went along with that, especially when they realised that they came out looking okay if they did it my way. The photo calls where you turn up for the opening of an envelope and some PR hack is telling you how it has to play? Forget that. I just ignore them and by now most of them have got the idea.
Rudd was a natural in front of the camera and he set a tone and a standard for dealing with the media that his team probably found hard to match. When Howard led from the front, he had people like Costello, Nelson, Vanstone, Pyne and Abbott, all of whom had the confidence to match the boss. Rudd’s charisma wasn’t really matched by his team. He was very accommodating to me once he liked the way he looked in my photographs, and in those couple of years that he was PM, I guess you could see how he annoyed advisers and colleagues. If he wanted to do the photo, he’d do the photo. He’d give us the time to do it properly, and that wasn’t always convenient for the people around him.
***
If you think becoming bureau chief made me a different person, think again. I may have been photographing politicians by day, but I was still always on the lookout. I still loved a stir. I was in London in 2010, following Rudd, and SBS TV cameraman Tom Finnigan and I were the pool (him for TV, me for stills). We had to follow Rudd to Buckingham Palace one morning and I was like a kid in a candy shop. I can appear irreverent to many people, but I was deeply impressed, walking through the halls and antechambers where the public don’t go. Every corner of that building is filled with history: the art, the statues, the suits of armour, flags, ensigns, memorabilia of the royal family. It’s incredible.
Anyway, we walked down this long corridor towards Her Majesty’s morning room, with all these dukes and earls looking down on us from paintings the size of buses. We got to the end of the hallway and the aides came out and apologised to Rudd: the Canadian PM was running over time, but would you please come this way, sir?
Tom and I couldn’t accompany Rudd where he was going. It was a protocol thing. So the bobby with us put us in a holding pattern. Then the bobby’s radio crackled and he looked up and told us that Prince William was about to come up to see his grandmother.
‘I’m sorry, sirs,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to put you in the dog room.’
‘You’re taking the piss,’ I said. Our only job was to get a bunch of shots of Kev and Liz. That was the gig. It wasn’t complicated.
He walked us into this room and I started giggling as soon as I set foot in the place. Couldn’t help myself, and it spread to Tom. We were just pissing ourselves: this small room had one tiny window and a huge fireplace, with a portrait of two corgis above the mantel. The bobby sensed trouble and warned us as he left, ‘Watch it, you two. There’s a CCTV system.’
Yep, the dog room was under surveillance.
Tom took some footage of me in that room: I’m all spruced up in a shirt and tie and a fifty-quid suit from Marks & Spencer, and doing a piece to camera from the corgi room. I couldn’t help myself. I said to Tom, ‘Roll camera,’ and I stood with the corgis’ portrait behind me and started to whisper and take the piss. The video was sent to the Tele as a piss-take. I thought the lads would find it funny. Unfortunately for me the paper put the video on the web. It’s still on YouTube and I’m still persona non grata with the royals.
The Prime Minister’s office took calls about the bloody colonials who couldn’t respect protocol. The week before, President Obama had put his arm around the Queen, so Buckingham Palace was sensitive about it. The English tabs were hounding me, trying to get an interview about those corgi room pics. When they couldn’t get hold of me, they rang Garry Linnell, editor-in-chief at the paper. They expected him to be outraged, but he told one of the reporters, ‘It wouldn’t be the first time Gary’s been in the doghouse.’
PHOTO: GARY RAMAGE COLLECTION
Doing a piece to camera from the dog room.
***
So I was living this split personality: the hunter who had a serious job, the sensible manager of photographers at Parliament House who could pursue with the best of them. And that’s the way News liked it. It would go like this: I got a call on Australia Day 2009, around 8 pm, and it was picture editor Jeff Darmanin in Sydney with a tip-off. Ivan Milat, the serial killer of backpackers who was serving seven life sentences in the Goulburn super-max prison, was on the move. Apparently he’d cut off a finger so he could go to the hospital and get some attention.
I raced up to Goulburn in the News RAV4, which was always crammed with equipment. I waited and waited at the side entrance where the ambulances arrive. There was an ambulance there, but no action. Hospitals don’t release details about patients except to next of kin, which is annoying for photographers. Nothing was going on. But with no warning – and just as I was about to drive away – the main doors of the hospital opened and out walked this guy in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. In the four seconds it took him to walk to the back seat of the waiting police car, I brought the camera up level and got him. And then just as quickly, he was gone. As the police car moved away an ABC TV crew turned up and were really unhappy with the outcome. News had an exclusive on that one and it reinforced the way it goes in this business: you can wait all day and finally you have a few seconds to take the shot. It’s a very thin line between coming up empty and getting the front page.
17
Embedding
Despite my new role, the conflict stuff wasn’t over for me. That was my deal with Holt Street: if I could get on top of my brief and get other photographers up to speed, they’d let me go on deployments. I was lucky that in 2009 the ADF decided to trial the ‘embedding’ of media in the same way that the Americans do. The Australian military had never embraced embedding journalists in actual combat operations. About the closest they’d come was allowing the press into a media detachment – such as we had in Somalia – and making the patrol leaders and commanders available for interviews.
For the 2009 trial embedding, Defence invited three press people who had experience in conflict zones: Ian McPhedran from News, Sally Sara from the ABC and me. The gig would start in Tarin Kowt, at Australia’s base in Afghanistan, and then we’d be taken out to one of the forward operating bases (FOBs). We weren’t given that information before we left. As it happened, I went ahead of the others. I’d spent t
he back end of 2008 working my contacts in the US Army to get some embedded time with a frontline infantry unit. I think conflict photography is important – I feel sort of responsible for ensuring there’s a document of what happens in the field. The Americans agreed to put me with the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division in Logar Province. I didn’t really know what they were going to be up to – Logar didn’t have the heavy reputation of Uruzgan or Helmand at that point – but I asked around and it became clear the 10th were going to be busy: their job was to establish new patrol bases and dominate an area which had fallen under Taliban control.
I didn’t see a lot of action with the 10th, but they woke me up to some realities that the media don’t always grasp. I was first flown into the unit’s patrol base at midnight, in a Chinook, which as it turned out was a blessing in disguise. I was originally rostered to drive up in convoy with the headquarter elements. I had been assigned a seat in an American heavy troop carrier called the MRAP, or mine-resistant ambush- protected vehicle. It does the job for the Americans that the Bushmaster does for Australia. I was pleased with the shift to the helicopter option, because when the convoy arrived at the base two days later, the vehicle I was supposed to be in had taken a direct hit from a roadside IED. Most of the damage was on the side I should have been sitting on.