Latest / Salt of the Earth / Ep 103: Libby Price _ Part A

Transcript

Ep 103: Libby Price _ Part A · Salt of the Earth

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Talt of the Earth Farm Story, where the heart of farming comes to life.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: John Howe was incredible.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: He walked into the Radio Current Affairs offices and said, Joel Lippy, I said, Yes, I'm having I mainly said off, I like to do my homework.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: What a life from Danny Fegan, a past guest and a damn good storyteller.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now today we're going behind the scenes in radio with one of the most recognizable voices in rural Australia, Libby Price.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: From her early days in the Adelaide Hills to an outstanding career across radio and TV.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Best known for ABC's Country Hour and now Ace Radio's Country Today.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Libby's journey has been anything but ordinary.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: She's interviewed Prime Ministers and even had John Howard approach her, not the other way around, and built a reputation as a tough, no-filter interviewer.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not all highlights.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: This one will educate, inform, and entertain.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Libby Price, good to see you.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Great to see you.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to preface this by saying I'm so impressed with your research.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well done.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I know more about me than I did before.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Libby, your voice has been out there for us all to hear for a long time.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Guess I don't Google myself.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Libby, I want to go back a few years, just a few.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Where did you grow up?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in the Sterling District Hospital in the Adelaide Hills and grew up around there.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Went to primary school there and fairly sort of upper middle class upbringing, and went to the private school that my mother went to and my sister went to, and hated that.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I persuaded my father to let me go to a coeducational school that was very groovy.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: We wore desert boots and uh yes, and what are they called now?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Corduroy jeans.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it was that was great.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I I love school and education and uh wanted to be a vet, but was never just couldn't get physics and chemistry.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So then I thought I'd like to be a photojournalist, like my grandfather always bought the National Geographic, and I'd look at the fabulous photos of animals because I am animal obsessed, as you'll I'm learning that.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we've got two dogs sitting with us.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we better introduce uh Roger and Audrey.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Roger's at Labrador Kelpie Cross, he's hopeless kelpie's terrified of livestock, and Audrey is a 13-year-old Jack Russell that's rather deaf.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um Roger's very friendly, and we might hear Roger's tail banging the microphone shortly.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Did you grow up on the land at all?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Were you all folks in the line?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Dad was a printer.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we did grow up with Roger, leave him alone.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: You might just have to pat him until he goes back to sleep.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we did grow up with horses.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was a classic case of a friend of the family's was very horsey.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Dad knew nothing about horses.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: He bought my sister a pony.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I then got it and I became obsessed, and she didn't.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been my life obsession.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: The first year out of school, I did a year of teachers' college.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And when I did my orange?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, that was in Adelaide.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And after my first prep teaching, I decided that was a really bad idea.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, then I went to England and did my British Horse Society assistant instructor certificate in horses.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I came back, I was a bit at a loss of what to do.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I went off polo grooming, which was pretty rough.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Polo grooming.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you're the one that drives the truck that carts the horses around, then saddles them up, that feeds them while the wealthy polo players go and stay in nice hotels and you just hand them the horse.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, but it was a great way to see Southwest Australia.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's not true, it went up as far as Thunderwindy.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, I've got to do something where I can still have my love of horses.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought I'll go to Orange Ag College.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: They had a what was called then a farm secretarial course.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they then changed that to rural administration.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea for most of us young girls was to marry a farmer.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: How'd you go?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not so well.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it did, oh look, it's raining.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: How wonderful.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: It did get me a bit of a start in agriculture, and I then got a job with the ABC in the rural department.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really where it all began.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I found where I should have been all along.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I was very fortunate.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: I married a working-class Londoner instead.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sat next to him on a plane, and uh that was the beginning of a wonderful relationship until we divorced.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, right.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I had two children, and yeah, I we're still very good friends.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So hang on, you met on the plane.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get very personal here, aren't you?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, this is interesting.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was working for the ABC in Perth, presenting the country hour there.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Did you do it in the mid-80s?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Cadet ship over there, was it?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, but very quickly within the cadet ship, it was only 12 months before I was presenting the country hour there, which I did for several years.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And with the man who was to be my husband worked for the War Corporation, ironically, because he knew nothing about agriculture, but he was in the property division and he used to fly from Melbourne to Perth all the time.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's where we met.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was flying to um a wedding in the western districts of Victoria when we sat next to each other on the plane.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can probably hear the rain, that's lovely.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it went for a few storms, I think.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So love was in the air.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Love, or you mean the rain?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Love was in the air.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, well, not what you're thinking.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we met later after the wedding, and yeah.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Very happily married.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: We got married at Mark Lofty House in South Australia, and then I moved to Melbourne, left the ABC and started working at the Australian Wheat Board as a media person.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: So just going back to Western Australia, ABC, what sort of stories were you covering over there?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was an interesting time because the departments of agriculture were still very much the agronomist to go to.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we used to do a lot more interviews with government agronomists.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I became a lot more interested in the politics, and that was relatively new in the rural department.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: There wasn't that much of a push into that area.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'd already always been interested in politics.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a lot more involved with the what was, well, they're still called the Pass for a St and Grosiers Association.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: They have two organisations over there.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's also the West Australian Farmers Federation.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And never the Twain Shall meet.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they still like each other much.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the PGA was a lot more involved, as the name would suggest, with a lot of the large beef producers up north.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the Farmers Federation back then was a lot more to do with grain growers and the southwest of the state.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I brought in a bit more of politics into it, and it didn't make me very popular.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And at one point, the boss, we were at the Perth show having a few beers after the broadcast, and my boss told me that I was such a disappointment to the ABC.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: They sent me over there so that I'd either resign or he'd kick me in a gear.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I resigned on the spot, but was persuaded not to resign, and but we didn't ever get on.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I wasn't in that sense sad to leave ABC in Perth.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I loved Western Australia though, it was wonderful because we'd get beef cattle farmers from the Kimberley that'd fly their own planes down and say, Would you like to come for a ride and go up around the Kimberley for a couple of days?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we were allowed to do things like that.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: I also with the wheat board went on a trip to Egypt.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: We used to sell a lot of wheat to Egypt, and in those days, the wheat board would actually pay for silos to be built for them to store the grain they bought from us, and they were opening a new facility at Soharg in southern Egypt, which is where the Nile starts.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: It sort of counterintuitive, it flows northwards.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that was amazing.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um Bill Hayden was then foreign minister, he was there with his wife, I can't remember her name now, Dallas or something unusual.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they sat me next to her at dinner because we were the only women there.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was slightly awkward conversation.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: But they brought um uh a bullock out and slaughtered it as a festive thing, and blood was spurting everywhere, and I I swear Bill Hayden went white.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he was I thought he was gonna anyway.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: That that was um that was an interesting time.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: We went to Indonesia on the way back as well.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I had a few junkets.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Those were the days.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: So from WA back to Melbourne.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Melbourne, where I married, and while I was working at the Wheatboard, I was also doing casual work in the ABC Newsroom, and I kept just knocking on the door of Radio Current Affairs, and eventually got a job in Radio Current Affairs, and that was I would say my heydays really.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, so I got a job with Radio Current Affairs, and it was fabulous.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was there for five or six years and went from being one of a team of four, we had a permanent reporter up at Trades Hall in those days, to being what they called uh bureau chief, which sounded terribly important.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that was uh filing stories for AM, PM, and the world today on different shifts, so there was a lot of shift work.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you got on AM, that was it in a bit.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I had quite a few stories.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I got a bit of a reputation for being um a fairly tough interviewer.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I guess my father was always very straightforward and blunt, and I still am and don't realise quite often how blunt I am.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't seem to have that filter.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I've interviewed pretty much every prime minister from Malcolm Fraser right up to I interviewed John Howard.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't interview Kevin Rudd, which was a bit of a relief because I wasn't terribly fond of him.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Julia Gillard, very impressive.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: A good friend of mine, uh the late Tim Fisher.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Tim, I just I was just listening to a podcast from the ABC about diplomats, and he came up in conversation because they said how politicians would fly into a country and they'd be you know, given a list of priorities by the diplomats, and the softer politicians would kind of skip the difficult bits, and they said Tim Fisher never did.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: He always tackled the difficult issues.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: What a what a man to admire.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: An incredible man.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, both him and John Howard made some big decisions and tough ones, didn't they?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they did.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: They did.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: John Howard was incredible.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: He walked into the Radio Current Affairs offices and said, You're Libby.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yes, I am.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know me?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Oh, I like to do my homework.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I had interviewed him once before, but to remember that was incredible.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas Bob Hawke, I was never fond of him either, uh, very chauvinistic, went during the pilot strike.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was with Radio Current Affairs and we were at Kilmore for some reason.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked him a question and he leant down into the scrum of reporters and whispered in my ear, if you weren't so stupid, girly, you wouldn't ask a question like that.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And said, next question.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: It worked, I was intimidated.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, do you remember your first ever story?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was asked to do a story on the show bags at the was it the Sydney show?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just gobsmacked.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, oh, really?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then they wanted me to do a story on the horses at the show because I loved horses.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, nah, no.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it I was a slow learner to start off with.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of assumed we'd be trained and told more what to do rather than have to hit the ground running.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something I've always remembered with the reporters I've trained and employed over the years.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's always keep to the basics, keep it simple, don't try and be smart.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're here to tell a story for the person you're talking to to tell a story, and that's put me in pretty good stead.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well done.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's their story, isn't it?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's not a forum for you to sound like a smart ass.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell me about uh your interview with the ABC's Country Hour?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the interview for the job.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Were you a little bit brave, a little bit cheeky?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think you Yes, I think so.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: That they were a funny old bunch.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're no longer with us, any of them.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I can I won't mention names, but one was not a particularly pleasant little man.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Another one was a Scotsman, and all he wanted to do was name drop.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So being South Australian, I was able to talk about the McLaughlin's, and so that worked quite well.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then they said, Where do you see yourself in 10 years' time?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd never thought of a question like that.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was in my twenties and I didn't want to say married with children.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, Well, maybe in your job.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, anyway, I didn't ever do that.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I never ever wanted to be in management.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: They sent me on a management course course in Melbourne, and I said after the course they wanted an assessment from everyone on the course, and I said, Well, you've absolutely clarified in my mind that I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in going into management.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't very pleased with that either.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And at some point you had a move to TV.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had the one of the world's shortest periods as presenter of Radio National Drive.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they'd already asked two presenters, and I was the next one to go.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they didn't know what to do with me.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, I went on holidays for a couple of weeks and I came back to what was our old office, and someone had moved in.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, where am I meant to sit?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: She said, It's not my problem.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they put me in a little cupboard with a foam.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: I said, What am I meant to do now?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was so human.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it was awful.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was in my early 30s, I think.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think if I'd had children.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I had.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I said, I'd really like to go and work for TV.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to 730 Report for a while, and you know, just they weren't paying me.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: But they sent me to do um a live cross about something to do with Bill Kelty.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um on the basis of that, because once you've worked in radio, you can time out really quickly, you know how to stick to the point.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had to borrow a jacket, someone else's makeup.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: As you can see, I'm not big into dressing up, so uh, and on that basis I got a job and worked for 730 Report for three years.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I'll be honest, I didn't really enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: How was it working with Kerry O'Brien?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was Kerry's Whale the Highway, and they'd started a new national program with him as the presenter, and they wanted it to be really heavily produced.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we went everywhere with the film producer.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and if you didn't rip someone to bits, he wasn't satisfied.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: I did an interview with, I can't remember the chap's name, but he was he used to run the Australians against further Asian immigration.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And with the producer, we worked out what we're going to do, and we were going to do a bit of an Andrew Denton, throw them enough rope, and they'll hang themselves.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we just let him go.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Carrie was astonished that he said, you didn't challenge him.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I said, we didn't need to.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: He revealed what it was really like.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we didn't really see R2I.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't, oh, he probably wasn't even aware of it, but I didn't enjoy it.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And also you felt so removed from the production process with heavily produced longer form stories.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I just missed being able to do a good solid interview.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: You had to have everything in a 10-point plan written before you left the office.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought it was rather contrived.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there were also some, there was a he went through executive producers at a rate of knots.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: There were four in the three years I was there.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: In Melbourne.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: But those days, like TV was pretty cutthroat too.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you had to do what you had to do to get that lead story and beat the opposition, didn't you?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: I would then move to news and I preferred that because I preferred that sort of pressure and it was short and sharp without this interference from everybody else.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I really enjoyed TV news.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then my marriage broke up and I decided to sort of try to semi-retire, which didn't work terribly well.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not semi-retire, that's the wrong expression.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Slow down.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: And spend more time with my children.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was a single mother, so it was pretty hard.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I went back to more or less freelancing, and then I tried to get back into the rural department.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this is quite a funny story.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully he won't be listening.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: The head of the rural department was from Adelaide as well and lived in the Adelaide Hills and used to catch the same bus back up to the hills, which took over an hour in those days before the freeway.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we were the tough private school girls up the back of the bus throwing things around.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he was a bit younger than me from the Catholic school that we wouldn't talk to.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's just very Adelaide.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then he is head of the rule department.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I remember you on the bus.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh no.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it never went terribly well.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he just said you're overqualified.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I took things into my own hands and went to the state manager of radio and said, This is ridiculous.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I got back in, but he never liked me.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: You got back into radio and into country.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And how long were you with the country out?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: 12 years.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: 12 years.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he said I wouldn't last.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was great.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Ever regret leaving TV?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, never.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Radio's my love.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I made two documentaries with my father.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was a man that could do anything, just about a world champion yachtsman.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: He then went into flying planes.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: He was a bit like Toad of Toad Hall.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Anything shiny and new he liked.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he bought himself a camera at Channel 7 in Adelaide with selling gear.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: So he bought a little outfit and little editing machine and taught himself how to do it.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we did one on my second cousin Ronald Farron Price, who's a concert pianist who's now 96.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: So no longer playing.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's still alive.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so no longer playing.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then another one on a very well-known South Australian uh landscape painter David Dryden.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that one actually Ronald went to where the ABC bought it for a piffling amount.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um the Dryden one, which was much better, didn't.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, we had a good time.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh with the country out, you're covering state and national stories in in rural communities.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: What did that teach you about farmers in particular?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm probably going to sound rude.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that they can get caught up in a little bubble and not fully understand that they have a product they're producing that they need to sell and be aware of.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's a bit harsh, isn't it?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: I did go on a trip with the Agricultural, International Agricultural Journalists Association to Norway, and that was incredibly telling because being a wealthy country from oil, but also a country going back with the agriculture for many centuries, it's a belief in the culture of farming.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: So they have a dairy farm in the Arctic Circle the government pays for just to keep one going.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, the cows don't like it much.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the farmers are heavily subsidized.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: So from that point of view, we are truly probably one of the only agricultural systems in the world that isn't subsidized, or as you say, somewhere like India, where the government will act very quickly to impose tariffs if there's any political unrest.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that makes it a lot tougher.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing I've learned about farming is how much it's advanced since I started rural reporting.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's extraordinary.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you think that the wheat price is still about the same as it was 30 years ago, they've managed to still make money out of it by incr increasing the productivity.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at what farmers are doing in the Mali, that was considered marginal country.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: They've had fabulous rain again today, I think.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that is incredible.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And even the wool industry used to be a whole lot of crusty old bloke.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: In tweed coats running it.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the floor price was a stupid concept that had to, if they'd been sensible about it, but they just kept pushing the floor price up and up.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: They got greedy over it.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt that I thought John Kerran was an incredible Labour agriculture minister.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're not good at agriculture ministers for obvious reasons.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he did an incredible job at saying to the industry, this, this is, this can't keep going.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you do learn a lot over the years, but I do worry little that if they don't like to hear bad news, they don't listen.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I just did an interview today with a Roger, get down.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Roger's trying to give Darren kisses with an uh a fertilizer supplier in Horsham.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he said farmers are waiting for the fertilizer price to go down.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And within 15 minutes of someone saying the price is going to go down, he'll run out.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's just you've got to make decisions.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can't sit on a wing in a prayer.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: When you said we've got to keep getting more yield and so forth, it's a high-pressured industry now, isn't it?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're not getting the support like they need.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's incredible.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where I'm from in South Australia, the York Peninsula, we used to drive through there and think, oh, who wanted to live?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is like hell on earth, with those little white snails everywhere on fence posts and merino sheep standing in a corner panting.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking, oh, this is awful.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's really high-value cropping country.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think Australian farmers do an incredible job, but they just want to perhaps, I think the nuffled scholars, the stories they come back with.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's only so much we can get out of the soil and that land, isn't there?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like something's got to give at some stage.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: But technology is uh advancing at a rapid rate.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Was there ever a sliding doors moment for you?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, could you have possibly become a farmer?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: I did date a few, and no, I don't think it would have lasted.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love my history, I love literature, I love the arts.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think I could have been a farmer's wife.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'd always have to be myself.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've been single for a long time now, for 12 years now, and I'm 66.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm happy.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: I tried all the dating stuff.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: That was just a disappointment after it.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: The apps and so forth?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, RSPP.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Did you?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Good on you.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, done with that now.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's just boy, there are some strange men out there.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: I did, I've got one that's still a good friend.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: He went and got and married someone else, but that wouldn't have worked either.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Livia, you've been a voice a lot of farmers tuned into every day.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember doing a couple of video shoots, and one day in particular, I was out on a farm one morning, and the farmer said, I've got to be in having lunch by midday because the country hours on.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you were and that was a lot of farmers' daily routine.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very glad to hear that.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: You do sometimes feel like you're in an echo chamber just talking to yourself.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do love it, and I'll tell you one funny story.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: I did Riley's ride.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard the stories Manfesto River Festival.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we met at the sale yards in Corion and we loaded all our horses up onto a cattle truck to take them up to Tom Grogan Station.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had a 17-1-hand horse who didn't fit very well.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, uh an old timer turned up and said, I heard you were here, I really want to come and meet you.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, that's lovely.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I listen to you all the time.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: I just love your voice.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, thank you very much.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward that night around the campfire, and these uh people from Sydney who were on the ride said, after a few drinks, okay, we know you're a singer.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sing us a song.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: What on earth are you talking about?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: They said, We heard that bloke say he loves your voice, he listens to you all the time.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to be come on, sing us a few country songs.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: You really want me to sing?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm a terrible singer.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I started singing and they believed that I wasn't a country singer.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh dear.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: But there are a lot of topics that you covered that really mattered on current everyday stories for rural communities.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: For example, Black Saturday, I know it was a big one for you.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: What stays with you about that?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that and Port Arthur.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're very, it's easy to trigger me.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget my father after Port Arthur, which was before Black Saturday, came over from Adelaide to visit.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as he walked in the door, I just burst into T.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: He said, What's wrong?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, I just got to tell you all about Port Arthur.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't go, but I was back.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: You used to have to log all the interviews that came in.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you didn't have a IT to or AI to do it for you.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: That was pretty tricky.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: We went on a road trip for Black Saturday, and after the first country hour, they put us on Melbourne Metro Radio as well, which is a real, you know, uh tick.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we ran for two hours, not one.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you're doing live interviews?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: There was all live then.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, oh well, the country hour still is.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget uh Alex on the the Oval, there was still ash falling on us and a notice board there with photographs of people.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you've seen this person, uh let us know.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And people were dropping off things that they thought for help were helpful.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: There was a huge pile of mobile phone charges.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and one bloke that I spoke to, elderly gentleman, I'm sure he he would have passed by now, but he used to take some of the kids to play golf once a week.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a young boy about 12 years old, and he'd do nine holes with his kid and show him how to play golf, and then he'd take him to the coke machine in the golf club and give him a coke to take home.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the whole family died.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And stories of one person trying to escape Kinglake, actually, Marysville was the most spooky one because you walked in and they'd be drove in and there'd be one perfectly fine house and then the rest of the street was gone.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: But this Kinglake person, they they went with their neighbours, they said, let's go, we'll try and get out, because there's only one way in and one way out.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they were driving into a huge explosion of flames, and the car in front of him just wasn't there when the flames disappeared, it was just gone.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: So they turned around, and by the time they got back, they were just on the rims of their wheels.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: There were no no really tires left.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: So this car that disappeared that was only like 100 metres in front of them.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, gone.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Just disappeared.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, the whole family.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: The stories that we were getting as producers, because we we were all hands on deck for that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was actually at a horse competition in Ballarat when it started.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I drove all the way from Ballarat, dropped my horse off on the peninsula where I used to keep it, into where I lived in Melbourne, straight into the office.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we just worked flat out.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the story is one woman rang up and said, um, in tears and said, I can't get my mother on the phone.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: She rang me and said she'd left with the good crockery on the front seat.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: We can't find her.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next thing came, a report came in that a woman had been found dead in a car with a crockery.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just and we had to deal with that, and a lot of that stuff didn't go to air.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got to say, the most marvellous broadcaster for those situations was John Fane.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't always agree with John, very kind-hearted person.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just found he used to sort of like a dog with a bone and get to the point where it's so aggressive and as if a politician was suddenly going, Oh, you got me, and spill their guts.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's just, oh John, back off.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: But in those sort of situations, his heart and soul was in it, and he was a marvellous man because we worked on the same floor.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: The rural department was on the same floor as 774.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we all knew each other really well, and I became really good friends with Red Simons, um, who was just over the boards.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we could he could hear what I was saying because I've got such a loud voice.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: So he was used to come over for a chat.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, they were great days.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those disasters now when there are fires.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: I always say to people, don't stay, leave now.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you speak to a lot of people that have gone through that have survived the fires and they said they'd never do it again.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: They would just go.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: We learn a lot, and I hope we've learned a lot from those fires.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you still see mainly in other states, people running around with footy shorts and thongs on.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, oh my god, I don't believe.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's part A with Libby Price.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: What a journey already.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: In part B, we go deeper.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: We pick up right after Black Saturday and ask the big question: how do you report on tragedy and stay human?
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: There are raw moments, plenty of laughs, some incredible behind the scenes stories, and Libby's take on journalism, farming, and life today.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you come back for part B.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: You won't want to miss it.