Small Bamboo (24 page)

All of these friends helped me become the person I am today. Pia and Nichola remain my closest girlfriends, but I’m still in contact with most of the mates I made at Hollywood Senior High School. I am so grateful my parents didn’t listen to me when I begged them to move me to another school. We were the last class to graduate from Hollywood before it closed. The class of 2000. The final day was sad but I felt kind of special to be among the school’s last students.

I treasure my high school journal where many of my friends have written their thoughts about me. Reading through it now still makes me smile. Here are some of my favourite comments:

Pia: ‘You’ve been with me through the hard times and right by my side for the good times. YOU ARE MY GOOD TIMES! . . . Imagining you in times ahead is so easy for me because I feel I’ve never known someone like you. We are like two peas in a pod!’

Nichola: ‘You always know how to have fun and you never sulk. Through bad times Trace you always come out the other side being cheery and glowing.’

Jen: ‘You were the person who dragged me out of my downward spiral and lifted me up to see the sky. For that I am extremely grateful.’

Jeremy: ‘School is finished but our friendship hasn’t and we’ll keep raging to our older years.’

It’s ironic, I think, when I read back through some of the messages. I was at my lowest point when I entered high school and was trying to find people who would help me out of the darkness. As it turns out, they were also looking for the same thing and I was able to help them too—we’re so lucky we found each other. It’s been a while since we left high school, but I still love them today as I did back then. And as Jeremy predicted, we’re still raging in our thirties.

16
THE JOURNO

I always wanted to be a flight attendant. I loved flying and I wanted to travel the world and see different places. I first went on a plane when I was two years old and then throughout my childhood my family travelled often. My parents took Trevor and me to Asia, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam. Of course, we took all those flights to Melbourne to visit the family as well. When the plane landed I didn’t want to get off. I wanted to be in the air all the time.

By the time I reached high school that ambition had started to fade, but I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. I was determined, though, to work out what I was passionate about. Towards the end of Year 8, I wrote down a list of my subjects and started weighing up what I was good at. My grades were good in English, but I wasn’t doing well in mathematics and science. That at least ruled out the likes of medicine and commerce.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed my drama classes. Not surprisingly, I hated the subject at first because I didn’t like being in front of an audience. But I pushed myself. I knew it would help me. My time in those drama classes, with the other students and a positive teacher, really gave me the confidence boost I needed. I became a much more outgoing person. For a little while there, I even toyed with the idea of becoming an actor and enrolled in an acting course based in West Perth. But I was never committed to it; the passion just wasn’t there.

My parents’ love of television meant we watched a lot of it when I was younger. The nightly news was guaranteed. It was the era of Terry Willesee and Tina Altieri. Every Sunday night we tuned into
60 Minutes
and watched Mike Munro and Richard Carleton. I was in awe of the journalists. They were sent into some dangerous situations but were still calm and composed as they reported the story.

‘Dad, I think I want to become a journalist,’ I announced on one of these Sunday evenings at the end of Year 8. ‘I watch the news and it really excites me. I want to do what they do.’

My father was taken aback. He’d never thought one of his children might become a journalist. The profession had never crossed his mind. Many Asian parents in those days pushed for their child to become a doctor or pharmacist or accountant or lawyer. I know several of our family friends who have gone down that path, but they are a hell of a lot smarter than I am. I think my parents just assumed I would follow what they considered the ‘traditional’ careers. Of course, they were very supportive about my choice, though my dad did have some valid concerns. He realised it was a very difficult industry to get into, there weren’t a lot of jobs available, and I wouldn’t have many options if I didn’t make it. When I was in Year 10, he relayed his concerns to my English teacher during a parent–teacher meeting.

‘Tracy wants to become a journalist,’ he told her. ‘To be honest with you, I don’t know how she’ll go. I’m a little worried. What do you think?’

‘It would be a great career for her, Mr Vo,’ my teacher replied. She acknowledged that job opportunities would be limited, but she believed I would be prepared to work hard. ‘Her grades in English are very good and she has the right attitude. I think she’ll be okay.’

That year, as part of the school curriculum, I got the opportunity to do three days of work experience at Channel Nine in Perth. It was daunting walking into the newsroom for the first time, but so exciting. I met all the journalists who hadn’t been sent out on the road yet. I sat at a desk and read the newspaper before I was eventually sent out with the court reporter; I can’t remember her name. I followed her and her cameraman for the day and it was busy. I didn’t realise how much time was spent in a car, driving from one location to the next. After a few hours in court, we were sent to a house fire and then the reporter had to pick up a couple of interviews for other journalists. I must admit I didn’t know what a journalist actually did every day. The reporter explained that journalists were always out on the road; sitting in the newsroom was rare unless you were producing the bulletin. One day was never the same as the next. You could be at a crime scene one day and interviewing a movie star the next. You had to be flexible too, she said, and be able to deal with all kinds of people. I thought,
How exciting to have a different experience every day! There’s no other job like this!

Day two at Channel Nine was a little quieter so I spent some time sitting beside the chief of staff. This is probably the toughest job in a newsroom. The person in this position is in charge of all the journalists, camera crews, producers and logistics. They’re the first people in the newsroom, the ones who set up the day. I watched the chief of staff work the phones, which rang nonstop. Then the sports presenter, Michael Thomson, was about to head out for an interview and the chief of staff asked him if I could tag along.

Thommo was lovely and took time out to answer my questions and make sure I understood everything. But the highlight of the day was the interview he was doing—with Peter Matera, a West Coast Eagles player and highly regarded wingman. I was a huge Eagles supporter and I still am. I went home that day, starstruck and thinking, ‘What a cool day! This is what I want to do!’

After my three days at Channel Nine, I had to do another two days of work experience elsewhere, so I chose a family friend’s travel agency. Here, I sat at a desk all day. There was a lot of paperwork and the time went by so slowly. I remember constantly looking at the clock. The three days at Channel Nine had felt like a few hours, while the two days at the travel agency felt like a week. It further cemented my decision that I wanted to be a journalist. No office job for me, thanks.

Through my last two years in high school, I got as much work experience in the media as I could. I took any job as long as I was in the vicinity of journalists or a newsroom. I answered phones as a volunteer at 94.5FM. I returned to Channel Nine several times for work experience and followed journalists around. But despite volunteering for all these broadcast media outlets, I wanted to get into print. I wanted to write. I read the newspapers every day. I got excited if I saw a story with a by-line by someone of Vietnamese background.

My relatives, however, thought being a journalist meant being on television, so from the time my parents told them about my career choice, it became a bit of a family joke. In Melbourne, Uncle Five nicknamed me Lee Lin Chin—he loved watching SBS
World News Australia
and hoped that one day I would work for them. Uncle Ut would parody the nightly sign-off in his best newsreader voice—‘Tracy Vo, National Nine News’—which was hilarious at the time but seems quite prophetic now.

But during these fun times I also discovered that my interest in journalism runs in the family. All my uncles and aunts kept abreast of the news, both locally and worldwide, a trait they probably inherited from my grandfather. In an email many years later, Uncle Seven spoke about my grandfather’s interest in the media:

Your grandfather happened to ask me about life and about politics in Canada, and especially in politics, incidentally I did mention the TV series
W5
. He expressed a lot of pleasure and interest about the title
W5
, which refers to the Five ‘Ws’ of journalism: Who, What, Where, When and Why. It is the longest-running news magazine/documentary program in North America and the most-watched program of its type in Canada. Writing this email will certainly make him smile up there, showing his amusement as well as his happiness, because his granddaughter just happens to be a successful journalist in Australia.

Whenever I think about how proud my grandfather would be, his smile, I know I made the right choice.

In my final year, I grabbed every opportunity I could to write, even if it was only remotely journalistic. Of course I got involved in Hollywood Senior High School’s
Year Book
. As well as being part of the committee, I threw my hand up to write three articles: a tribute to a great mate of ours, an entertainment-style piece on the Year 12 ball, and a feature about one of our school camping trips. These were my first attempts at writing and looking back today, they’re ones I’d like to forget. They’re terrible. But I’m glad I gave it a go from that early age; it was fulfilling and I really enjoyed it. And it was just the beginning.

I was accepted into Curtin University, a leading Australian university based in the southern Perth suburb of Bentley, to study a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in journalism. I had read about the course at Curtin and thought it would be perfect for me. The university had its own newspaper and radio station so I would be able to get hands-on experience. The newspaper grabbed my attention and in the second year of uni I enrolled in the print course. Students had the opportunity to produce and write articles for the university newspaper, printed twice a semester, a process I found exciting and something I really enjoyed getting my teeth into. Not all submissions were published, so when my short article on dental health featuring my cousin Diem, who is a dentist, made it into an edition of the newspaper, I was stoked. After that, all I wanted to do was work in print.

I was so disinterested in television and radio that when I was told I had to do a broadcast subject in my second semester, I asked my course coordinator whether I could make up the unit by doing more work in print journalism instead, even though I’d already done all the print courses. No, he said, so I chose radio and avoided television altogether. I was a reluctant student in the radio course, doing only what I needed to pass the unit, until I met Les Welsh. Les was one of the lecturers in radio and also the news editor at the university station, Curtin FM. As part of the unit, we had to work at the station under his guidance.

My first day at Curtin FM was a buzz. I loved the tight deadlines and the sense of urgency. I enjoyed writing shorter scripts and pulling out grabs to accompany a report. The more time I spent there, the more I enjoyed radio. Les was a great mentor, and his passion for the medium would soon rub off on me. I spent all my free time at the station. I wrote scripts for the hourly bulletins and went on the road to press conferences. I got firsthand experience of what life as a radio journalist would be like, and I loved every minute.