Author Archives: Sophie

The bossiest shop in Rockhampton.

Written by . Posted on February 5, 2012. Filed under The Blog.. 1 Comment.

When I was in high school, Rockhampton’s East Street Mall was a terrifying place of  empty shops and slippery tiles, populated by drunks and aggressive homeless people.
They’ve cleaned it up a bit over the past five years, but the long-time retailers are jaded, tough as nails and totally over dealing with the dodgy East Street regulars.

My sister was on the hunt for a costume for a fancy dress party, so we took a deep breath and headed into the costume shop on the mall. As well as carrying a wide range of costumes and Bundaberg Rum merchandise, this shop was also home to a large number of passive-aggressive and downright bossy signs.

Something tells me they have a problem with shoplifters.

My week in photos: rain, music, rellies and Vodafail.

Written by . Posted on January 29, 2012. Filed under The Blog.. No comments.


My love of playing guitar is greater than my longing to have manicured hands like other adult women.
Blisters on my left hand are from playing bass, grazes on my right hand from playing an acoustic. Shred life.


I played at a house show in North Rockhampton on Australia Day, along with Lockjaw (pictured above). The small punk/hardcore  community here makes me feel so excited and so hopeful about life and creativity. I think there’s a lot to be said for the punk ethic of just jumping in and getting shit done.


The rains have come a few months late, which is fine by me. In fact, I wouldn’t have minded if they’d taken a year off after last year’s floods.
Not long after I took this photo, a tree in my front yard was struck by lightning and crashed down where my car usually stands. Ah, Queensland.


The first Benjamin Family Circus for 2012 happened in Brisbane this weekend for my Granny’s 80th birthday.
My cousin Dommie put together a wonderful book of Granny’s life, featuring research my sister and I had worked on. I’ve written about Granny’s life before – it’s certainly been eventful.
Here’s Dad reading a letter he wrote to Granny (his mother) when he was four years old, which my cousin had put into the book.
My siblings and Granny are laughing because he isn’t sticking to the script.


I spent a large amount of time arguing with Vodafone this week. I’ve been with them since late 2005 and was really happy with their service until around 18 months ago. My Android phone has bricked itself for the third time in its 18 months of existence and since Rocky doesn’t have a Vodafail shop, I’ve been forced to use the relic pictured above for phone calls and texts.
I can’t do battle with their call centre as their service drops every second call I make. Yep, it’s really that bad. I’ve been communicating with their social media team and emailed their tech support with a job number, but haven’t received any contact in 4 days. Telecommunications ombudsman, here I come.

More pics of everything over at Flickr.

2011 in good reads.

Written by . Posted on January 13, 2012. Filed under The Blog.. No comments.

I was an incredibly nerdy bookworm all through my early childhood and primary school.
I had the reading age of a 16-year-old by the time I was five, and I remember being taken up to the Year 3′s classroom when I was in Year 1, so they could see how badly they were being owned by one of the smallest Year 1s in the school.
Unfortunately this led to some pretty hectic bullying, which I tried to avoid by spending all my lunch breaks in the school library. Having no friends also left me with plenty of spare time, which I spent volunteering at the local town library after school.
Yes, I really was that much of a nerd.

I ditched recreational reading throughout most of my teens. This was mostly because I’d been seduced by learning guitar and music in general, although going to boarding school meant I had friends and therefore a social life for the first time ever.
While music and I have had some great times, I’m stoked to be reading regularly again.
Once a nerd, always a nerd.

Here are some of the reads of last year that have stuck with me. You can check out my favourite reads of 2010, if you’re super-keen.

Read More »

New Years.

Written by . Posted on December 31, 2011. Filed under The Blog.. No comments.

Bringing in the new year with the wankiest of all wanky ciders. It's so wanky the brewers won't even ship it out of Melbourne.

I start every working weekday with bleary eyes, saving blank news script templates with the broadcast area, time and date. Today’s would’ve been MKY 630 311211 and RKY 630 311211. After a while the dates seem more like the Dewey Decimal System, a way of filing work rather than marking time.

I feel like I’ve lived three years in the past 12 months.

I spent last New Years Eve taking social photos in Toowoomba for my then-new job as flood waters washed over Emerald and just under the floorboards of my family home. Ten days later the Toowoomba flash floods tore through the garden city and the Lockyer Valley, killing dozens and destroying entire towns. For me it was 14 hour days, mud, Xanax, gratitude and a steep learning curve.
Our family held our breath through February and March as my Dad received and recovered from open heart surgery.
My colleagues and I were made redundant just before Easter, and I spent most of May and June living in my car and working for the ABC on the Sunny Coast.
I started my new job in late June, which has been another vertical climb. I’ve moved house twice, cranked out 3 zines, 2 demo releases for one of my bands, joined a second band, got 2 tattoos, had a couple of one night stands and one way romances and mitigated mania and depression with medication, sleep and love.

I guess what I’m trying to say is the universe scoffs at the idea of organising days and nights into cycles of 7, 4, 12, 26, or 365 and I scoff with it.

I don’t scoff at love and good times though, so I hope there’s plenty of both in your life tonight.

Zine 6!

Written by . Posted on December 19, 2011. Filed under The Blog.. No comments.

Hello internet!
Issue 6 is done and dusted.

I’ve been in one city and job for the past six months, which is some kind of record for me. Issue 6 is about being punched in the face by life and mortality, early starts, trolling idiots on the internet and features the usual interviews, conversations and pro tips for life.

Copies will be in stock in stores in Brisbane and Melbourne, but Smells Like Zines in Toowoomba is still my zine peddler of choice AND
their webstore is offering a special pre-order of Issue 6.

Pre-orders get stickers, a bonus photo zine and whatever other cool stuff I feel like chucking in there.

It’s $3 + postage (as usual) and you can order now by clicking here.
Make sure you do it by midday Tuesday the 20th though – all zines ordered after that will be goody-free.

There’s also the Issue 6 mix, which should give you a good idea of what tunes I’ve been torturing my neighbours with lately. I would feel guilty about that, but I swear the guy at number 39 mows his lawn every second day. Seriously. Get a better hobby.

Worse than a stocking full of coal.

Written by . Posted on November 23, 2011. Filed under life. No comments.
Mum: Do you think signing Sophie up to Lite n Easy would be a good Christmas present?
My sister: Uh, NO!
Mum: (huffily) Why? She wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning up after herself.
My sister: She doesn’t. I do that for her. HAPPILY. It’s a thing we have. That’s a terrible Christmas present. That’s like the time Granny gave Lucas (our brother) girl pyjamas for Christmas.
Mum: (still huffy) No, it’s like the time Granny gave your dad 50 metres of glad wrap for his birthday. It’s useful, but you just couldn’t see it at the time.
My sister: That glad wrap was shit! It dissolved when you used it in the microwave.
Mum: *stony silence*

Extra-curricular activities.

Written by . Posted on October 23, 2011. Filed under The Blog.. No comments.

I’ve spoken about this before, but I’ve been having a blast getting back into writing and playing music.
It is my first love and like many first loves, I totally over-invested in it and ended up loving it to death.

I recently dragged the skills I learned during my 14 months in a music production degree out of the depths of my brain to record a split CD for my band Sailormouth and my friend’s band Sharks and Wolves.

The Sharks and Wolves half and the communal cover song was recorded at the home studio of our friend Goof.
He was very kind and let me take over all the engineering duties, as well as fielding my dumb questions.
Check out some photos I took during the recording and download a copy of the CD for free.

 

Poison City Weekender

Written by . Posted on October 5, 2011. Filed under The Blog.. No comments.

I’ve never been much for parties. They make me nervous and I either drink and talk too much or leave early without saying goodbye to anyone.
Gigs and festivals often have the same effect on me; it takes something special to keep me there and keep the creeps away.

The Poison City Weekender is that something special.
I only saw one crappy band, all the people were nice and the venues were perfect.
The wide array of ciders available in Melbourne bars didn’t hurt either.

Here’s a video I made and some photos I took.

Today is World Alzheimer’s Day.

Written by . Posted on September 21, 2011. Filed under The Blog.. No comments.

My early childhood was full of sleepovers at Marnie and Pa’s house in the Brisbane suburbs. They’d pump me full of ice cream and coco pops, then swim in the pool and take me to the park.
They even put up with me waking up at 5 in the morning. I’d jump into bed with them and read stories while they dozed back to sleep.

I remember spending hours searching for treasure in Marnie’s junk room, which was full of random stuff she’d accumulated in her lifetime. When I got tired of that, I was allowed to hang out in Pa’s study with him as long as I was quiet.
He’d write and read at his leather-topped desk while I pored over his set of beautifully illustrated encylopedias.

Then suddenly my family moved to Emerald, I started school, Dad started a new job, my brother was born and my grandfather died of cancer.
Marnie started doing strange things. She’d chuck out the silverware instead of washing it, forget where she was in her own house, misplace her car in shopping centre car parks.

It was Alzheimer’s. She was only in her late 50s.

Our last good outing with her happened a few years later. I was nine years old, and my parents and I took her to see the stage musical Les Miserables at QPAC.
It was a fantastic production, but what sticks with me about that night is how much Marnie enjoyed it. Actually, ‘enjoyed’ isn’t the right word, I don’t know if there is one for how much she was affected by it. I suppose she was filled with joy. Here she was in a world where everything was strange and confusing, but she knew love and she knew music. She was still humming and smiling as my mum put her to bed.

Not long after that, she made her last trip out to central Queensland to see her parents (my great-grandparents) and spent time with us at home.
She sat smiling with my dad while he played piano and had a brief moment of lucidity with me, in which she told me stories about the dances she went to where she met my grandfather.

Alzheimer’s took 12 years to get the better of my grandmother and yet she was still outlived by her parents.
By pure luck I got five years of ice cream and stories, while my brother and sister only got to see a strange old lady in a nursing home.
Mum and her sisters had years of stress and the pain of losing their mother as a person, only to start the grieving all over again when her body died.

Right now, there’s no prevention or cure for Alzheimer’s. You can slow it down, but that’s about it. I guess all I can say is be kind to elderly people even if they’re annoying, and tell as many stories as you can so nothing is forgotten forever.