Episode 1: Graeme Kemlo

Duration: [00:46:17]

Melinda: Alright, welcome to Writer on the Road where telling stories matter, writing them down is even better, and publishing them is the greatest goal of all. But it's important to remember through all the toilities and testing times (and there'll be plenty of those), it's the journey that matters and it's the journey that we're here to talk about. The who, where, what and why and how of storytelling.

During these podcasts I'll be sharing my journey of building and monetizing my writing business as well as inviting others from all stages of the

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writing journey to share their stories.

For this, my first podcast, officially titled "Podcast Number 1," I've invited the master reencounter himself, Graeme Kemlo travel writer extraordinaire, Australasian president of the International Food, Wine, and Travel Writers Association, host to the ever-popular travel writers radio show, intellect, business writer, singer, and grandfather. Welcome Graeme, have I missed anything?

Graeme Kemlo: Well, thanks. How do I live to that intro? I thought you were talking about someone else.

Melinda: No, it's how I've come to know you and how I've come to think of you. As you and I were discussing earlier you are my go-to person whenever I need a little piece of advice or I guess, moral support. So I thank you for coming on and being my very first interviewee.

Graeme Kemlo: Well, it's been a pleasure to watch you develop as a writer and a

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storyteller Melinda. So I'm flattered that you should ask me to be your first guest.

Melinda: Well, look Graeme I've got to tell you in six months’ time if you're still saying that I'll be really, really pleased. But I promise I'll try not to...

Graeme Kemlo: Of course, yeah, I'm sure I will be. I'm sure I will be.

Melinda: Alright. Over to our first question. As I've said the purpose of my podcast is to follow people's

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journeys, follow people's stories. Now, I know what you do know, I know what you've been up to lately. But I'd like to take you right back to the very beginning. Everyone has a story to tell and I'd like to know what your story is and what your journey is been.

Graeme Kemlo: Well, I'm a journalist, I've been doing that for more than four decades and I actually consider myself to be very lucky. I've found myself in many

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instances in the right place in the right time.

I was just talking to, someone else interviewed me the other day on Jay Air, the radio station that we do Travel Writer's radio from, and I had forgotten some of this, but I was reminded that I was very lucky to be a journalist in Canberra on the very day that Gough got sacked. So I stood, I stood in front of him, you don't see me in pictures

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because I'm where all the photographers were, I'm holding up a recorder, a little tape recorder to take down what he was saying to the assembled crowd and maintain the rage and all the rest of it and at the time I was working for the Melbourne Harold, which was an afternoon newspaper. We were in fact we were the afternoon paper for, not only for Melbourne, but Canberra and also for Tasmania. So we kept reporting into the afternoon as

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the...