Nat Karmichael

Voice Over (00:09):
This show is sponsored by the Comics Shop. Welcome to Tuesday Chinwag with your host, Lee Chalker, writer, artist, and creator of the comic series Battle for Basel.

Leigh Chalker (00:32):
Good day. Good day, and welcome to another episode of Tuesday Chinwag. My name is Lee Chalker. I’m the creator of Battle for Bustle, which is out now in the comic shop. Now there’s hundreds of Australian comic books out in the comic shop, which sponsors these live streams. So jump on, buy some stuff, check out some artists and some creatives. Now the best thing you can do is to jump on Comex, on YouTube, Facebook, like, and subscribe ’em anywhere you can find them because it helps the tree, the community, all grow and get fresh, and it helps reach other people with the beauty of Australian comics and creators. So I’m not going to beat around the bush for too much tonight. I’m just getting straight into our fluid little show because the guest this evening is one. Mr. Nat Carmichael, how are you sir?

Nat Karmichael (01:24):
Hello, Lee. And hello to everybody who might be out there listening, watching, or whatever you’re doing tonight.

Leigh Chalker (01:32):
Yeah, hopefully they’re all sitting around the fire mate, chilling out, maybe cooking some marshmallows and stuff, how it is, and just enjoy a lovely conversation, mate. So for anyone that hasn’t seen the show before, the show is based on who, what, where, when, why, and how. It’s a fluid show. We talk about anything and everything that comes up topically from comics to life to just whatever takes our fancy in. Whichever way our trains of thoughts go, it is fluid. That’s how we like it. And comments are welcome. So please feel free if you have any questions for Nat or myself, then fire away. Here we go. The fourth monkey. Woohoo, two Aussie comic legends having a chat. Thank you Stu, you’re a champion. Kerry Harris, hello to Nat and hi Lee. Hello Kerry. Thank you for watching. Nick may have a good one. Thank you Mates, it’s yeah, Jeffrey Beats. Good day all. Hello Jeffrey, I hope you’re well. Thank you for watching and Danny Nolan, welcome to the top end Trop Fest. Great to see a publisher, historian, super fan like Nat, getting a chance to showcase his awesome career. Good on you Danny, and thanks for watching, mate. New champion. Alright Nat, so mate, we’ll just go straight into the existential question mate and get this chat off and running. Hey, so who,

Nat Karmichael (03:06):
Nat Carmichael. And to start off, I’d like to acknowledge the First Nations people, elders, past, present, future, because I think that’s an important thing to do. Black fellows in this country were the first storytellers, they were the first fellas who gave the world some wonderful stories and we are continuing that wonderful tradition. So let’s acknowledge them. The land that we speak, you and I is just blackfella land from the beginning and let’s just acknowledge that I like to do that. That’s important to me. So that’s how I want to start. How Nat Carmichael, I’m a publisher, I’m a passionate, I guess I’m passionate about Australian comics more than anything else and we’ll talk about that tonight. I guess we’ll talk about a whole range of things because I like this open format, Lee. So take away, you can start with a few questions and I’ll try and answer ’em as best I can.

Leigh Chalker (04:00):
Alright, well mate, look, I want to thank you for that lovely introduction, mate, because Aboriginal culture, the First Nations people were the first storytellers amongst us and that’s a beautiful culture. And in North Queensland I live on the Wook Bar tribes land and I am very fortunate to have many friends and basically acquaintances mate from the First Nations people. And I admire their culture and what they’ve done and what they continue to do greatly. So thank you for acknowledging them. That’s really very nice of you mate. Now getting into the crux of it, Nat, now mate, you’re a gentleman, a man that has, I would, from what I have seen of you man over the socials and what you publish in that you’re very proud Australian comic book historian. I would say with your publishing you delve back into the past from some, I would say lost Australian creators that deserve to come out into the light for a new well generation of people to read their beautiful stories. Nat, let’s take you back to Little Nat and where you started, where you grew up mate, like your comic books, how you got into it, where did the love flourish?

(05:36)
Yes, Jeffrey, respect to the First Nations people. Well said.

Nat Karmichael (05:41):
Look, to answer your question, Lee, I suppose I don’t think I just focus on past works. I’m also very passionate about Modern Works as well, so you’ll find that some of my publishing covers that area as well. But Little Nat was unable to read when he was young, and I’m talking about Little Nat being about three years old and he had a wonderful father that used to come home and bring all of these comics to read. Well, I couldn’t read, like I say, but comics are a visual medium first and foremost. And Little Nat who couldn’t read was able to look at pictures and see sequential stories and make up the stories himself by just looking at the pictures. And I had a wonderful mom and dad who used to reading these stories to me as a little fella before I could even read myself.

(06:40)
And so my background has always been comics, I guess, and we didn’t have tv and I suppose that was the entertainment medium for myself. I’m the eldest of six, and so I suppose I was lucky enough to reap the rewards of all the comics because as I grew a little bit older, the comics were passed down to siblings or they got new comics and I was able to read all of them. I could read my sisters, I could read my brothers, and I had my own comics as well. So it was a wonderful experience growing up, reading all these comics. Now they consisted mostly in those days of the English comics, and I’m talking about the Bino, I’m talking about Dandy. But even before that there was magazines called Harold Hares Weekly, and I still remember Harold Hare with his golly gum drops or some IL saying like that. But I used to think as a child it was just wonderful and Jack and Jewel Play Hour, there were a lot of kids comics back in the day, which I suppose introduced kids to the wonderful world of comics and that’s where I got my introduction.

(08:04)
So it was really nice to be able to look at the pictures and some of those early English comics that I’m talking about, the very early 1960s, there were a lot of the English comics carried a lot of Spanish illustrators and they carried a lot of Italian illustrators and the POIs as well. It was just a wonderful array of humour, adventure, just things that got you into a different world. I suppose television gives people a chance to enter a different world and I think comics did the same thing for me.

Leigh Chalker (08:42):
Yeah, yeah, that’s lovely man. Rob O’Connor, two fine gentlemen right there and good evening to Rob and thanks for everyone out there, Nat. Yeah, man, that’s an awesome thing. Did you have those moments where, take you back to just before you could read in the pictures and you were making stories up in your mind and the theatres and flowing and things like that, did you find the comic books help you to get a bit of a flow into reading when you were younger? Would you get the opportunity to sit down with dad and he’d read your stuff and the family all get Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, well,

Nat Karmichael (09:28):
Yeah, very much so. It was a very much one-on-one time with my dad and my mother too. They’d get the comic out and maybe I’d tell them what I thought the story was about and then they would read the little caption underneath and expand on it. And I suppose it was a desire to learn, to read, to be able to do the stories for myself. But I mean, a good comic tells a story and you can tell a story by looking at the pictures and if it’s a really great illustrator, a really good storyteller, you’ll be able to work out a story from the sequence. And I think that was instilled on me when I was very young to appreciate the artwork of a comic. And it was much later, I suppose, than when I learned to read and got a little bit older, I suppose I was able to understand that the writer is probably just as important as the artist because the writer’s telling a different story as well, and they’ve got their own nuances the same way as an artist has.

(10:30)
And when you have the amalgamation of an artist and a writer telling a wonderful story, it just makes it a perfect synthesis. I mean, you can have writers that in Australia for example too, I guess a lot of comic book artists and writers are the one and the same person, whereas overseas, I guess it’s more prevalent that it’s the other way around. You have more writers doing their craft and the artists doing their craft and just melding those talents together. But in Australia it was the other way around. But for me, for being in my formative years, it was those English comics. And it wasn’t really until I was in my teenage years that I started to discover the American comics. And I think my very first American comic was a Marvel comic, was in Australia at the time, growing up in the sixties, all you could get with a black and white DC reprints.

(11:31)
And I wasn’t really keen on them. I didn’t really like the artwork. I think having grown up reading the English comics I liked, there was a lot of character to some of their artistry and I didn’t find the same with the DC reprints. They didn’t really interest me until I was an early teenager. So I got a good foundation I think in those English comics. After graduating from the Kitty comics and being able to read, I went to Ranger and Valiant. Valiant was my favourite. I used to Vale to make sure we had an order every week and there was Kelly’s Eye and there was the House of Doman and the Steel Claw. They were some of my favourites. And I found out more recently that Alan Moore was a fan of some of those strips as well. So it’s really nice to know that some of those strips have been replayed today, they’ve been re-energized and people are starting to write and draw some of those characters once again. And I find that a great thrill. And some of the reprints lately they’ve been reprinting some of those. So it’s a wonderful nostalgic experience. Sometimes as an old man, I am seeing these comics being reprinted and I can save them over and over again.

Leigh Chalker (12:59):
Yeah, that’s awesome, man. When you just mentioned Ranger just then, because my dad collected comic books before me, so I have a bit of a similar, I guess, backstory to you that it was very much one-on-one time for me with my dad when he was around as well, and he collected Ranger, I’ve got those comics still tucked away here, and he loved those adventure and the real Boys stories. And then he collected the Amazing Spider-Man and the Uncanny or the X-Men as they were then, and Marvel Tales and all that sort of stuff. And when I was probably about, I guess seven-ish, he used to kick back with me and man, he used to, because I wasn’t a big reader either, I was always drawing, but at that stage, I guess, I dunno whether I’d say slow, I just didn’t take to it. I didn’t pick it up as quick as others, like the reading side of things.

(14:09)
But he would sit there man with comic books and he would read ’em to me with different voices and boom bang. So it was like, wow, I was fully immersive and yeah, awesome memories, man. So I’m really vibrant with what you’re talking about there and feeling man, because it’s something awesome about that. I mean, obviously the love continues for you, Nat. I mean, I don’t mean to pry, but I’m looking behind you as you speak and I’m seeing quite a plethora mate of comic book stuff in the background, particularly a Kira over there. So obviously your tastes all across the board mate, you know what I mean? You’re not just in one particular genre, which is healthy.

Nat Karmichael (15:05):
No, that’s right. No, that’s right. I mean, I think it’s good to explore different areas of the comics because it’s a universal medium. And these days I’ll have a look at some of Japanese comics. I’ll look at the European comics and the American comics. I’ve got nothing against them. Going further what you say, I guess I was lucky that I had sisters and my sisters had comics that my father, I think brought them for them to read. There was Bunty and there was Princess Tina, I can’t recall all the names now, Misty and all of those comics were sort of, I guess they were marked for girls, but because I was such a passionate reader, well, I read them too. Why not The Phantom, of course, the Australian fandom. I mean that’s something we did, did have in our household when I was growing up too.

(16:05)
There wasn’t much in the way of Australian comics because I suspect by then that the import restrictions had been lifted. And so a lot of the American colour comics were coming on the news stands, excuse me. So a lot of Australian original comics when I was growing up, it was starting to fade away. The only one I can recall with any clarity was the Panther and the Raven by Paul Wilham. And I did read a couple of episodes there and I really liked the dynamic style that he had as an artist, the story. Yeah, that was quite interesting too as a youngster. But for me it was just the Valiant comics. I also graduated two things like Smash and P, and they reprinted a lot of the Marvel comics. And I can recall really liking Leo Baxendale and Ken Reed as artists. They had some fabulous artwork in the English comics, but as far as the American comics in those comics went like Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. I still wasn’t a fan up until about 13 or 12, but my mother loved it. She loved Spider-Man. I can remember trying to find my mother one morning wondering where she was, and she was sitting on the toilet reading and it was a reprint of one of the Steve Dicto early and she was quite fascinated. She loved it. But me, myself, well, I wasn’t a fan until much later, but there you go.

Leigh Chalker (17:53):
Oh man. I guess for lack of a better description, I mean, it’s a lovely memory of your mother, you know what I mean? To have reading Spider-Man in the Lou. But I mean, man, mean when I went to Canberra and Gunda guy for the first time to meet my dad, my dad’s side of the family, I remember being a little boy about five or six I guess, in that sort of zone. And I remember every relative’s house that I went to had comics. They just had on a coffee table next to there’s comics and they’d be sitting around waiting, killing time. There was no phones or anything like that. They’d just be sitting there reading a ghostwriter, comic mate or a fan and stuff. And I was like, this is amazing. You know what I mean? The collective, there’ll hate the next part of the story. It was on coffee table, so there were coffee cups and stuff on these comics and dad was, ah, don’t do that. And yeah, you couldn’t doggy books with dad and he’d be like, forever getting up the cousins. You can’t put coffee mugs on those comics, man. And they’d, but yeah, man, comics everywhere when I was a kid too, mate. Beds. Yeah, that’s

Nat Karmichael (19:22):
Right.

Leigh Chalker (19:23):
It was Archie, you name it.

Nat Karmichael (19:25):
I think the other thing too, yeah, yeah, Lee, I think the other thing too, I suppose is that you’re right, comics were everywhere. They were in the news agent and that’s where you’d find them. But they’re also secondhand bookstores and they used to carry a lot of comics, especially the Donald Ducks and the Mickey Mouses and the super goofs and things like that. And my dad also, he used to work in the city, and so he used to catch the train, it’s down. And on his way home there was also the Red Cross bookstore where they used to sell books quite cheaply, but they also had a large selection of comics. And one of the comics my dad purchased for me was Spider-Man, 25. And I suppose that was my first taste of an American comic that my father passed on to me. But the first one I purchased was an Iron Man, I think it was one George Tuska drew.

(20:23)
And just before Barry Smith did his retelling of the origin with Roy Thomas, I think it was. And to me, I was really attracted by the colour of the cover, and I thought 20 cents, I was sort of humming and haring 20 cents as opposed to the English comics, which were 10 cents or 12 cents at the time. And so I thought, that’s double the price. You don’t get as many pages of comics, you only get about 17 or 18 pages as opposed to 40 of the Pomy comics. But I gave it a try, and from then on I was hooked.

Leigh Chalker (21:00):
Well, it looks like we might’ve lost that briefly, so I guess you stuck with me and we’ll try. Here he comes, coming back. There you go, Nat, you’re back, mate. It’s the beauty of the live stream. So you were excited, you were hooked on. This is what happens. This is the fluidity of the show.

Nat Karmichael (21:22):
You

Leigh Chalker (21:25):
Look, don’t worry.

Nat Karmichael (21:26):
Pardon me?

Leigh Chalker (21:28):
It’s a fluidity man. And we will get back into it. We were hooked on the colours. You were like bang into it. Like 20 cents versus 10 cents. Yeah. Oh, hello Darren. How are you buddy? We’re both going. Well, thank you for checking in. Yeah, yeah. So back to you anyway, Matt. Sorry mate.

Nat Karmichael (21:48):
So what happened? We lost contact did we? A little while ago. Anyway. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (21:52):
Sometimes internet drops out, mate. It just happens. It does happen. Don’t feel too bad about it, mate.

Nat Karmichael (22:01):
Yes. Yeah. The other thing too I can think of too, as growing up, Lee is the newspaper. We used to get the afternoon newspaper in Brisbane and there were all these comic strips. And I must say I was fascinated by the comic strips and there was the pots, there was the peanuts, and they had Garth. And my favourite at the time was Garth. I liked the adventure strip. It seemed to grab me. And I think it was probably helped by the fact that we used to get the newspaper every afternoon. We didn’t get the morning courier mail. So my knowledge of something like Air Hawk for example, was pretty Well, I had no knowledge about Air Hawk because we didn’t get the courier mail. But getting the telegraph was wonderful because there was some lovely strips there, some pantomime strips called Louis I can remember. And then the Australian became the Sunday Australian, and my father subscribed to that. And inside that, there was a wonderful array of classic comic strips. There was Tintin, there was Pogo. And I recall as a child cutting these out of the newspaper and putting ’em in a pile, I dunno what happened to them. My mother probably thought, ah, let’s get rid of this trash. My son’s collecting and cutting out newspapers.

Leigh Chalker (23:30):
They ate Spiderman. She was probably thinking, I can’t read these little things in the loo.

Nat Karmichael (23:37):
Yeah, that’s it in the toilet. Actually. We used to have, it was a little container where comics were placed. So if you had a time, yeah, so if you had to do a big job, you had some entertainment while you,

Leigh Chalker (23:54):
Oh man.

Nat Karmichael (23:56):
So comics were everywhere,

Leigh Chalker (24:01):
But

Nat Karmichael (24:02):
The only place place comics were though is at school. The school kids were into tv. And I remember quite clearly in grade three, I was ostracised because I didn’t have tea and I didn’t know who Astroboy was because all the kids of my class we’re into Astro Boy. Astro Boy bounces away. Whoa. So I didn’t know anything about them, and I tried to sort of explain them to share with them the passion I had for the comics that I was reading, but to no avail. I was unable to convince them otherwise. There you go.

Leigh Chalker (24:41):
That’s a bugger. But man, I can see you’re still vibing with passion though. It’s amazing. I’ve spoken about it to people previously on Chin Wags and that, but one of the things that I sorely miss now, like the book exchanges and the secondhand bookstore where you could go and there were just beautiful files of comics. And for a young person who was only just in a part-time job or getting money from the washing machine when the change drop out and any way you could mate, you know what I mean? To buy those comics book were beautiful things, man, where you could just so many good memories of book exchanges, man. I used to love them walking in there and that smell of the old paper and stuff, man. And I always used to wonder how many books did those book exchange owners read? It’s like, yeah, unbelievable. Been

Nat Karmichael (25:45):
A beautiful thing. You’re right, Lee, too. I mean, that’s one thing that I still do today about you were talking about smell. I love getting a new comic and having a sniff.

Leigh Chalker (25:58):
I’ve met a brother, I think everyone else looks at me like I’m weird, man. I stand in some bookshops, man, where you can, they’re not in keep this between, keep this between us, man and I a little whiff there, mate. I’ve seen people looking like learn of this guy smell.

Nat Karmichael (26:18):
There’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like it. Anyone out there listening and watching get out of comic and smell it?

Leigh Chalker (26:26):
Oh, you have a big old wolf of that print mate, beautiful. It’s like, yes.

Nat Karmichael (26:31):
Yeah, that’s it.

Leigh Chalker (26:35):
Oh man, I thought it was just me. But God, I feel better now. Now.

Nat Karmichael (26:39):
No, no, not at all.

Leigh Chalker (26:43):
I feel really good. I feel like I’ve let something off of my chest that I feel like’s been hidden from people for so long. Man,

Nat Karmichael (26:52):
Never be ashamed, Lee. Just keep sniffing, keep sniffing.

Leigh Chalker (26:56):
Anyway.

Nat Karmichael (26:56):
Look,

Leigh Chalker (26:57):
I’m not going to be ashamed anymore. Just got to walk around smelling everything. Maybe not people, but if they’ve got a book, just dive onto them. And I just natural.

Nat Karmichael (27:11):
That’s it.

Leigh Chalker (27:14):
Oh man. That’s

Nat Karmichael (27:16):
Cool. Let me move on a little bit, Lee, because I had all this influence about comics when I was in grade seven. I thought, you know what I’m going to do when I grow up? I’m going to become a cartoonist. I thought that’s the life for me. I want to draw and make people laugh and do some cartooning. And so in high school I organised a little group where in lunch hours I asked people if they were interested in coming along to have a little discussion about comics. And that was really quite well attended by one of the teachers and a few of the other kids. And so I realised that I wasn’t alone. And you’ve got to remember too, this was before the comic bookstores. People I guess in the sixties were if they were comic fans, I guess they did it in private and didn’t really, there wasn’t much in the way of a community as such as we know now.

(28:22)
So I found that really good to know that there was someone in, this is in high school now, the early high school, there were people there who were just as passionate as comics as I was, which was a real revelation for me. And also in the, I think it was one of the Australians, one of the Australian newspapers, they had an article about a guy who collected comics and they had a photograph of him and his comic collection. And it was John Ryan and I decided to write to John Ryan and just ask him a little bit about what is the process of getting a comic published in Australia. And he sent me a really lovely letter, which I still have, and telling me about his passion for comics and how he felt that the reporter who’d done the story was he went a little bit off topic, John felt, and he said he could understand why politicians took journalists with a bit of a wide berth because he felt he wasn’t really reported. Well, he had a passing reference to I think Captain Adam. And the headline of the article was about Captain Adam. And John really wasn’t really interested in talking about that. He just wanted to talk about more generally about Australian comics. Anyway, nonetheless, John wrote back to me and asked me if I’d be interested in going to visit him. And he ended up setting me a big package of his monographs.

(30:11)
And inside the monographs, he had some details about some of his early research. This is before he did panel by panel. We’re talking about 1973 here. And one of the monographs that he enclosed in there was about John Dixon and Air Hawke and some of the, he did. And I was really touched by the fact that he actually sent it to me for starters, the fact that he was passionate about it, to say that he planned to write a book about his passion. And that got me thinking, I suppose it sort of stuck it with me for quite some time. And I have to say that of the two people that greatly influenced my way of thinking in so far as publishing goes was my father and was John Roth because they both pointed me in that direction without me realising when I was still a teenager.

(31:14)
I was still keen on cartooning. And I spent a lot of my time drawing in my spare time. And at that time we were living at Bribe Island, and I suppose I was drawing pictures of surfers and I used to sell ’em to the kids on the bus. We used to travel by bus from Bribe to Caboolture, which was about half an hour journey and selling those cartoons. And on weekends I was practising by drawing comic strips with the hope of one day baby, getting it syndicated and a few things like that. My very first published cartoon was in 1973 in the Asley State High School yearbook. And I guess that encouraged me to think that maybe I can make it as a cartoonist, and sadly the real world, when you’ve got to sort of earn a living.

(32:12)
My parents were sort of, even though they were very encouraging of me, my reading, they felt that there was no way that I’d ever become a cartoonist. It wasn’t practical, and I had to get a real job. And I suppose I was a little bit disappointed with that. And nonetheless, I decided to write a comic about the fact that I had to leave that sort of passion behind me. And that was the very first comic I published. And there’s a copy here. You’ll find a copy. There’s a copy in the national library because I sent a copy to John Ryan and unbeknownst to me, he kept it, and it’s within all his comics collection in the National Library. It remains there. So I was pretty chuffed.

Leigh Chalker (33:02):
Yeah, yeah, man, that’s a beautiful thing to be able to reach out. It would’ve taken some courage then from a young gnat too, to reach out to his hero. But what a gift, man. Do you know what I mean? To get this package from him, that must have just blown your mind, man.

Nat Karmichael (33:26):
Oh look, it was fabulous, Lee. It really was. And I’ve still got them. I kept them. They became important to me because I guess it legitimised the hobby, I suppose, that comics weren’t just something disposable like most people thought. And I suppose too, in the early miles in the 1970s, used to have adverts for back issues of comics. And I started to realise that there was a market for them. I mean, I think you could buy a Spider-Man, one for $20 or something like that if you had $20. And so there was a value placed on comics. They weren’t just disposable, they weren’t just childish. And I think John’s monographs really highlighted that for me. He was passionate about Australian comics and he valued them and felt that they were important enough to write about them, which is what he did. I mean, he contributed to the world Encyclopaedia of Comics, all of the Australian entries there were written by John. And by that time I was in work, I’d found a bit of work and it wasn’t anything to do with comics. And sadly, I think my dreams I felt were slipping away back in those days.

(34:49)
And where do I go from here? This is where we can branch into other topics, Lee, because around about 1977, and probably up until about 1979, there was a period of my life where I suppose I left home, I left Queensland, I moved down to Adelaide and I got into a totally different scene altogether, and that was one of drugs. And I spent nine months in 1980 where I was homeless by choice and lived on the streets and travel around the country as a bummer, one of my plans in high school was not just necessarily to be cartoonists, but also I used to daydream and look at the wonderful blue sky outside. And one of my dreams and one of my ambitions back then was to be a bum and just to live on the streets. And I know that sounds really weird, but anyway, I guess I lived my dream. I decided to leave Adelaide and I left Adelaide really for the express purpose of, actually, I left Brisbane to go to Adelaide in order to give up my drug habit. And I ended up in Adelaide with even a greater drug habit. And so the idea was to go

Leigh Chalker (36:31):
Well, looks like we’ve lost NA again. Hopefully he’ll pop back up because I’ve got to tell you, if you’re listening, this is getting very interesting. Nat, welcome back mate. Don’t stress. Let’s get back into it. You’ve gone to Adelaide to get off the drugs, but you got on him. You wanted to be a free man.

Nat Karmichael (36:51):
I wanted to be a free man. That’s it. Yeah, that’s it. You’re right, Lee. So there was a period of time where I was living on the streets and I travelled around the country hitchhiking, which is something you could do these days. I dunno, I don’t see too many hitchhikers these days, but I managed to get around the country and managed to get off the drugs, which I think was a good thing. No regrets there. And then I guess getting back into the work sphere, I also had a wife then, and I also had, she was expecting my first child, so that changed everything. I no longer had his desire for drugs, they just weren’t in my scene anymore. I just had to leave them alone. I had become a responsible father. I think my attendance at work improved. I became a nurse and my absenteeism just dried up.

(37:56)
I had a responsibility to another human being, and that totally changed me. Becoming a dad was one of the best things in my life to change things and work things around, which it’s wonderful and I’ve got a lovely family now, and it’s just wonderful. And grandchildren’s family life to me is just wonderful. I can’t express that enough. Having all these kids and all these grandkids, kids, it just gives joy to my life. They really do. And I feel really blessed. However, when I first got, when we were expecting, I was living in Canberra, I was nursing in Canberra, and my wife found that too cold. And so the idea was to leave Canberra, and we came up to Brisbane where it was a little bit warmer and there was a little bit more family support in order to raise the child. But still in the back of my mind, then there was this ticking thing that I wanted to draw comics and publish comics.

(39:02)
Now, I think because John felt that there was a need for Australian comics, I think it sort sort of bubbled in my brain that we’ve got to produce Australian comics. And one thing I want to say here is that around about this time, this is just before the specialty stores came into being, but I think in all parts of the country, there was a little undercurrent of people like me who felt there was a need to publish some local comics. And the people in Adelaide will probably remember Willow Papers. And the people in Melbourne will probably remember Ink Spot that was put out by Miniature when they were just a little, I think Phil Bentley and the other guys were just selling from their garage. And in Sydney, I guess there was Gerald Carr who was just doing all these wonderful comics and getting them out on the news stands in Brisbane.

(40:06)
When I came up here, there was Ian Gould and Jason Pulis was just starting out. And Graham Cliff, who were in a little group together who wanted to publish comics there. And in Canberra, just before I left Canberra, there were guys there. There was Peter Markman and Mike Priest and Peter Bollinger, guys in Canberra who were keen on producing comics. So I think in all areas around the country, there was this little bubble and of creativity of comics who were just coming to the fore. And I think it was a wonderful time just to start getting into that medium again. And it was the beginning of what we now know, I suppose, is the revival of the Australian comic industry, if you want to call it industry. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (41:02):
Well,

Nat Karmichael (41:03):
Anyway,

Leigh Chalker (41:04):
I’ve heard people in the past have recognised it as an industry because they do suggest that it is industrious all of the people that create and publish their own work. And as you were saying, when you do love something, it is compulsive, isn’t it? It just stays. It’s that itch that you can’t get rid of. It’s always there. Even if you step away from it for a year or two, you still somehow find yourself being drawn back into it and things. And another thing I’d just like to say, man, is I greatly appreciate you sharing that story about your troubles and your addiction. And I too, I’m an alcoholic, so I’ve into my third year sobriety, so I understand what it is to go through breaking that habit mate, and finding the will and those little areas in life that you need to improve in order to keep going.

(42:13)
So congratulations on that, man. When he comes back, we’ll continue that conversation. But I don’t know, send in some comments. This is really good. I’m having a ball here, Nat. Yeah, man. But congratulations for getting through it, dude. And much admiration for anyone out there that’s struggling with any sort of substance abuse, go and get help. And there’s people out there that love you, so good things can come from it. You just got to believe in yourself and try hard. So back to you, Nat. You’re saying that, so your comic book drawing didn’t feel like it was going because at this stage, you’re a dad with a young fella, your wife, you’ve moved back to Brisbane for family, a little bit more support like being young parents as you would’ve been at that stage. Your nursing, this Australian comic book scene you notice is starting to bubble up and there’s people pushing through and putting things out there. So take us from there, man. What were your feelings at this point? Where did you head

Nat Karmichael (43:26):
Yeah, Lee.

Leigh Chalker (43:28):
Well, and I guess we’ll come back to that question. It’s like, don’t you love the internet? Hey, the old fluidity. Hey, this is the fluidity of the show, Matt, I got you covered, brother. Don’t about that. I’m zoned in on you tonight, mate. So it’s like you’re not going anywhere. We’re finishing this story. Yeah. So take us from when you got brey, mate.

Nat Karmichael (43:53):
Okay, well, there’s just one thing I didn’t dwell on, but I’ll just say this very briefly. Back in, just before I left Adelaide, I had an inkling about something and I thought to myself, I’d read what John Ryan had written about John Dixon and Air Hawk. And by that stage I discovered Air Hawk. I discovered that in a hostel in Brisbane before I left for Adelaide. And I started to read the Daily Adventures, and I was quite hooked, really, on the adventures. And so when I was in Adelaide just before I left, I wrote to John Dixon’s agent, and I asked Brian Foley, Brian, is there any chance of us putting a volume of Air Hawk things into a comic? And he wrote back and he gave me some details, and then I did my period of travelling around. But when I was in the early eighties, when I was keen on publishing again, I put out a comic, it was called the Australian Comics Group. I don’t have a copy here to show, but it was just a photocopied comic, really. It contained some of the artists of the time. There was a guy called John Hunter from Brisbane, Ian Eddie from Melbourne, a couple of the guys from Canberra.

(45:20)
And there was a story there that was scripted by myself called Hero Australia. Anyway, I published it and I sent a copy

Leigh Chalker (45:33):
Internet, God and Don Teo, you’re a hundred percent right? Yep. And oh, hang on, we’ve got Danny Nolan here. Nat, how did Monty Webb become so important in your life? We’ll come back to that. Thank

Nat Karmichael (45:47):
You to the question again. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I’ll come to that. But in the meantime, where were we? No, anyway. Anyway, that’s why I sent this comic down Phil down in Melbourne, and he wrote back a polite letter, but basically saying, your comic sucks. Let’s put it that way. Let’s put it that way. And Phil and I get on, so let’s not say there’s any bad.

Leigh Chalker (46:21):
Now, everyone out there, thank you for your comments too. Okay. I’m letting Nat, we are there. We are there. If you are with me, I’m just letting everyone know I’m appreciating their comments, but I’m giving you your space so we can get through this story. Okay.

Nat Karmichael (46:39):
I

Leigh Chalker (46:39):
Love and harmony that everyone contributing. I haven’t forgotten you, but back to you, Nat.

Nat Karmichael (46:48):
Where are we?

Leigh Chalker (46:50):
Well, we are. Are we there? We were talking about your mate told you that your comic book was pretty average, and you said there’s no bad blood because you mates now. So that’s the point

Nat Karmichael (47:03):
Where, oh, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. No, I’ve got the total respect for Phil, and he told me that it was pretty crappy. And so my desire to publish was still there. And so we’re talking about 82 then. And I was saying to myself, if I can’t do something myself creatively, I’m crap. I’ve got to accept that. And so ever since then, I’ve never drawn or really written a comic since then. Oh no, I have. I have. But they’ll come to that. But I thought to myself, rather than me publishing anything that’s second rate, why not publish something that’s really top class? And on that basis, I got back in touch with Brian Fig, John Dixon’s agent, and I had a desire to publish Air Hawk, and Brian gave me the, okay, John gave me the, okay. And in fact, John drew a wonderful illustration, which ended up being on the front cover of my very first Air Hawk comic. Can you see that? I’m not sure

Leigh Chalker (48:10):
If that’s useful. Come the other way, Matt. There we go. Shane brought this. Yep. Hold him right there. Look at that. There

Nat Karmichael (48:16):
You go. So that was published in 1988. Now, prior to this coming out, prior to that coming out, I was in touch with Gary Della, who was starting up his RY comics. And so I put Gary in touch with John because Gary wanted some filler material for his comic. And so Gary was able to get in touch with Brian Foley, and that’s where he ended up getting some of the Air Hawk stories in the reverie. So that was sort of episodic. I think he had part of a story in one issue, and that continued on to the next story. And I was okay with that. I sort of gave Gary the, okay, why don’t you do that? And then after that, John asked me if I’d make sure that I just do it one complete episode per comic. And so I managed to get the second issue out. There we go. There it is.

Leigh Chalker (49:16):
Bring it back up, Shane. Full screen. Yeah, look at

Nat Karmichael (49:20):
That. This way.

Leigh Chalker (49:21):
That way. Yeah, that way. There you go. That’s beautiful.

Nat Karmichael (49:26):
Now, John was kind enough to draw the illustrations, the covers for those. I did pay him, and I wasn’t really satisfied with, they were both 500 copy print runs. I wasn’t really happy with that. And so at that time, I was in touch with Gary Celler, and Gary at that time was doing his comics with Dave Dere and the Cyclone Comics industry was sort of starting to bubble over. And so Gary and I, and back in these days, this is before emails and before phone calls, because SDD phone calls back in those days were just,

Leigh Chalker (50:10):
I remember like five.

Nat Karmichael (50:15):
That’s it.

Leigh Chalker (50:15):
Yeah. And then you got the special Sunday rate where between eight 30 and quarter to eight, you could talk to anyone for 50 bucks for 15 minutes or whatever it was bargain.

Nat Karmichael (50:29):
So anyway, I got in touch with Gary and I said, Gary, would you be interested in publishing an Ear Hawk story? I’ll pay a proportion of it if you do another proportion of it. And he’d just put out two cyclone specials, and I just put out two Air Hawks. So we decided to get together and make an Air Hawk super special under the cyclone banner. And that’s where this one came about.

Leigh Chalker (50:59):
Oh, full screen. Come on, siz Magic, man. Look at that. That’s beautiful, man. Have you got

Nat Karmichael (51:07):
Signature

Leigh Chalker (51:08):
On that too, Nat? Are they signed up? Oh no. Is it? I can’t

Nat Karmichael (51:14):
Signed where?

Leigh Chalker (51:16):
Oh, I just thought there was signatures, but it’s just your corner box up there in the top. No,

Nat Karmichael (51:20):
No, that’s up here. No, that’s just John’s logo.

Leigh Chalker (51:24):
Gotcha.

Nat Karmichael (51:25):
Anyway, so Gary and I made that a co-production, and I was very proud of that. That one got on the Newstands. It was my very first newsstand comic, and many thanks to Gary for supporting me that way. And I guess I supported him by having a different sort of comic in his stable. Now I’m going to backtrack a little bit here. When I was in Canberra before coming back to Brisbane, I decided to write to the Courier Mail. No, I said, no, sorry. It was the Canberra Times. The Canberra Times had a new comic strip called Swamp, and I just loved it. It appeared, I think once a week, but I thought the humour was really good. And I didn’t realise at the time that it was done by a guy in Brisbane, Gary Clark. And so I wrote to Gary after the newspaper, supplied me his address and his wife, Vonne wrote back to me thanking me for the mail.

(52:30)
And anyway, Gary and I became close friends when I moved up to Brisbane, and Gary told me about the Australian, the Australian Black and White Artist club, and he said, you’ve really got to join that if you want to get a front row seat with all the best cartoonists in the country. And I thought, what a great idea. So I joined up, and this is Lance Don’s question from before. So I joined up and I became a member of the Australian Black and White Artist Club. And my very first meeting, it was in Sydney, and I stayed on the couch at Gary Channel’s place, and I tried to get Gary to join too. He didn’t do that until later. But anyway, I went to the very first annual, the Stanley Awards. I think it was the third one that they’d held. It was in Sydney, and it was just fabulous. They put me right at the back, and I thought, what do they put me in the back for? They put me back with the old fellas and the old fellas in the comics game, and I’m talking about Jim Russell. I’m talking about Dan Russell. I’m talking about Tony Rty. I’m talking about Vain Lindsay. I was with all of these old fellas.

Leigh Chalker (53:46):
You’re with the treasure mate. Yeah.

Nat Karmichael (53:53):
And at that very first dinner with his wife at two tables down was Monty. So I went up to Monty and I said, Monty, I love your work, but what you got to do, Monty, is one day you’ve got to publish that Ned Kelly and put it in a volume. And he said, we’ll talk about that later. Anyway, so he was really open to the idea, and it was just wonderful to be in that club because there were the old fellas in the club who had all of this history. They were so willing to share about some of the fellas from the past. And that was what I was interested in. I wanted to know about all the fellows. Now, John wasn’t there. He was a member, but by that time, he’d moved to the States. So I didn’t get to meet him, and he’d won a couple of awards the couple of years before I’d went to the annual award night. But nonetheless, I just enjoyed it. And I mean, of those fellows I met that night, the only one still going is vain Lindsay, and what a man VA’s now 103 and just fabulous. Anyway, we had a great conversation and I asked vain if he’d ever write an introduction to one of my books. I asked Peter Foster if he’d write a little article in one of my comics, and they both agreed it was just something you did for people who are passionate about comics as I was.

(55:31)
And now I guess I’m still in the, it’s now called the Australian Cartoonist Association, and now I’m one of the old blokes. And so if there’s any young fellow there that wants to know something or wants to talk about old comics or old times, they can always come to me. I’m always happy to yarn about it because I’m, I guess they passed the baton to me. And so it’s my responsibility now to pass the baton to the young ones. And it’s nice to see some of the people like Dean Rankin there and Paul Mason, the young fellows who are doing comics now, they’ve joined the Australian Cartoonist Association and they’re doing great things as well. And it’s just wonderful because editorial cartoonists probably won’t survive because of the way the media is and the comic strips, sadly, they’ve gone by the wayside, but the people who want a cartoon and the people that want to make people laugh, and the people who want to do stories in comics, they still persist. People still want to hear stories, and they want to hear our stories. And so that’s why I think the a CA is important, and anyone who joins is going to meet some of these old fellows like me, and they’re going to meet some young fellows who are up and coming, and most people are really willing to share and impart information and knowledge. And that’s why I get such a buzz out of being a member. Anyway,

Leigh Chalker (57:02):
This is great, Matt. You just keep going, man. I’m going to sit back here and just enjoy your company for the evening, mate. I love to learn this stuff too. So drop it. Just tell us everything.

Nat Karmichael (57:17):
So here are some of the other comics I did. Now, this one here, Gary helped me design this one, and I had a few subscribers who just hated it. They felt it was a little bit too risque, shall we say. And I thought by having it in the newsstands, it would probably sell heaps of copies. But the sad story is that it didn’t sell much at all. In fact, I lost quite a bit of money on it, but there you go. So following that, I decided to do a comic for the Americans. And so I released this Air Hawk for the American audience. And you know what? You look at that cover, and you know what John Dixon told me?

Leigh Chalker (58:04):
No,

Nat Karmichael (58:05):
John Dixon told me, well, you told me to make this a pg. So John Dixon told me what he thought about the cover. And the reason for that is that I didn’t get a proof copy. And anyone who’s out there who publishes comics, publishes books, makes sure you get a proof copy because the printer decided just to print off my guide rather than what I was wanting for the cover. And so this was a painted cover that I sent them as a guide. And you’ll also notice down the bottom now, I dunno if you can probably, when you see it in person in real life, there’s a lot of editing and changing of the original artwork that was done on that artwork. And John was a bit filthy with that, and I don’t blame him. It’s one of those things. So you learn things by publishing, nothing’s ever perfect, and you learn, you really

Leigh Chalker (59:10):
Said, definitely worth joining the Australian Cartoonist Association. Thank you.

Nat Karmichael (59:15):
Good idea. So anyway, that was around about 1990, and at that stage, I’d spent quite a bit of money on publishing those last three comics, and I lost quite a bit of money that I didn’t make any money. And anyone who’s tried to publish comics, if you try to do it in a way where you’re going to make money, you may be disappointed. And I was certainly disappointed and lost the heap of money. And further to that, I’ll be really honest about it, I lost my marriage. And so the marriage didn’t work. And from there, I guess I had a very dark period in my life, and I won’t go into all of it because there’s a lot of things there that a lot of people dunno about, and I probably won’t talk about, but let’s just say, suffice to say that for a period of time I lost contact with my children and I didn’t know where they were, and things just weren’t going too well. And so in the depths of despair, I could have done two things. I could have gone back to having a drug habit or I thought there was a better idea. And so I decided to write a comic book. I didn’t want to illustrate it. I wanted to write one. And so this is the end result here. This came out in 1993.

(01:00:47)
Now, for those who, people who don’t know rugby league football, Wally Lewis was the king. Yeah. Well, some people call him the king, but I don’t think New South Wales people would say that. But anyway, so I able to, I went to one of the black and white artist club meetings in Brisbane, and I ran into a young cartoonist called Joanne Applegate at the time, that was her name. And she was just wanting to break into comics. And so she illustrated the comic for me, and we published another comic of 500 editions. I was hoping the cover would’ve been in cover, but it didn’t happen. But I think the purpose of the comic for me was to try, was some therapy, I suppose, to try and work out where the future was going to go without contact with my loved ones. And sometimes in the depths of despair in life, there’s always a little beacon of joy that you don’t realise is there, and things weren’t going too well.

(01:02:10)
I quit one of my jobs and I didn’t know what to do. And I ended up working in a nursing home, which I thought would been the worst thing in my life. I left because I think there was frustration about my family not having contact. There was frustration about feeling the management weren’t listening to what we wanted. And anyway, I ended up going to this nursing home and who should I meet there, but my present wife. And I guess that’s the nice story. And then slowly over the years, my engagement with my children has returned, and we just have a wonderful relationship. I just really treasure my daughters. I treasure all members of my family and the grandkids, all of them. They mean so much to me now. And I think it’s through that joy and working hard and getting ourselves established, my wife and I, and getting a new home, then the passion for comics came back again. It’s something that doesn’t go away.

Leigh Chalker (01:03:25):
Yeah. Yeah. Matt, I’d very much sorry to introduce yourself there, but thank you so much for sharing that story with me, man, because I’m very grateful for that. And you feeling comfortable to tell me that, man? Yeah, yeah.

Nat Karmichael (01:03:43):
Sure. Sure.

Leigh Chalker (01:03:45):
It is an amazing thing, though. Creativity helped you. And looking back on what I know about you now, even though we’re in the middle of your story, wonderful decision on your behalf to pursue the Wally Lewis writing mate and find the young artist. Now, ENC Thomas has just got a comment. It’s rare for anyone to talk about the impact of our creative lives on our marriages, but it can be immense. Thank you, Nat, and well,

Nat Karmichael (01:04:18):
Thanks, Ian. Yeah, thanks Ian. Yeah, I guess comics aren’t done in isolation, though. I guess There are so many factors that bring into us when we are creating, and for me, writing the Wally Lewis story was cathartic, I suppose. Finding an artist who was willing to illustrate it was just a joy. I know Joanne used the artwork as a basis for getting employment with Queensland newspapers. So she herself used as a stepping stone to go further, and she became very successful. I think she managed to be the president of the black white artist club too for a period of time as well. So a lot of good things came from it. And I think sometimes when we’re in despair about things, there’s always joy to be found. That’s my belief in any case. But comics aren’t in isolation. I mean, there’s so many other things too. I mean, I’m also very passionate about music. I like music. Not so much opera or classical or rap, but any other genre I’m quite happy about. And so that’s part of my life too. But I mean, comics are the main thing, but there’s all these different things that infuse our lives. I mean, another thing too, I’m quite passionate. I’m passionate about rugby league. I mean, when I grew up in the 1970s when I had my own little pocket radio,

Leigh Chalker (01:05:54):
I used

Nat Karmichael (01:05:55):
To listen to Queensland playing New South Wales, and we got flogged, we got flogged. We got flogged every year. Every year we got flogged. And so when state of origin came about, who was I going to back Queensland? My oath

(01:06:10)
These days, I still remain very passionate about my rugby league because I just remember the times when we got beaten by so much, by so many, and also by our own players because a lot of them were lured over to New South Wales, and they were paid, paid by the pokey machines, which we didn’t have in Queensland. So I remain quite passionate about the Rugby League to the point that we had a hundredth anniversary centenary for the Australian Cartoonist Association just a little while ago. And why couldn’t I go? Because it’s on the same night. The state of origin three.

Leigh Chalker (01:06:55):
Oh, Nat, you went with the rugby league, mate. There’s some passion. We’re seeing two sides of you here, man.

(01:07:05)
Hey, you got to follow what your thing is though. Yeah, that’s it. Ian just mentioned something before in a comment and you being so beautifully open a moment ago about how creativity, in terms of comic books and stuff like that, it can be isolating. It can be if you wish it, and it’s beautiful to hear. It’s sad because I’m one of those people that as I’ve tried to pursue my creative and artistic side, I’ve had a relationship breakdown over the last few years because I wasn’t present enough for it. I decided to put everything into drawing and creating and people that I meet, and not everyone, people are lucky.

(01:08:05)
If you are a creator out there and you do have a partner that supports you and understands that it’s something within you, it’s part of you when you get the compulsion to do this stuff. I would say from my perspective, it’s not being selfish, it’s just part of you. You have to do it. But if you do have a partner that supports you and backs you and understands you and loves you very much to pursue that interest, then man, go and give them a hug because you’re the luckiest people in the world. So yeah, I just wanted to add to that from

Nat Karmichael (01:08:45):
Yeah, sure, sure. I have to say there, Lee, is that I do have a wife who allows me that freedom. Does she understand the comic medium? No. Does she really find that I put that before her at times, yes. Is it fraught with danger in a relationship? Absolutely. Because I was going to come and talk about that later, but I can talk about it now. I believe that I’ve got a wonderful wife who allows me that creative freedom to do these things. Although she does feel that she doesn, she doesn’t get the, what’s the word for it? She doesn’t end up having the emotional support that I ought to give her at times. And I think that can cause problems because it is hard to try and strike that balance between creativity, responsibility to your employment and responsibility to your relationship. And it’s trying to juggle all of those moving parts where you can produce something just really wonderful as well as preserving what’s really important.

(01:10:06)
And it’s a really tough battle. And I do think at times that my wife has had to go second fiddle, and I know that’s not really a nice thing for her. And I know that sometimes she’ll vocalise the resentment for that, but nonetheless, she’s stuck with me for better or for worse. And here we are still together and I’m internally grateful for the wonderful support that she has given me, even though she doesn’t understand the medium. And even though you talk about my books behind me that seem quite ordered in front of me is total chaos. And I won’t show you one of the bug bears of her life is the fact that I’m in our double garage. We don’t have a car in our double garage, but we have plenty of boxes of books, plenty of records, plenty of CDs, plenty of short boxes that are in piles to my right here that drive her nuts.

Leigh Chalker (01:11:13):
Well, mate, who needs vehicles when you’ve got books and creativity and music and the theatres of your mind to take you into places, you know what I mean? Who needs reality of these metal things that take you from A to B? We don’t need that. We can just there.

Nat Karmichael (01:11:31):
Well, no, no, I still need a vehicle and it’s out parked.

Leigh Chalker (01:11:35):
I just park it outside.

Nat Karmichael (01:11:37):
Yeah, that’s it.

Leigh Chalker (01:11:41):
Nat Ian’s just said Nat, I take my hat off to your publishing empire. We

Nat Karmichael (01:11:48):
Thank you Ian. I must say too,

Leigh Chalker (01:11:52):
Matt, we’ve got Danny Nolan here. He says, the risk of creators to fail is something that their passions often mask. So it’s not something they don’t factor into the equation when chasing their goals and no, it’s not Danny. Yeah,

Nat Karmichael (01:12:08):
True,

Leigh Chalker (01:12:08):
True,

Nat Karmichael (01:12:10):
True. That’s true. I must say though, the one thing about this double garage with all of its books here, some of my grandkids love coming here and they say, and this is where we came to before Lee, they say, doesn’t this smell great?

Leigh Chalker (01:12:26):
Yeah, yeah. Hey. Oh nah. Like man, you get those little guys, smell ’em, man, whatever you do, you throw ’em in there even for a half hour smell ’em like pay for man. That where it you get that whole fool. That should cologne that stuff, dude. Yeah, I dunno about that. But

Nat Karmichael (01:12:50):
So where we go from here, I guess we’re going sequentially, aren’t we, with the way life is going and we

Leigh Chalker (01:12:56):
Can go any way you wish, Mr. Carmichael. I have an absolutely lovely time mate, so feel

Nat Karmichael (01:13:03):
Free. Right. So I suppose what I could talk about, there’s nothing that’s always straightforward in publishing and some of the problems you encounter. I mean I guess I’ve had a few things that haven’t gone quite right. I mean, first of all, there’s occasions when I haven’t proofread a book and much to my shame, I had a book that I did publish and I’ve got show and tell books here. So this is a book that I,

Leigh Chalker (01:13:37):
There you go. I was

Nat Karmichael (01:13:42):
Pleased with this book and I didn’t get it proofread and I really kicked myself for not doing so. It’s an anthology which was designed to raise money for Beyond Blue. And what I did is I wrote to male and female creators in Australia asking them if they’d be willing to put in for the anthology to limit it to five pages maximum of a story they felt was important to them or something with the theme of Australia. And I was really overwhelmed by the wonderful response by the creative community. This is back about 10 years ago now that came out and it was important I managed at that stage, I was working in the psychiatric emergency centre where I’ve worked for the last 13 years at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, and I was able to get the mental health nurse of the year to write an introduction for me.

(01:14:45)
We get on quite well. And she wrote just a small short piece. The only thing I didn’t do with the book is I didn’t get it proofread. And to my absolute horror, Dave, I think he rang me up or he emailed me and told me that I’d got the sequence of his story muddled up. And instead of page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, it was page 1, 2, 3, 5 4. And I think there were other mistakes too. I forgot to include Greg Gates’s drawing of himself. I forgot to, I think I got Sarab, my friend Sara got his name wrong in the credits and little things like that that I should have picked up, which disappoint me to this day. And so if you’re doing a book, folks, if you’re making a book, get it proof read, it’s really important. I was talking about it before with that Air Hawk one, but it’s one of those things that’s some of the problems you get with publishing. Another one I’ve had over the years I suppose, is that my wife said she didn’t really want me to publish it. My first book was this one here as a book as far as books go. And I did this one in 2010. I wanted to do this because inside there, inside I included a lot of biographical work about John Dixon.

(01:16:17)
I enclosed five complete stories and I also went to a lot of people that were important to John in his life and asked them to tell me, how did you find John? Can you tell me something about John? And they all managed to write a little article there. His daughter, his son, his manager, one of the guys that used to work for him on the Sunday newspaper strip, a really close family friend wrote, John Ryan’s wife at the time wrote something and everyone wrote a little bit to his sister wrote something, they all wrote a little bit about John and I didn’t tell him that’s what I was doing. I told him I was just putting out a volume of air hook. But inside the volume was all these wonderful things about John and also an interview with John telling us about what materials he used, what sort of papers, a bit of background about his history.

(01:17:19)
And anyway, we got the book published and then we went to America and the first person that I wanted to give a copy to was John Dixon. So I managed to see John just a couple of years before he passed and I was able to present him the book and he sat down there and started reading it. We just had dinner and he just wanted to get away from the dinner table and he wanted to keep on reading what people wrote about him. It was just a wonderful thing. It was just really nice. He didn’t expect it and it was just a wonderful surprise. It made the holiday, I suppose. I didn’t think much of Los Angeles after that. We went to New York and we spent 10 days there and that made the holiday special too.

Leigh Chalker (01:18:10):
Man, that sounds like that would’ve been an amazing experience though, like letting being there with him while,

Nat Karmichael (01:18:21):
I’ll tell you a story too about in New York, this is something that I’ve got to tell you. There was a cartoon exhibition on in New York and I said to my wife, I’ve got to go and see this. It was Will Eisner. And they had all of his originals and I thought, oh, I mean Heaven will Eisner’s original stuff. And it was all of the stuff from the 1940s and some of the later stuff. And I thought, how great is this? And my wife wasn’t interested. She said, I’m going downstairs, I’ll be waiting down there and I’ll come out when I see you. No worries. Yeah, righto. I don’t care. I’m going to see will I say Anyway, so I go downstairs and I want to a rave about what I’ve just seen and she told me, oh, don’t worry about that. I’ve just seen Yoko. Oh no.

Leigh Chalker (01:19:11):
Oh, mans that fur done.

Nat Karmichael (01:19:14):
Yeah, that’s it. So there you go. I missed out on seeing Yoko, but my wife had a chance. And there you go. One of those things. Well,

Leigh Chalker (01:19:22):
That seems to me as I get older, I sort of understand the importance of compromise, man. And so it seems like a bit of a win-win there for both. What could have been potentially a little like maybe antsy, like everyone came up, roses provided.

(01:19:47)
Lovely. Yeah, no, that’s great man. Yeah, that’s fantastic. When you said with your proofreading, I know it’s obviously a very important thing, what do you tend to have from what you’ve learned now when you’re doing your new comic books and stuff like that? Do you have someone that you get to help you edit them or do you have a group of people that you go, Hey, trust that confidants that like say, can you read this for me? Or do you do it yourself? I mean, do you give yourself a bit more time between the deadlines and the final print? How did you get around that

Nat Karmichael (01:20:35):
Sort of? Well, in regards comics, I suppose I was working to a deadline. So the proofreading wasn’t really sent elsewhere, if you know what I mean. I guess I proofread it and sometimes that’s where you make mistakes by thinking you know what you’re reading when you’re not, if you understand what I mean. But these days when I’m publishing a book, I don’t have a deadline. I try not to have a deadline. I tend to send the material out or outsource it to other people to let them read. I mean, Rogersons done one for me just recently. He’s reviewing Iron Outlaw for me at the moment, and he’s looked through the text there, made some suggestions, not necessarily that we agreed to all of them. And sometimes I’ve had a professional proofread. It varies from book to book and depending on what the material is, but I prefer that I don’t proofread because I think when I do proofread, I make mistakes and I’ll tell you look a very embarrassing one and I’ll publicly talk about it because I feel really bad about it. I’ve just very recently released another air hook comic. There we go, there we

Leigh Chalker (01:21:58):
Go.

Nat Karmichael (01:22:00):
And there are a lot of people that assisted with this one and I wrote other credits inside the front page there and I’ve got really editorial input and assistance. And the first person I’ve got on the list there is Jason McPherson. And I didn’t pick it up and Jeremy was very kind. I mean I had to apologise profusely. How could I get Jeremy McPherson wrong and put Jason McPherson? And I felt really bad about that, but so even though I’ve had other people look at things, sometimes things like that get missed and it really irritates me. I feel it just, it’s something that shouldn’t happen, but sometimes does. And I know that in some of my other books that’s happened as well, some of my other comics that mistakes are made, I know what they are. I don’t tell everybody, but those are the ones I have shared with you tonight are the major ones that trouble me and they’ll always trouble me. And putting Jason instead of Jeremy will always trouble me and I feel really bad about it, but I can’t do much about it.

(01:23:21)
Anyway. We were talking earlier about conflict between relationships and the creative soul and there’s always external pressures of outside and in the mid 1910s, what are we talking about? I guess about 2015 or so, there was a fairly major thing that happened with Inside Our Family, which I probably won’t go into right now, but in order to work through that, I suppose for myself, I started doing crazy things. And by that I mean I was working a lot of late shifts in my psychiatry position. And so my shifts started at two 15 and I used to start work at one o’clock and my workday usually finished about quarter to 11. But being the nature of the job, I used to finish sometimes 11 o’clock, quarter past 11 and I’m still a fair distance from home, so I didn’t get home until sometimes after midnight. And then my dear wife would stay up and wait for me, we’d have a conversation about the day. And so bedtime didn’t arrive until about one o’clock in the morning.

(01:24:49)
And during these times with this external pressure about what was happening with inside our family, I used to get up early in the morning and I’m talking about six o’clock in the morning and started working on my oi oi comic. And I used to work from six o’clock in the morning up until around about 11 o’clock, sometimes even a bit later till half past 11 when my wife said, you better have a break, you better have something to eat, get ready for work. And then off I’d go. And so I was doing crazy shifts. I was sort of starting at six until one o’clock in the morning and I did that for a long period of time. And I think this is in order to try and put aside, let’s put it that way. And those dramas now have subsided and everything’s fine. But at the time it was tough really. And I think it was no tougher then on my wife Carleen, who I think put up with a lot and what can I say? Yeah, I mean the fact that she I think was willing to stay the distance in the relationship is testament to her strength and her character.

(01:26:10)
And I can only be forever grateful because I was working flat out on these comics. I dunno, do you want to see them all? I dunno.

Leigh Chalker (01:26:21):
Absolutely. I can actually tell you, Matt, that I bought a few of those issues from the news agents mate back in the day, so I’ve got them over in portal.

Nat Karmichael (01:26:31):
Good on you, Lee. That’s good to know.

Leigh Chalker (01:26:33):
Alright

Nat Karmichael (01:26:33):
Mate, that was the, I’ll just quickly, briefly tell you, I was really happy with this cover that was done by Anton Emden who gave me, I paid all the artists and I made sure everyone got paid. It wasn’t a great amount for everybody, but everyone got paid and I allowed all the creators to retain copyright because to me that’s very important. And an Todd who drew that cover surprised me at the Stanley Awards that year by giving me the original black and white artwork. And I was just blown away by his generosity. He charged me half of what his normal fee is, and I was just so wrapped. And if you look in the books in the background on that illustration, he’s written Air Hawk and Ned Kelly. So anyway, that was lovely. And then this one here was another favourite that was a issue that featured all female artists in Australia, and I was honoured to have that one shortlisted in the ledgers as they were at the time. And then from the next issue, some of the artists were willing to do wraparound covers and I was so pleased with this one here.

Leigh Chalker (01:27:54):
Well, Danny Nolan just said that back into Australian comics, Nat, so there’s someone else you influenced me.

Nat Karmichael (01:28:02):
Oh, that’s lovely. Oh, that’s nice. That’s really good. Anyway, was, and Dave actually wrote me a synopsis about this character on the front and he had this idea that I thought was wonderful about doing a comics story about this character. And anyway, he was quite busy at that stage, and so he said he wasn’t able to get back to it until much later. Anyway, a couple years later I wrote to Dave and said, you whatever happened to that idea that you had for this comic for oi, oi. I mean, the magazine had finished by then, but Dave said he couldn’t remember anything about it.

(01:28:49)
But somewhere among my emails, I’ve got this really great big synopsis of a story that Dave had that I thought was just wonderful because he did that Uncle Silas for the Americans for Dark Horse. And this story that he had in his head was just something faster period to that. But anyway, he couldn’t remember it and I’ll just have to dig it out and give it to him one day. But I think these days he’s just so busy. I was really pleased with this one. This one had very limited distribution at the news agents and Tony Thorn did this wonderful story inside about the first Australian comic strip. And it’s really dear to my heart. It’s talking about the indigenous population, the First Nations people, and some of the tragedies that be fell them in Tasmania in particular.

(01:29:46)
And this one here was one for Jeremy Staples. He had a comic zine festival in Toowoomba. So this one didn’t get released on the news agents and the cover artist was, I’m trying to think of her name, isn’t it terrible? I can’t remember her name. But anyway, she did this wonderful cover and I believe that after that she was hired by Nicola Scott to colour all of her Wonder Woman comics. She can’t remember her name. Isn’t it terrible Spanish name. Anyway, I think she’s got married recently and isn’t that wonderful? There’s another one that was a double sider one, and you can see I like the covers that covered over to the back.

(01:30:37)
And then Alicia Jade, and inside this comic, I’d always said, I didn’t want superheroes because I wanted to be an independent comic. And inside there, Fran Cantor and Andrews Bergen drew the first issue of magpie. Now the second instalment was in this issue here and they were going to do a third one. And the idea was that, and this is where life gets in the way. So what happened is that we’ve got an eight page story on the first issue. We had an eight page story on that second one I just showed you, and we were going to do a third one and that makes 24 pages. And the idea was to put them all together and market it to the Americans because I thought it would do really well. Anyway, I decided to come down to Melbourne to have a conversation with Franz and Andres to talk about that fact about trying to get it all together for America.

(01:31:49)
And we arranged to meet at a certain place in Melbourne at a certain time, and I think Fran and I both met there, but Andreas wasn’t there to my great shame, I was cursing him behind my back. I thought, what are you doing? We made these arrangements. I come all the way down to Melbourne just to catch up and you haven’t shown up in my head. I was sort of thinking Ill of him. And Andreas becomes the third great influence in my life because unbeknownst to myself and unbeknownst to Franks, Andreas had had a medical episode, and I won’t go into it his personal life, but just to made me realise that there’s more to things than just comics. There’s a life outside of here and Andreas could have died. The poor bugger.

(01:32:49)
He hasn’t really rich, his peaked like he was back in the day back then. And I just felt embarrassed that I was seeing all these negative thoughts and awful thoughts about him simply because he hadn’t made up a meeting with me. And you can’t in life, I don’t think you can sort of try and think you’re going to make all these plans about what’s going to happen and what you’re going to do because things get in the way, life gets in the way. And it didn’t happen. It didn’t come to pass. We didn’t do the third episode. The guy spent some time in rehab trying to recover from his medical condition and I felt totally embarrassed by my thinking. I mean, I didn’t badmouth him to everybody, but in my heart I was badmouthing him and I felt really bad. And he taught me a lesson to be humble, to be a little bit more considerate of other people, that there’s other things in their lives that are going on. And so it was a valuable lesson in life. I thought that I was taught by Andress even though he didn’t realise. Another issue, which I was really pleased about was this one here. Now I really like this cover because you know who it is though, who did the cover

Leigh Chalker (01:34:26):
Looks like a lumsden.

Nat Karmichael (01:34:29):
It does. And it is. And Glenn hadn’t drawn any comics for years. And anyway, I convinced him to do a cover and I just really love the cover and I love the comic. A lovely story. What I did with this issue is that there were some comics that I had from the 1980s that I hadn’t published, and that was Ian Eddy and I had some work from a guy in Adelaide, Jim Stratman that I hadn’t published that I wanted to publish. And so I decided to make it a nostalgic issue and I managed to get Ian’s permission. Ian really wouldn’t communicate with me, but I managed to get in touch with him by his brother. And that was the last published work of Ian before he sadly passed away.

(01:35:21)
So that was a very special issue that I was able to put away. And Lee, I do thank you for purchasing in the newsstands. I must say that they didn’t sell well enough for me to be able to continue it, and that was a great disappointment. The only thing I can say is that I think I’ll be apart from Fru, I’ll be their last Australian publisher to be on the Australian newsstand ever because I don’t think it’s going to be viable unless someone’s got a really good commercial property that’ll sell. But these days no one goes to the newsstands. I think the only way to sell Australian comics these days is probably via the specialised conventions. And even then, I think that the thousands that were sold back in the heyday have long gone. And these days I think if you can sell a hundred copies of a comic, then you’re doing pretty well. If you can do more than that, then you can sit yourself with a bestseller. Anyway, I was talking about am I mono lagging too much,

Leigh Chalker (01:36:32):
Mate? Anyway, NA, I’m going to just say, sir, I am enjoying this immensely, mate. You have a wealth of knowledge and wonderful stories and I’m enjoying it. Please continue. And your leisure mate.

Nat Karmichael (01:36:50):
Thank you. Thank you so much then Lee. So in one of my Air Hawk comics, I had a backup strip called Trundle, and I really liked Trundle and it was a creation of Neil Madison. And Neil was a very prolific cartoonist that I met at the Australian Black and White Artists Club award nights. He was also a very good friend of Gary Clarks who I was friendly with. And I asked Neil if he would be willing to allow the trundle to be placed in the back pages of one of the Air Hawk comics that I did in the 1980s. And he agreed. And so I reapproached him later asking if we could put the strips. It only appeared in one newspaper in Australia. It wasn’t a big cell, it wasn’t like it’s a baby. It wasn’t like, I think he had a couple of other strips, St. Pip’s, a lot of his strips were very popular in the newspapers, but trundle wasn’t, it didn’t do too well. But anyway, Neil gave me the okay to go ahead and so I put out this volume now.

Leigh Chalker (01:38:03):
There we

Nat Karmichael (01:38:06):
Go. And what I love about it is that the strips are pantomime strip here. I’ve got some up here actually, so I dunno if you can see those.

Leigh Chalker (01:38:18):
Yeah, we can see that. Yeah, that way right there. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.

Nat Karmichael (01:38:24):
So this is what some of them looked like and it was just a very gentle humour. It wasn’t anything too rough. And anyway, it’s just the one I love giving to kids. And when we were at Comic Street last month, because I love the Strip so much and because it’s for kids, we gave heaps away to some of the kids because sort of left his comic strip career behind. And so I’ve got quite a few copies still left. Like I was saying, I’ve got a garage full of unsold books. It’s such the nature of publishing now. That’s what I was telling you before. I tend to wander after Ive published

Leigh Chalker (01:39:15):
That. We’ve got a comment here from Christopher Sequeira. Good evening, sir. Dang you. Nat Carmichael laying down a challenge to publish in a Australian outlets again. No, I think that’s called an inspiration. Nat Best to you. So thank you Chris for your comments and popping back on the show.

Nat Karmichael (01:39:39):
Thank you very much. So anyway, after I published that air that I presented to John Dixon, my wife said, you’re not going to publish another comic book until you can get a distributor.

Leigh Chalker (01:39:57):
Well, there you go.

Nat Karmichael (01:39:59):
I don’t want these comic books holding up our garage. And so I think, yeah, fair enough, fair enough. So what did I do? I managed to get one. I got Dennis Jones and Company, and they were quite happy to distribute my books. And so that was just a wonderful joy that they were able to do that. And on that basis, I managed to get quite a few books into the bookstores. And here’s one in particular that I loved.

Leigh Chalker (01:40:29):
Oh yeah, look at that. Oh, sis, bring that. Oh man. Now here we go. Oh, Monty, very cool. Yes.

Nat Karmichael (01:40:40):
So now what happened, the background story to this one is that as, as I said earlier, I approached Monty at the award night and asked him if he’d be interested and he said, look, it’d be interesting the idea. And so later on after I’d published that first air hook, I decided to write to Monty again and just ask him if he wants to revisit the idea and put all those strips in one volume. Anyway, I got the sad news really, that Monty wasn’t well and that he was on his last legs. So in fairness to the family, I told them, look, I’ll just shelved the idea for a while. So Monty did eventually pass away and I gave them a good year to grieve for Maori. He was a good age and he’d done so much work for Australian comics each January the fifth, which is his birthday, I like to announce what I consider to be the best Australian comic of the year, and I put it on my web blog page. So I allowed them to grieve the family. Were okay with the idea, or rather, Dorothy, his wife was okay. She was at the Nina when I first met Mondy and it was given the okay, which was just wonderful. So we managed to, this is the first time I ever kickstarted something and we managed to get the whole thing into one volume and it was a wonderful bit of work.

(01:42:20)
I had Michael Kovi who started the design for me, and the printer became a little bit, how would you say? The printer was a little bit fussy about what he wanted in regards to dimensions of the book. And Michael was quite upset with that and said that he could shove it. So I didn’t want to shove it because I wanted to finish the book. So I ended up looking online for someone that could help me. And at this stage I had published Oy, oy, oy. But anyway, I found a young guy called Ryan McDonald at Smith, and he wasn’t the cheapest guy to employ, but he had a really nice way of communicating in his email and he asked, I think we decided to make arrangements to meet. He lived at Logan and I lived on the Redcliffe Peninsula, which is about an hour’s drive away.

(01:43:20)
So I decided to go and visit him in his home, and just a wonderful friendships that developed from there. We’ve known each other for so long now and we’ve done so many books together and it’s just been a wonderful relationship. Ryan knows what I like about in the Way Design goes, and we’ve very rarely had any issues about putting things together. And so Ryan was with me when we finished Ned Kelly, and he’s been with me pretty much ever since, except for some of my recent comics. And I owe depth of gratitude for Ryan. He’s does a wonderful job with a lot of my books. So these days he only works on weekends for me, and he only does it for, because he loves what we do. This is the one here that we did after Ned Kelly. Now this one here is just a massive to, and I can’t believe that I’ve done this. Now I look back at it, I mean, how many pages was it? I can’t remember. It’s got every strip that was in the newspapers, and I’ve forgotten how many pages it is. I’ll just sneak a look. 390, almost 400 pages

Leigh Chalker (01:44:40):
Like

Nat Karmichael (01:44:42):
Newspaper comic strips, and it’s as thick as thick.

Leigh Chalker (01:44:47):
Wow.

Nat Karmichael (01:44:49):
As far as Mondy goes, I don’t think I could do any better for Mondy. I know his son, Justin was really proud of the book, and I was super chuffed too. Justin, his son came up to our home up here and he presented me with all the original artwork in order to use the era artwork for the book. And I was wondering how to get scanned because the artwork’s huge. I mean, the book is half the size of the original artwork, and I was wondering how can we get the scan? Because I didn’t want to put it on a, it was too big for a scanner and I didn’t want to put it on one of those rolling scanners in case the artwork was damaged. So anyway, surprisingly enough had a chat to the art department at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, and the girl that does the media stuff up there said, look, I would love to photograph it for you. So every page was photographed. So she did a wonderful job. It’s the people behind the scenes that help out, that make these things just a pleasure. I was able to get a photographer to do a photograph of some of Monty’s original memorabilia. That holster is Ben Hall’s original holster that he used the gun, but the holster’s, actually, Ben Hall’s holster. So the people that behind the scenes that were just so willing to assist in giving help to make projects has just been amazing. So there you go. That

Leigh Chalker (01:46:43):
Have, oh, Nat, we’ve got another comment from Christopher Ra here, copies of Nats Air Hawk and Ned Kelly were given to me to Steve Ditko Spider-Man before he died. And were very much liked. Steve wrote me in his letters, Ditko recalled seeing Air Hawk in the day. So there you go. Thank you very much, Chris, for your comments and by me to Steve DI should say. So there you go. And here’s another one, Nat and I made sure to tell Monty’s son. Justin.

Nat Karmichael (01:47:21):
Very good.

Leigh Chalker (01:47:22):
Yeah, Nat, I’d have to say, man, when you’re talking from talking to you this evening, you’re very self-aware and spiritual leaning. And what seems to have happened in a couple of those circumstances that you’re telling me is almost synchronistic universe. Pathways have opened up to you in terms of these are things that you’ve wanted to do that’s tied into your past and wondering how you’re going to scan those images. And someone you worked with, I’d love to photograph them, and then suddenly it’s there, they’d be done. I’m not sure how I’m going to do all this, the graphic design stuff, you know what I mean? Whatever will become, and then I met this other fellow who led you to have this long lasting friendship and stuff like that. Mate, it seems to me that things, your path has always been clear, man, from when you’re a young fella, like passion and determination and grit, like per are admirable qualities, sir. And that’s what I’m seeing in you tonight from how you’re talking. You had your, you’re appreciating things

Nat Karmichael (01:48:57):
Maybe Lee, but I think sometimes there’s things that happen behind the scenes where it’s not always that smooth sailing. And I can talk about some things that don’t come off. For example. I mean, back in the day I was passionate about Felix the cat, and I felt that it’s a character that had questionable heritage. The Americans say they own it. Well, EY, I think we did. I think Pato Sullivan was an Australian, and he created it on that basis. This is back in the 1980s. I wrote to someone and asked them, well, who owns the rights to Felix the cat? And I received a letter back from King Features saying that the rights to Felix, the cat were owned by King’s features except for aia. So Australia or New Zealand could publish a Felix the Comet. And so to that aim, I had a conversation with Ian Eddie and asked him if he would be willing to do some illustrations for me, and he did some for me. Here’s some here now.

(01:50:24)
And I also got an email, not an email, a letter, because back in the day it was letters. And I received a letter from a new budding artist who said, well, look, I could write a script about Felix the Cat, and I’ve got this script still here, and it’s about 20 pages long, and I don’t think I’ve got it here. But anyway, I received this email from this budding artist who said, I’d love to draw it for you if you’d allow me to do so. Anyway, it was Dylan Nala, and when I saw Dylan’s work, I thought Dylan’s work. There’s a dynamic aspect to his cartoons and his comics that he would be an ideal cartoonist for Felix the Cat. The only problem there though, was trying to locate the copyright holder, which would’ve been the next of kin of Patto Sullivan. And anyway, it took me years and years before I was able to locate the copyright holder.

(01:51:31)
So unfortunately, I had a conversation with a solicitor in Melbourne, David over the Fox, who drew Fox Comics or published Fox Comics back in the day. He’s now works for entertainment as a lawyer. And he said that if you wanted to try and challenge it, it’s not likely you’d succeed that it’s unlikely that you’d be able to publish a comic there without the Americans jumping down your throat. So Felix the Cat, sort of something that’s sort of gone by the wayside, if you know what I mean. So there are projects that I sort of wish could happen, but they just don’t for whatever reason. So it’s not always smooth sailing, but nonetheless, I’m not really going to complain. Another instance really is I was doing a presentation of Air Hawk at the What’s now the Australian Cartoonist Association talking about my Air Hawk book. And I wanted some background information about John Dixon’s early work.

(01:52:36)
So I had a conversation with Graham Cliff, and I know Graham is a passionate Australian comics historian, and he told me that I’m going to write a book about Australian comics just to try and supplement what John Ryan wrote in panel by panel, and would it be okay if, would that be okay? What do you think about it? I said, that’s a great idea, go for it. And I said, have you got any material about Air Hawk? So he gave me some material about John Dixon and Air Hawk, which I utilised. And then over the years, I asked him occasionally, how are you going with that book on Australian history, Graham, oh, it’s coming along. He used to tell me it’s coming along. And I used to ask him probably every couple of years, what’s happening with it? And the same answer, it’s coming along. And in the end I thought, well, it’s coming along and so I’m coming on too. I’m getting a bit older and I’m not going to hold my breath worrying about it. So I just didn’t think any more about it. And then it was just a few years back, Graham comes up to me, Hey, listen, I’m ready to publish this book about Australian comics.

(01:53:47)
And he blew me away. I said, oh, well that’s good. I didn’t expect it. So he came to me with his manuscript and it did blow me away. Graham spent so much time researching it about how many comics, so many people had drawn, where they were born, where they died. He went to grave sites, he went to family members, he went everywhere to research his book. And I felt it was too valuable a resource not to publish it. And the end result is this fabulous book here. And

Leigh Chalker (01:54:27):
There we

Nat Karmichael (01:54:27):
Go. There you go.

Leigh Chalker (01:54:29):
Sun beams to sun,

Nat Karmichael (01:54:34):
If you can read the bottom there, rise and fall of the Australian comic. Australian

Leigh Chalker (01:54:38):
Comic,

Nat Karmichael (01:54:39):
1920,

Leigh Chalker (01:54:40):
Forward to 1965. Does it say 1965? Yeah, that gotcha.

Nat Karmichael (01:54:48):
Yeah, that’s right. From 1924 to 1965 Graham, same belief is the first Australian comic book was Sunbeams. And he believes that the comic industry died in 1965 due to, well for import restrictions being lifted and tv, just a range of factors really. And he doesn’t believe that the industry’s ever going to recover. But I dunno, I hold a different view than Graham in that regard in so far as I think that there’s still a lot of wonderful artists and cartoonists out there who want to tell stories. And that’s the basis of comics. It’s storytelling, and it’s sharing those stories with everyone.

(01:55:38)
And I think it’s important to get those stories out there. Now, like I said to you before, that my wife wouldn’t allow me to publish more without a distributor. Well, the worst thing could happen is that Dennis Jones and company went bust and they were kind enough to tell us that they were going to go bust and that their warehouse was full of our books. And if you want to come and get ’em, come and get them. And being in Queensland and they being in Victoria made that a little bit difficult, but with some lovely people like Jim Bridges, I think Ian McCall and Danny down in Melbourne, they all went to the place where Dennis Jones was and rescued as many copies of my books as they were able to. And I’m grateful for them too, for doing so and rescuing them, I guess, from destruction. So anyway, I had the dilemma, what do I do now? I’ve told my wife that I’m going to only publish if we’ve got a distributor and oh no, what did you do,

Leigh Chalker (01:56:49):
Matt?

Nat Karmichael (01:56:51):
What did I do? But sometimes things work out, and it’s just sometimes amazing how things work out. It’s one of these things that it seems really weird. I was at a conference, a work conference about suicide, and on the very first day of this conference about suicide, my sister passed away. I heard that my sister had passed, and I thought, oh, how can they get any worse? Anyway, as the day was progressing, I got a phone call from Novella distribution, and they said, we’d love to distribute all of your books. And it was sort of bittersweet. I mean, I wasn’t really taking much notice about this suicide conference. I was too preoccupied with my sister’s passing.

(01:57:43)
And at the same time I got this, so it was a bitter ofWe day, my sister passing. But by the same day I was able to get a new book distributor. So that worked out really well. And so chugging along with more books, and lemme go through a couple of them. Yeah, yeah, please do. Emil Mercy was a cartoonist. Now, Emil’s got a wonderful story. If you dunno his story, I’ll just briefly tell it to you. He was born in New Caledonia, so spoke only French. And his family was, his family was a baking family. They had baking empire, and they made quite a bit of money about baking. And anyway, Emil’s dad said to him, if you go to Australia, you’re going to be disinherited. We’re going to take you. You’re not going to be in the will. We’re going to cut your ties, you’re gone.

(01:58:46)
And nonetheless, he wanted to be a cartoonist. So he came to Australia, he did many occupations and eventually became a very well-known cartoonist who did a lot of comics in the 1940s. And some of ’em were called Super-Duper Man, a parody of Superman and Trip along Hoppity, parroting hop ca, and Mud Drake, the magician for Mandrake. So he did a lot of these wonderful comics, and eventually he managed to get a job working in the newspapers, working as a cartoonist. And so I didn’t know Neil, but I managed to have a wonderful association with his dad that I met one night at the cartoons award night and had a conversation with Michael, who gave me permission to reprint some of his original cartoons in this book. And that was assisted by Philip Bentley, Phil Judd, Gary Clark, Ian, look, just a lot of people. My daughters reviewed some of the cartoons and we put it in a book and it was all to benefit the Australian, the National Cartoon Gallery in CS Harbour. And if you ever get to Coffs Harbour, now, the gallery was closed for a period earlier this year, but they’ve now reopened. They’ve also got a car museum inside the gallery. So if you like cars, that’s great. If you like cartoons, it’s great. If you like cartoons and cars, well, it’s even better. You’re in heaven. Yeah, that’s right.

(02:00:43)
That was a Kickstarter, which was supported by a lot of wonderful people, and we managed to get that one published. And whilst I was in the process of publishing that, I got an email from Dylan. Dylan nailed it, that I hadn’t heard from for years. And he said, I’ve got this book that I’d love to be published, and I’ve given it to an English publisher and they’ve had it for five years and they haven’t done anything with it. Would you be interested in publishing it? We’ll take the rights off them and we’ll get it published. And I said, yeah, I’d love it too, Dylan. Dylan was one of the easiest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. And we brought out this lovely book and we were so honoured that it was awarded a bronze that at the Comic Arts Awards of Australia. And I’m just so wrapped, we had such a ball putting it together, Dylan, Ryan and I, and it’s one of the pride pieces that I’ve published, but we’re not content with that. We put out another one, just late last year, rock and roll theories. And right at the moment we’re talking about, well, Dylan’s trying to, well, I hope he is. Dylan, if you’re listening, I want you to keep finishing colouring Dar and di. He’s colouring dar and di that used to appear in all of the show bags. The idea is to put those in the volume as well. Yeah.

(02:02:15)
So there are some of the things. Now, one of the things about being in the Australian Cartoonist Association, I believe, is the friendships you make with people. And I was at one of the meetings, I think we had it at Coffs Harbour and Coffs Harbour. I was just sitting down and I was looking at this guy that was sitting down intently watching the proceedings, and he was doing some drawing. And if you’ve never met a cartoonist, you’ve got this idea in your head about what a cartoonist should look like. That’s how it is for me. Anyway, I don’t know. I mean, all cartoonists are different. They’re ordinary people. But in my head, I’ve got an idea of what a cartoonist looks like. Anyway, this guy that was sitting in one of the seats, very intent listening, drawing to me epitomise what a cartoonist should look like.

(02:03:18)
And anyway, during the break, he came up to Gary Clark and I and said, Hey, listen, do you want to have a look and see what I’ve done? I want you to see what my cartoons and see what you think of them. And I was just blown away. I just love this guy’s work. And we’ve become firm friends. This Rob Feldman, if you’ve ever met Rob, you’ll never forget him. And we put out this book that you can’t get anymore because it’s just out at print, but it’s cartoons, comics and cows and cars. And I thought we were going to do a short book about 80 pages. Not a worry, Rob. I’ve got to write some more pages yet, Ned, I’m not quite ready. I wanted to get it out with Ned Kelly. And anyway, he kept on writing, and writing is not ready yet. No, righto. Anyway, we eventually got it out there and it is just fabulous. It’s a bit like Monty Python on speed. It’s just so much fun. And lately, I asked Rob if he’d write another book, if he could do another book for me as a comic, not as a book this time, but it’s a comic. And we’ll do it in colour.

(02:04:29)
And could you make it about 28 pages? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No worries. I could do that. Yeah, no worries. Anyway,

Leigh Chalker (02:04:36):
It’s going to come in about 56,

Nat Karmichael (02:04:40):
No, 84. 84, 84 pages. And it’s wonderful, wonderful. If you haven’t seen it, there it is. Fridge Boy From Space. If you haven’t read that, you’ve got to read it because that’s just so funny. It’s a spoof of Star Wars. It’s a spoof of old comic book characters. It’s just wonderful. I just love it. And Rob, I love Robbie. He’s just a wonderful guy and he is just, what a cartoonist epitomised to me. Now, I do want to tell you about a story, and this is about Robin. I’m babbling on a bit, and I probably need some water, but I’m going to keep on going.

(02:05:23)
You keep going. Rob was so, so happy about his book. And you know how I presented to him. I decided to fly down to Sydney and just knock on his door and just say, hello, Rob, here’s your book. And so Rob was so over the moon about it that he decided to go to the book fair in Sydney, and he went to the book fair, and this fellow came up to him and said, Hey, do you know anything about cartoons? I’ve got this cartoon at home that I would love you to have a look at. See it, because it’s been at my home for so long and I want to know what I can do with it. So Rob said, oh, look, I’ll have to talk to my mate, Nat. He’ll tell, he’ll know more about it than me. So he gave me his email and then I forgot it. I completely forgot. I was so busy doing Ned Kelly. Anyway, Rob wrote back to me and said, have you contacted this guy that’s got this cartoon? He wants you to have a look at it. And I said, oh, I did forget. So I wrote to the guy and he told me that he had a copy of, for God’s sake, stop laughing.

(02:06:38)
And I said, what? He said, I’ve got this Stan Cross cartoon, and I’d like you to have a look at it. Now, back in the day, I dunno if you know this, back in the 1930s, Stan Cross did this really big cartoon. It was just the Rage of Smith’s Weekly, which was a weekly magazine that came out, and it was filled with features and a lot of cartoons. Anyway, this cartoon in particular was so well known that they printed copies of it, and it was just rooted right around the world and right around Australia. And they made thousands of copies of this particular cartoon because it was so popular in the 1930s. It was about two guys on the building site. One was dangling down, and the guy on the bottom who’s just grabbed the other guy’s pants and pulled them down and said, just stop laughing.

(02:07:34)
This is serious. But there were copies everywhere. And so when this guy told me that he had a copy of this cartoon, I thought, yeah, righto, no worries, but can you tell me what size it is? And when he told me the size, I had a conversation with Lindsey Foyle, who knows a lot about cartoons. And we came to the conclusion that wasn’t really a copy of the cartoon. So one afternoon after we’d finished at the Australian Cartoons Association award night, Lindsay and myself and Rob couldn’t make it because he had to go to work, decided to drive to this fellow’s place just to have a look, see at this cartoon that he had. Anyway, it was the bloody original. It was fair of the original. It was so huge.

(02:08:25)
And it’s known as Australia’s funniest cartoon. And over the years, people have been trying to find the original, and we were just blown away. We knew it was the original because we could see some of the white out in one of the anvils in the cartoon, and just amazing to find this cartoon. And it just blew us away. And the guy said, I’ve just had it in my toilet because they were going back to toilets because he said, I love to look at it every day. And there it was. He just had it there and we learned the history about it. And anyway, later on came back to Brisbane and he asked me, his partner had developed some cancer and they needed some money. And so they asked me if I’d have a negotiation with the National Library about acquiring the cartoon. And so we did a bit of haggling and they agreed to purchase it, and they paid that guy 20,000 more than we expected.

(02:09:33)
And so it was really nice for he and his partner. They were able to pay for their medical expenses. And so I wrote an article about it in the ink spot, and this was the first ink spot that I decided to edit. And I edited Ink Spot after, it was just before oi folded, I decided to join the A CA again and take a more active role in their organisation. And to that end, that was the first one I published. And the sad thing about it was it sort of my favourite issue, really, the first one I did, because first of all, we’re talking about the cartoon that Rob helped us discover, but also the fact I had to write Theary about my friend John Dixon. He had just passed away just shortly before the issue came to press. And I had a long association with the A CA in editing their magazine there. I did about 14 issues in dda. I won’t go through them all, but I suppose one of the best thing people will like to know and see, I suppose, is we did one on the Phantom.

(02:10:57)
I was in the committee, and one of the things I thought that the A CA should do is that to get their message across is to try and get the magazine into all the libraries. And we managed to get a lot of the magazines in the New South Wales libraries, but unfortunately it costs them a fair bit of money. And the a c, sorry, the a c committee decided that we’re not going to spend that much money, too much money. And sadly, the libraries in New South Wales no longer have copies of them. But it was a good gig while it lasted. And in the end, I think I decided to call it quits. I think soon after my mum passed away. I think I was thinking I would worked on oil for a period of time. And then I worked with Ink Spots and I managed to get the magazine out every quarter. And combined, I spent about five years getting a magazine out every quarter. And in the end I thought, no, I need a bit of a break. So there you go. So that’s some of the things I’m also passionate about, comic history, as you know. And so I work on the Ledger Awards, the Living and the Deceased Ledger for the Comic Arts Award of Australia. And I enjoy that role. I’ve been doing that now for about seven years, getting some guys together. We judge two awards.

(02:12:29)
We’ve got some that are going to be judged in or they’ve been judged already. We know who the winners are. And that’ll be at a public function in Canberra. I’m thinking about the 29th of November. And earlier on in the year, we had the a, a deciding to have their award on one weekend, and the Comic Arts Awards of Australia we’re going to have it on another weekend, and they were both in Canberra. And I thought, what you doing this for? Why can’t you get it together? So it was a matter of talking to Daniel. It was a matter of talking to Kathy and say, look, come on guys. And the outcome has been really wonderful. We’ve got both awards on the same weekend, both in Canberra, and I think everyone will be happier for that. So sometimes it’s nice to take an active role in the comic world and try and get a really good outcome for the people who love the comics, which is

Leigh Chalker (02:13:32):
Oh, absolutely. You

Nat Karmichael (02:13:33):
And everybody has. Listen,

Leigh Chalker (02:13:36):
Mate. Absolutely. I actually caught your post on Facebook and that had the two separate dates, like two weekends apart in Canberra. And at the time you posted I myself, I was like, why wouldn’t you just make a phone call to each other or send an email and go, you know what I mean? We could get everyone together in one place. Yeah,

Nat Karmichael (02:14:08):
That’s right. Yeah. Well, that’s right, Lee. So when I put that there, I was still in the process in the background of trying to work them both to talk to each other. And I’m really pleased that we got a sensible outcome there because who wins? The comic fans, that’s what it should be about anyway. Not everything goes smooth sailing. I feel like I’m doing a big monologue here. Last year, late last year, no, it was earlier this year. I was a little bit concerned that I wasn’t getting my checks from my distributor, what’s happened, what’s going on? And I tried to ring them and I didn’t get any response, and they weren’t answering my email. So I decided to drive along because their office is only about 45 minutes away from where I live. So I drove down there and I found their closed up shop. So once again, I’m without distributor, and once again, I have so many books in my garage. And so there’s a problem there because I did tell my dear wife that I’m not publishing books unless I get a distributor.

(02:15:16)
So where do I go? And I guess this is one of the things in life, where do you go for comics? And I know Christopher was talking before living his message about where do we go for the future of comics? And my feeling is, and I’ve had a discussion with Dylan about this and a few other people, is that my belief is that the world’s a smaller place these days. And that we can’t just be insular. I think that in order to publish comics, we have to do things for a more wider market than Australia. And whilst I’m still passionate about the product here and the work that we put in here, I feel that the best way to get Australian comics seen by the wider community, I think the only way around that is by getting our comics seen by an international audience. And the only way to do that is to get the comics published or rather distributed by Diamond or by Lunar because they’re the guys that hold the monopoly.

(02:16:27)
They’re the guys that can get our comics out into the world. And so to that end, I sent a copy of Rob’s book. I sent a copy of Dylan’s two hardbacks and I sent a copy of Dylan’s comic and I sent ’em a copy of my most recent Air Hawk. And I was hoping that they would say, yeah, look, they’d take them all and they’d distribute them. So they go around the globe, unfortunately, I dunno what Lunar are going to say just yet, but unfortunately Diamond have said no to everything except for Air Hawk. So I feel the cycles come around again, that I’m in the process of publishing Air Hawk again for maybe a wider audience than my first cycle of Air Hawk comics.

(02:17:16)
Don, my mate in Sydney’s just finished producing or preparing the second issue for publication, and that’s coming out shortly. So the idea will be to distribute them in the States. I’m not happy about the fact that they’re not going to see other Australian works. So I’ve got another plan in place for that and I’ll share it publicly. Now, is that my first issue of Air Hawk in this second incarnation? It has two complete stories. My second issue has three complete stories, and my third issue is planned to have three complete stories. But after that, in issue four onwards, I’m going to put two complete stories and as a backup Heaven Australian comic there as well, so that the Americans and the British, everyone who gets comics from Diamond can see that there’s another Australian talent in the back of the Air hook, but the same way as I did in the first time when I championed Trundle. And I’m hoping that in the back of the Air Haw comics, we can champion other Australian talents. And I’ve got an idea of who they will be, but I won’t reveal those yet. I’m still in discussions with those sort of people.

(02:18:34)
But where do you stop Lee under? Where do you stop? I dunno, there’s other things in the works. There’s one book that I’m still working on that hasn’t seen the lighter day yet, but it’s coming along. I’ll talk about it now if you’d like. Do you want to keep going? Blah, blah, blah. You

Leigh Chalker (02:18:54):
Can absolutely keep going, Mr. Carmichael. Mate, this is for you, mate.

Nat Karmichael (02:19:01):
Okay, so a few years back I got an email from someone in Melbourne and they said, we’ve found some original artwork. Would you be interested in identifying what it’s if? Anyway, I had a look at it. I thought, oh, that’s all an outdoor, I knew that from John Ryan’s book. So they said, oh, we’re just going to chuck it out because it’s been here for ages. We just want to get rid of it if we can. I said, Hey, hey, how about I offer you some money for it and you send it up to me? So anyway, they were quite happy with the price I proposed and they sent it up to me and I thought it would be probably about two or three pages. And anyway, it turned out to be 40 pages, original pages out of the 52 pages or episodes that were in the run. So I was just blown away and I thought, well, what are we going to do with this? We just can’t just sort of let it just sit here, why don’t we get the thing published? And so to that aim, I thought, oh, I’ll just have a conversation with a few people and see what they thought. Anyway, I remember Ian McCall, if you’re there, Ian, I’ll tell this story about you.

(02:20:14)
Ian said You’re not likely to get these guys to talk because one was a writer, one was an artist, and they does don’t see eye to eye. My understanding from what Ian told me is that one of the blokes was when they first started drawing the Iron Outlaw strip that he had a girlfriend and at the end of the strip, the girlfriend had gone to the other side. So

(02:20:43)
There was a bit of ity between the two blokes. Mind us, Ian said, you’ll never get them talking because they’re not talking, they don’t like each other and they won’t get on. Anyway, me being me, I suppose, let’s try this and just see where we go. Anyway, it took a bit of convincing, but anyway, Greg and Graham or Fish, as he likes to be called out, agreed to it. And with the help of Philip Bentley, we’ve been working on this project now for probably about another four years, but we’re getting to the stage now with Ryan’s help. We get to the stage where we might have a proof copy of the book very soon. So that’s my hope. Anyway, my mate, Ryan, that’s done so much for me with all these books, has got a young little daughter. And so most of his time on the weekend has spent with his daughter and that’s quite understandable.

(02:21:38)
So these days I’m looking at other people to help me with the production of comics, although Ryan still helps me. And the other thing that’s coming up in the future, I suppose, and I’ll talk about ’em now, I suppose, is going back to what we were talking about right at the beginning, Lee, about English comics. There was a script I remember from my child who called the Cloak and it was an English comic and I really liked it and I thought I’d just see if I can find out if the creator’s still alive and whether they’d be interested in putting their story in one volume. And I didn’t think he’d be around actually, because back in the 1960s, he must be a good age. Anyway, Mike Higgs is his name. And anyway, I found on the grapevine that the strip’s called the Cloak, and along the grapevine I heard that Alan Moore likes the cloak. Anyway, so things have come to pass, shall we say. I’m name dropping here. I know. But anyway, Alan Moore says that if he can see us working on this project and he can see a PDF of what the book will look like, he’s going to write an introduction for us and how can I not work with Alan Moore? So yeah,

Leigh Chalker (02:23:00):
Man, there you go. I think that’s a project you could twist anyway, I think why wouldn’t you? I dunno what to say about that. It’s just a Yep, I’m going to have to do that.

Nat Karmichael (02:23:20):
The only problem there, Lee, is if I publish something like the Cloak, it’ll be the first non-A Australian product I’ve put out, but still a chance to work with Alan or Alan to get Alan to write an introduction. I can’t say no. I’ve got to say yes,

Leigh Chalker (02:23:38):
Mate. I think listening to the body of work and your passion, your involvement, your work with the communities amongst Australian comics, so cartoonists and daily strips, all those sorts of things, your knowledge of history, you are keeping artwork from all, basically you’re stockpiling artwork that would otherwise not be treated as it should be. And I mean, you’re preserving it for other people to look at and appreciate because it is beautiful art. These artists put their time and their blood, sweat and tears into these creations. And I think if for everything that you’ve spoken about here and the fact you’re still willing, what you’ve gone through, the ups and downs, the highs and lows and everything, and to maintain that passion, man, and I don’t think anyone’s going to hold it against you, man, for doing the cloak to work with, to have Alan Moore. You know what I mean? Write an introduction. That’s pretty special, man.

Nat Karmichael (02:25:04):
Yeah, for sure. To me, Lee, the way I look at it is that artists work solo and they work by themselves, they work quietly and a lot of times they do it for the passion they have for the medium and the stories that they want to tell. And I guess they don’t seek a claim like rock and roll stars or book authors or people or film producers for example, or art or actors. They do it because they love to tell a story. And to me, they’re the real heroes because they’re telling stories that some of us can relate to. Some of us can’t relate to them, it doesn’t matter. But they’re stories that are important for and Australian collective. And to me, they’re the heroes. They’re the people that we ought to revere because a lot of their work represents who we are. And even if they’re talking about a superhero story, for example, there’ll be little parts inside that story that’ll reflect something about the day they wrote it or drew it.

(02:26:29)
And comics to my mind are a reflection of the era that we live in. They tell a tale about how we are in 2024 or they tell a tale of how we thought the mos or the thoughts of 1964, for example, the very first air hook that I’ve just published. Now, there’s some sexist comments in there. There’s some things that we would say that aren’t politically correct now, but does it matter? Not really, because it’s a reflection of the time and we’re trying to preserve things like that. So if people in the future can look at it, I mean because newspapers, they’re disposable. They’ve gone, they’ve disappeared. Can’t, if we can’t record some of these things, they’re lost forever. And we need to record the valiant work that these artists and these writers have done to put their blood, sweat and tears into these stories because they’re our stories. That’s my belief.

Leigh Chalker (02:27:31):
Yeah, no, I think that’s fair, man. I think that’s really, really fair, man. Yeah, I’m just enjoying sitting here, man, listening to your stories and stuff. That’s one thing I love about Tuesday, chinwag is getting meet people.

Nat Karmichael (02:27:56):
And good for you, Lee, for doing that because you’re right. I mean, I think preserving the conversations you’ve got with these artists is important. It’s probably just as important as what I’m doing in preserving their work. You are preserving their oral stories and the backgrounds that we may not be able to find in Graham’s book or in John Ryan’s panel by panel, because you are dealing with the current creators, you are dealing with the people that are in the here and now. And so in 20 years time, 50 years time, what you are doing now is a valuable resource and people have got to look back and think, oh look, that internet connection there was pretty shit. But does that matter? Because it’s the content of what you’ve got there and it’s the conversations you’ve had with these artists and these creators that are going to last longer and more power to you. Great work, mate. I think it’s a good thing you’re doing here.

Leigh Chalker (02:29:00):
Thank you. Na. Yeah, look, as I’ve gone further along through it and that it’s very quickly becoming something that I’ve realised within myself through self-reflection of, it’s probably one of the most proud things that I’ve ever been a part of to do this. It didn’t start off with that intention that, but as me, Shane and myself over time of just talk more about it, thought about things, and then we just think myself and he thinks and then we talk and then we realise like, man, wow, okay. And for you to say something like that and that man, very humbled man, greatly appreciate it, man. Yeah, that’s made me feel even prouder. So thank you very much.

Nat Karmichael (02:30:04):
Good on you.

Leigh Chalker (02:30:05):
Thank you, man. Na, something that, apart from our conversation and your commitment to Australian comics for so many years, as we’ve said through ups and downs in your life story and and your passion, and make sure you give your wife a hug tonight, mate, because she’s a lady, alright. She is. Yeah, she is.

(02:30:31)
Yeah. You’re a lucky man mate. Something that I saw on the socials the other day that I know you’re passionate about too, because we spoke briefly about it before the show was something that I admired in you as anyone that watches the show or listens to it regularly. They would know that myself and Shane are pretty big advocates of mental health, mental health awareness, and looking after yourselves, looking after your brothers and your sisters and being kind to people and showing kindness, gentleness and love and compassion where you can to your fellow man. And I think what you did the other day, I’m going to let you speak about it as you wish, because I think it’s a huge, from someone that’s suffered mental illnesses from someone that knows people, it still battles. I mean, I’ve had addictions and stuff, and from tonight’s conversation, you are someone that has gone through things as well. But yeah, man, I absolutely admire what you did the other day and telling the world really what transpired where you used to work. If you would be so kind as to let people know about that side of you, if that would be okay.

Nat Karmichael (02:32:00):
Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So my work is as a clinical nurse at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, I’m still working there. I’m ply on long service leave and I’ve got annual leave and that’ll probably save me out to my retirement. As you can see, I’m getting older. I’m 67 in December. So I’ve been working in that department, the psychiatric emergency centre now for 13 years. And in that time, mental health services have been increasingly needed by our community. And my concern, I suppose, is that the capacity to manage some of the people in some of the people that require admissions has been greatly diminished by the lack of available beds.

(02:33:02)
And I guess my concern’s been something that’s growing over the last four or so years and to the point where I’m willing to speak up about the fact that we need something to be done and it needs to be addressed. And the reason why I feel that I and my colleagues, if they’re willing need to speak up is because mental health patients don’t have a voice. Mental health patients are marginalised in our society. They are stigmatised in our society still, and they’re placed underneath the Mental health Act, and they don’t have a voice to say what they need and what’s needed for them. And because we don’t have the available beds for them, I’ve been increasingly concerned about the non-action of both governments and administrators in the place where I work. And it came to a head a little while ago. I was the active nurse unit manager, and I came to work on a Monday morning and I was told that there were no beds for the patients and that some of ’em had to sleep on the floors and on the couches. And to me that was just horrific. It’s just something that shouldn’t happen.

(02:34:36)
And because they’re mental health patients, why should they have to put up with that? It’s a PG show, why should they have to put up with that? So I was outraged it should not happen. And then it would’ve been probably about four or five weeks later when I was back in my substantial role as a clinical nurse and I was directed by the clinical director to accept in my department there’s four beds and there’s an extra bed for emergency. So we’ve got five beds. And I was directed by my clinical director to accept more than five patients into my unit overnight, which means someone would have to sleep on the floor or on one of the couches. And I refused. I said I wouldn’t do it. I was directed by my after hours nurse manager to follow the direction and I refused to do so.

(02:35:37)
And I had a standing up, I rang the clinical director, he was at home, but I rang him up and I just told him that I refused to follow his direction and he could do what he wants because it just wasn’t right. And then following that, I suppose I felt that I had no recourse except to talk to the media. And there’s a very nice journalist that I’ve come to know even better, I suppose, since I spoke to her for the A, B, C. And over a period of about two or three weeks, we had some conversations. She was given copies of my emails that I sent to management, which by the way, were never answered from management. And we decided to do a story about the situation because it just wasn’t right.

(02:36:28)
So I did have to consider whether or not I should speak publicly or whether I should speak anonymously. I juggle up the pros and cons. I mean, I do have signed an agreement. I believe that I don’t speak to the media. I think I signed that code of conduct. I think that’s why they call it a code of conduct when I joined Queensland Health, not to speak to the media or unless it’s been authorised, but I chose to speak in defiance of those code of conducts and those directives because of the fact that mental health patients have no voice and they need a voice and they need someone to speak up.

(02:37:25)
But nothing’s really changed. And I guess that’s a disappointing aspect. The minister has released a statement just a couple of weeks ago where she’s acknowledged the people who have stood up to point out the failings of the system and she has promised $8 million into our unit at the Royal. There’s also, I don’t mean to be cynical, but there is an election in October, so I dunno whether that’s, look, I don’t think it is window dressing. I was going to say that it could be window dressing. But after I did speak to the A, B, C, the minister did invite my wife and I into her office and we had a conversation with her and I found her very approachable. I did think she was listening. And subsequent to the meeting in her office, I invited her down to our department where she came down one day and she spent some good time, a good hour, actually a good hour, maybe more with our staff. And we talked about our issues and why we felt we were not being listened to.

(02:38:43)
And so subsequently, just a little while ago, the $8 million has been promised. I was a little bit dismayed by the fact that the state opposition leader has decided to say very little. And so I sent him a copy of my thoughts to him to the Courier mail in relation to my recent conversation with the A BC journalist and the opposition leader spokesperson did ring me just a few days ago and essentially told me that if the money’s in the budget, they will honour it. They have said that they’ll maintain a mental health levy that’s placed on Queenslanders in order for mental health. But I did feel that he wasn’t saying, his spokesperson wasn’t saying enough for me. He wasn’t really giving me any policy direction about what he thought was important. And he wasn’t really telling me how he would address the issues, which to me are the lack of beds.

(02:39:55)
The Courier mail rang me today and they had a few questions for me. They are running a story tomorrow, tomorrow morning, I don’t know the A, B, C, at least were able to give me a transcript or a rough of what they were going to publish. And they gave me the latitude of correcting things that weren’t right or of being able to correct things that weren’t quite right before they published the career. Mail hasn’t done that. They’ve decided to run with a story, the contents of which I don’t know what it’ll entail or what it’ll say. So I’m a little bit in the dark about what they’re going to publish. I know that I have given them a statement. It was a statement I gave to the health minister and it was the same statement I gave to the opposition leader. The fact that they’re saying something is good, I do think it ought to be the pressure ought to be placed on government, and I think pressure ought to be placed on the opposition given that there’s an election coming because I think that the mental health patients in our state deserve no less.

(02:41:09)
They need to have a voice to say something about the way the situation is. I mean, I’m probably getting on my high horse here, Lee, but in our department we have five beds. As I say, oftentimes we have patients who come to our department who require admission. They need to be admitted somewhere for their mental health treatment, and they require high dependency nursing. And by that I mean they need intense nursing. Our department is simply an assessment area. It’s not designed as a ward and it’s not designed as a treatment area, and it’s not designed to house people. It’s really a stop gap before the assessment’s made and a decision about where they go is made. We have patients in our area that require high dependency nursing that have been there up to eight days. And I can think of a first Australian lady that was there eight days.

(02:42:15)
She was eight days waiting for treatment to start before a bed was found for her. And to me, that is not good enough. That is just far below standard of what I would expect were I to be that patient or that patient’s loved one or anything. The fact that she was a First Nations lady made it even more worse for me personally. I found that too hard to cope with, but that’s the state of play. The number of beds for mental health patients have not increased over the last 20 years. We are seeing an increase in methamphetamine use. We’re seeing an increase in alcohol use. We’re seeing an increase in medicinal cannabis use. And all of these things add to psychosis or people requiring mental health treatment. Sometimes it’s just temporary. Sometimes it’ll last just for 24 hours, but sometimes it’s more long lasting that needs more intense care. And if these people don’t get it, where are they going to get it? We’ve had patients who have left our department simply because they don’t want to wait for that treatment to commence and they’ve harmed themselves and it’s not good enough.

(02:43:38)
They’re off my high horse. I’m passionate about my work too, Lee, I guess I’m passionate about life really. But people that have no voice need a voice. And there’s so many things in society that people need voices. We’ve got people who suffered domestic violence. I mean, they need a voice and it’s getting amplified in the media. That’s great. There’s a lot of things that First Nations people need and that gets a reasonable out of voice, especially well prior to the referendum, I guess mental health people don’t seem to have had it, the homeless people. And I suppose I can speak from that experience in my past, I suppose, knowing when I was homeless, even though it may have been by choice, knowing the fact that I had drugs in my system, knowing that there’s people that are probably worse than I was back in the day who need the help and can’t get it.

(02:44:43)
I think I was able to manage to become sober myself without requiring interventions. But I know there’s other people that can’t. There are people that need help. And at the moment, I don’t think they’re getting that help that they need. And I think that’s very sad because it’s an indictment in our society. We’re spending how many billions on some, sorry, pg. We’re spending so many billions of dollars on some submarines. There are people homeless, there are people that require mental health assistance. There are need for more teachers, more nurses, more doctors, for God’s sake. We don’t have an overnight psychiatric registrar in our department. I mean, from 10 30 at night until nine o’clock in the morning, you can’t get a psychiatric registrar. You have to wait until the following morning. It is just not good enough. We’re treating mental health patients like third world citizens. It should stop. It’s got to stop. People need help

Leigh Chalker (02:45:58):
Often. No, mate. That’s after seeing your story and stuff the other day. And as I said, seeing how passionate about you are about comic books and seeing your passion in that a, b, c story and on your socials and things and sharing similar passions. Man, I admire the fact that you took a stand, mate. There’s a lot of people would know what’s going on and they chose not to speak about it. But you’ve put yourself forward to put information that needs to be heard for the sake of minority groups that do deserve and need to be cared for. Because I think the general population, when they hear of mental illness, they just have these basic images. They don’t realise how intricate each illness is. Like the traumas, the post traumatic stuff that triggers these things. Majority of people probably think it’s all drug and alcohol related, but it’s not.

(02:47:02)
There’s chemical imbalances, there’s people escaping violence. There’s a whole heap of stories behind it, mate. And I think that that Nat is as valuable part of your story as the story that you’ve told us for the first couple of hours of this man, because I admire your stand man. And I hope more people take notice of it and again, shows more compassion to their fellow brothers and sisters out there because there’s a lot of people doing it. Hard world’s not getting easier on this show. And Siz, one of the things about Comex is I’m a firm believer in creativity, can help with find within calm, bring a little bit of peace to you because it certainly helped me in my times and when I was going through my issues mate, which I still do. I’m not out of the woods yet, but you know how getting there mate, getting there thing one day at a time they say so.

Nat Karmichael (02:48:10):
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. There’s a saying in the Calvin and Ho’s cartoon, I dunno if you’re familiar with it. And it goes, I wish I had the ability to change the things I can, the inability to see the things that I can’t and the incapacity to accept the things I can’t or something like that. I can’t remember exactly. Now I’ve got it all muddled up. Anyway, a really nice, I’ll have to send it to you later. It’s a really nice, anyway, I think I’ve got the incapacity to make changes. No, no. To accept changes. I can’t remember the cartoon. I’m sorry. No, I thought I had it in my head, but I haven’t. But anyway,

Leigh Chalker (02:48:53):
I think that’s perfectly lovely, Nat. Now na, as we wind down our show mate, I would like to ask you, the one thing that I try and ask everyone is we know why you do it, but if you were at a convention or you were at Comic Street or you were at the acas, the acas, wherever you wish to be, and there was you older Nat and Little Nat came up to you and said, how do I get to you? What would you say to them? What would your advice be to Little Nat about comic books and stuff, mate?

Nat Karmichael (02:49:41):
I

(02:49:49)
Make more comics because look, there’s a lot of things I tell little Dad. I would probably say, don’t do drugs. You waste your time doing drugs. I would tell little Na, make more, make more because I think that the world is becoming increasingly a sad place, an anxious place, a place where people are more fearful sometimes of each other, out of others. And make more comics that can bring joy, make more comics that can bring hope and make more comics that can tell tales that inspire because they’re the tales that I read now that inspire me. There’s nothing I quite like than listening to some wonderful inspiring music or reading a comic that makes you feel there’s some hope or brings joy. Joy is what the world needs at the moment as well as love. I think joy is important. That’s what I think. Yes, that’s it. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (02:51:25):
The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can’t and the incapacity to tell the difference.

Nat Karmichael (02:51:34):
That’s me. That’s me. I’m having that read at my funeral.

Leigh Chalker (02:51:41):
We got there thanks to the audience and thanks to Mr. Carmichael. So there you go, Nat. Mate, once we finish up, just stay on the line. We’ll have a little debrief after the show. But look mate, I’d like to welcome you to the Chinwag family and I’d like to look, I’m very grateful man for tonight and your insights and your lessons and just from someone that’s only been doing comics for a little while, man, like to hear these stories from people like yourself and everyone else I’ve met is very inspiring man to me and keeps me going and wanting to pursue to get better and better. Thank you for your work with mental health. Thank you for your work in comic books and telling us these lovely stories. And yeah man, pleasure and thank you to everyone out there that’s watched the show. Thank you very much for always supporting Chin Wax.

(02:52:42)
Thank you very much for supporting X. Don’t forget to like and subscribe the channels because it helps the algorithms and it gets out to more people. And we can share stories like mats and we can share the other shows that are on the X Network. The show is sponsored by the Comex Shop. There’s over 100 Australian creators and comics on that shop. $9 flat rates. So buy one comic, buy 20 comics. It’s just go out there, buy some stuff man, support like the industry, the community, show some support, spread your love and show some compassion for people. And you also know that at the end of the show there are phone numbers for Lifeline that will be coming in case anyone out there struggling, those phone numbers have helped me in the past and perhaps they may help you or somebody else out there. So if you know someone that needs a hand, give ’em a hand. A smile can go a long way. See you next week in Community as Unity and Chinwag is and always will be made with love. Thank you. See you later Mr. No worries. Bye-Bye.

Voice Over (02:54:07):
This show is sponsored by the Comics Shop. Check out. Come to comics shop to pick up a variety of Australian comics from multiple creators and publishers. All for one flat postage rate. We hope you enjoyed the show.