About: Leigh Redhead

Childhood

I was born in Adelaide in 1971 to hippy parents. They split up when I was five and my younger brother and I lived with my mum, who became a radical lesbian feminist. My dad moved to New York.

We moved to Sydney where we lived in squats and went to lots of demo’s. Women behind Bars, Ban uranium mining and ‘what do we want? Fraser out, when do we want it, now!’

When I was seven we went overseas. We visited my dad, who was living in London, friends of my mum’s in Paris and relatives in Germany. In Paris my mum went to see a Jazz pianist, Mal Waldron, and they fell in love (she wasn’t a lesbian anymore) and we lived in his studio flat in Munich for a couple of years, not going to school, and travelling around Europe when he played gigs.

Teenage years

When my mum and Mal broke up we moved back to Sydney. Then Stanwell park, then up to an alternative dope-growing community called Elands, about fifty k’s inland from Taree. I lived there for about four years, from 10 to fourteen. My mum built a house in the bush and we had no electricity, a canvas bag for a shower, and a pit toilet.

‘Dancers wanted, any nationality, apply within.’ I walked around the block a couple of times, getting my courage up, then walked down the stairs

My best friend and her family moved to Armidale when I was 14 and I went to live with them for two years. The schools were better there, my mum had just had twin girls, and I didn’t get on with her boyfriend.

When I was sixteen I went to live with my dad for a year. He was living in LA, more of a yuppie than a hippy now, and I went to a private school where the principal was called Jake, and wore a pony tail and reebok hightops. It was 1988 and all the rich and famous sent their kids there. Spoilt brats with sports cars and Mexican maids. Compulsory classes included Ethics (cause everyone was too wealthy to have any) and Mysteries (where we passed around a ‘talking stick’ and revealed our innermost feelings.)

Uni student

I finished senior year and came back to Australia. I was 17 and looking for work without much luck until a friend lined me up a job as a cook/deckhand on a prawn trawler. We went from Cairns up to Cape York, three months at sea without leaving the cramped boat.

When the boat broke down our second trip out I moved to Sydney. I did lingerie waitressing, then massage. I lived around Newtown and indulged in as much sex, drugs and rock and roll as I could. Somehow I managed to finish a BA in communications at the same time.

How I started writing...

Leigh Redhead I moved to Melbourne when I was twenty six and had trouble finding a job due to my impractical degree in film making and cultural studies. I had a disastrous couple of weeks as a banquet waiter at Crown Casino, and I was walking down Elizabeth street one day, near Flinder’s street station, when I saw a sign in the window of the Crazy Horse Adult cinema. It was crudely written in coloured texta and said: ‘Dancers wanted, any nationality, apply within.’ I walked around the block a couple of times, getting my courage up, then walked down the stairs.

I stripped from 1998 to 2001. At the Crazy Horse, Club X Bar, The Shaft and did buck’s parties and made the occasional foray into table dancing. Sometimes I went back to massage, once I worked for a dodgy guy in a house rigged up with cameras as sort of an internet version of phone sex, and I even tried to go straight by landing a job at David Jones Foodchain. My resume was a complete lie, of course. I first started writing Peepshow in 2001. Stopping and starting.

I moved to Northern NSW in December 2002. There aren’t any strip clubs (although the Australian hotel in Ballina has lingerie girls on Friday nights) and I decided I really was going straight this time and because I liked cooking my destiny was to be a chef.

I started working in a kitchen as a first year apprentice for six bucks an hour.

I have since come to my senses. I tried stripping up the coast for a while but it didn’t work out. Most places make you pay to work there or else take a third of your tips. Highway robbery! I worked for a short time at a place that did private dances and massage (but strictly no touching of the genitals) but they got busted for prostitution one night and got closed down. So now I’m just writing all the time and turning into a strange hermit like creature whose life takes place entirely in her head. I’ve never had a very good grip on reality but now it’s totally gone.

I still like cheese, reading, dancing and because Irish whiskey’s expensive I’m getting very friendly with cask wine. (But fancy, two litre stuff). And I’m still crap at guitar.

Find out more about Leigh at: www.leighredhead.com