I was one of six kids, with four rough and tumble brothers and a big sister who could hold her own with the best of them. Pigs-tails tied to the back of bus seats, playing commandoes with real rocks, catching cane toads, that kind of tomboy caper. I thought I was pretty tough and Jana, the perfumed steamroller had already paved the way for young women journos like me to play with the big boys in the testosterone-driven world of television current affairs.
I had slept in bombed-out hotels in siege-torn Sarajevo, interviewed senior members of the Taliban, I’d been frogmarched at gun point out of the parliamentary compound during the 2000 coup in Fiji. In fact the coup leader George Speight sent a messenger around to my hotel to tell me I’d better watch out after I asked the wrong questions. That night I went to bed with the iron under the cover just in case I had to clock a midnight visitor. I’d received death threats from a people-smuggler in Jakarta, hand delivered under my hotel door.
But none of this equipped me with the skills to negotiate the minefield that was my one-time tyrannical boss. This A-grade bully, among other things, literally made a crucifix sign with his fingers behind my back when I walked into the main office, in front of all the other staff.
He once called me a pig in swill. He told me and anyone who would listen that the reason he did not like me was because I reminded him of one of his former wives, and there were several of them. Standing up to him would invite more abuse. The misogyny of it all would put Alan Jones to shame.