How did you get a job at triple j?

Ah, the million dollar question. 

Sometimes I think that the answer should be a short one. Succint, easy to replicate, somehow giving you the magic key to my dream job. Don’t get me wrong - if it was that easy I would love to pass the key over to you. But honestly, it was a mixture of determination, passion, and good timing. 

You know how I told you that sixteen-year-old Sarah wrote a letter to triple j? I asked what I needed to do to get a job there, and was bursting with excitement and pretty much ready to explode when I actually got a reply. In the mail. Yeah, email wasn’t really a thing back then.

I opened the envelope carefully… and lost my mind that there was a triple j sticker in there. I coveted that sticker so much that I didn’t want to stick it on anything, and to this day I think it lives on, unstuck. Even though I have access to about a million of them now.

The second thing in there was the letter. Answering my questions. A real life triple j human had written back to me! It was Tim Benjamin, who I think worked in the triple j newsroom at the time. Tim, if you’re reading this, thank you. You made me feel like my questions were valid, and most of all you gave me hope that triple j was indeed the inclusive, welcoming community of people that I was led to believe via the wireless.

I still have that letter.

TLDR: Tim told me to have determination, finish school, go to Uni and “it doesn’t matter what you study”, to be interested in the world, read heaps and volunteer at community radio.

Honestly? My heart sunk a little as I read it. I didn’t want to be a “journo”, I just wanted to share music. And volunteering in community radio sounded perfect, but I lived in a small town, with no transport, and no community radio station I could walk to. So, again, I put that dream aside, and just figured I’d be part of the music community in any way I could, even if it was just for fun.

Fast forward over the next few years and I was volunteering in just about every part of the live music industry that I could find, studying a Bachelor of Business (Marketing & Business Management), and making every assignment I could about music somehow. We need to write a Business Plan for someone? Great - I’ll do it for the all-ages gigs that I’m working with. We need to pick an elective subject? Great - I’m doing Music Business! And so it went…

Then there came a decision point. I was living on the Gold Coast and had just broken up with my live-in boyfriend. Not much was happening work-wise, and I was torn about which way to go. Option 1: move to Brisbane, and volunteer at 4ZZZ FM. A few weeks earlier I had volunteered at 4ZZZ Market Day and met the host of the metal show, and he had encouraged me to join the team. Option 2: move back to Murwillumbah, save some cash, and then work out what’s next. 

So which do you think I went with? Two. It was option 2.  Seriously, that ‘sliding doors’ moment in my life makes me think that I would have ended up in radio no matter what I did.

Short story (yeah, I’m not good at those): I ended up in a Work for the Dole project after I moved to Murwillumbah that involved a team of us making a weekly radio show on Bay FM in Byron Bay. It was called ‘Hectic Eclectic’ and man, was it ever! We played music, we talked rubbish, we spent the week producing audio to play on the show - it was awesome. I still remember my first time talking on-air… I was sitting in the studio, just watching and learning, and the facilitator Andrew says “Sarah, you can say the next callsign”. 

What?! How do I even do that? “Just say ‘you’re listening to 99.9 Bay FM.” Well, I freaked out, but I said it. Probably with a wavering voice and a bit of a stumble! Eek! Actual live radio!

Months later, the project lost its funding and I was asked to take over Hectic Eclectic as my own baby. I presented, produced and created that show for the next 8 months. I also trained new presenters, including the new host of the metal show. Sliding doors. 

During that time I asked Andrew an offhand question: “So how would I go about getting a job at triple j, anyway?”

What a legend. He found me the number of the Brisbane office of triple j, and I nervously called and asked to speak to Costa Zouliou. Up until this point, Costa was a mirage to me - a distant mop of curly black hair that I once saw on a school excursion while triple j were doing an Outside Broadcast at the Surfers Paradise beachfront. His was a voice that I’d listened to on Drive, and that my brother had pumping every week on Three Hours of Power. To be actually calling this man, with the promise of a two-way conversation… whoa.

Spoiler alert: I met Costa Zouliou

He wasn’t in. I called the next week. He wasn’t in. And the week after. He wasn’t in.

Luckily I didn’t get a complex about it. Much. 

Finally, the switchboard told me that the days I’d been calling on were his days off. I still laugh thinking about how nervous I got every time I got up the courage to pick up the phone, and how I carefully considered what day to call… all to have that be the day that he didn’t work. Put it in your voicemail, Costa!

We spoke. He asked me to send through a resume. I did. We spoke again. He agreed to let me come up to Brisbane for a day so I could have a look around the studios.

Holy moly, I was nervous that day. My dad drove up to Brisbane with me, because I had no idea where I was going. And I think he was just as excited as me - he’s been a musician all his life and loves music just as much as I do. 

I don’t remember what I wore that day, but I do remember my hairstyle, because Costa hasn’t let me forget it in the 13 years since. “The girl with the piggytails” he says. I thought I was pretty cool, with my hair pulled into two low pigtails, and then each braided into three separate plaits.

Dad and I arrived at the ABC (the home of triple j) and couldn’t for the life of us work out how to get in. Huge gates surrounded the building on Coronation Drive, and the only gate we could find was locked with no one in sight. After we hovered for a while a friendly guy appeared and asked up what we were doing. “Ahh, you’re after Cossie! I’ll let you in.” That guy is still one of the friendliest people I know at the ABC, and won’t hesitate to help out a mate. That was the side gate, by the way… we just hadn’t walked far enough around. Oops.

I was super-nervous, but determined to come across as being cool enough to be let into the musical gates of the biggest youth radio station in Australia. I still felt like the straight-A, middle-of-the-road invisible shy girl from high school. The plaits helped.

Costa showed me around the office and the studios, and it was amazing. “Could I come and do work experience here? Help out with anything?” I asked hopefully. Miraculously, he said yes.

I had no job in Brisbane. I had one friend there. But on the promise of being able to come in every Friday and label CDs, I moved states. I didn’t know much, but I knew I had to be there, behind those musical gates. Whatever it took.

I volunteered every Friday for a year. In that time I was offered a full-time job and turned it down because they wouldn’t give me Fridays off, I took another job on the proviso that I wouldn’t work Fridays, and eventually I ended up in retail working for music store HMV. I loved that job. Getting to share music with people was still my passion, and I still remember the buzz of connecting a customer with an Ash Grunwald CD and blowing their mind. Yeah, we still bought CDs back then.

I was also volunteering at 4ZZZ radio, after having gone through their new presenter training and scoring the Sunday morning breakfast shift. 5am - 9am every Sunday morning with The Sound of Muesli, right before Zac Hurren hosted the Jazz Show. I also had a very brief sojourn on another community radio station, but we were kicked off the air two shows in. Maybe we can talk about that another time. Or not.

MCing and hosting the triple j One Night Stand in Dalby with Lewi McKirdy.

It was a regular Friday in November 2004 when I buzzed in to the triple j office as per usual, expecting nothing other than more cataloguing of CDs and listening to good music. Costa turned to me and casually said “How do you feel about doing a mid dawn on-air shift?” 

What. The. Actual.

For all my volunteering and labelling of CDs, the reality of actually Being. On. Triple. J. was mind-blowing.

But it happened. And it was one of the best experiences of my life. 1am until 6am. Music all night long. Getting to say “you’re listening to triple j” for real, and not just saying it accidentally on 4ZZZ because triple j was all I listened to.

Mind. Blown. 

Even better - they liked me. And they got me back. A lot. Soon I had a weekly mid dawn slot, which often turned into twice a week. I loved it. I made my life work around it, turning down shifts at HMV when I got offers at triple j, and sometimes working those shifts back-to-back with no sleep. My manager at the store was a deadset legend. Still is. Thanks Paul.

One day, in an equally casual manner, Costa turned to me and said “You know, I reckon you’d be really good at Roots N All.”

Really? Why?

I’d never pigeonholed my music taste to be all about roots music. I had been a teenager obsessed with Soundgarden, Pennywise, Incubus and silverchair. My ex-boyfriend had introduced me to Spearhead, and I loved John Butler Trio and Ash Grunwald - but didn’t everyone?

Costa’s answer: “Well, you like Michael Franti and all that kind of shit.”

Thanks Cossie. He proceeded to suggest it to management in Sydney, and the next time the current Roots N All host Ash Grunwald was sick, guess who got a call? Little old me.

I had less than eight hours notice, which was tough for a girl who liked to plan everything out meticulously. Richard Kingsmill offered to suggest a few songs to get me started on the playlist - yes please! The only artist I remember from his list was Nithin Sawney. 

Confession? I don’t think I’d ever listened to Roots N All.

But I curated three hours of music, talked to listeners, and absolutely loved it. And luckily triple j did too, because I soon became the go-to girl for shifts when Ash was sick. 

It turns out I knew a bit more about roots music than I was giving myself credit for, too. My dad plays blues music, and is more passionate and knowledgeable about music than just about anything else. By osmosis I’d become a blues music fan. Growing up, my dad would always be sitting in the room, guitar in hand, playing away as we had a conversation. It still doesn’t feel quite like home unless there’s an instrument being played.

I’m often asked about my first radio interview. I actually didn’t do any in community radio, so my first time was on a fill in shift on Roots N All. You know who it was with? Damien ‘Jr Gong’ Marley. On a terrible phone line from Jamaica. Throw me in the deep end, why don’t you? I can still remember Costa sitting on the other side of the glass, watching and listening as I’d asked for his help since I was so nervous. No pressure. I gotta say, being able to say that my first time was with Damien Marley isn’t a bad thing though. ;)

I was standing in an op shop in Fortitude Valley when I got another call from triple j management. “Will you produce Roots N All? We still want Ash to present, but he needs a little help with the admin side of things.” Um, YES.

So I was part of the Roots N All team. Officially. And I got to work with Ash Grunwald, whose music I absolutely adored. Turns out he’s an amazing human himself, and he and his wife are now some of my favourite friends on earth.

When Ash decided to step down, triple j offered the gig to me. In December 2006 Ash and I went out for dinner, drank a bottle of red wine, and did his last show together. Handing over the baton, if you will. 

January 2007. Roots N All was my baby. And oh how I loved her. I took her and shaped her into my own. We grew together, and the show grew into one of the highest rating specialist programs on triple j. Listeners loved it. The roots music community embraced me and the new Roots, and I feel that we actually created the show together - thank you tribe.

I met and spoke with absolute legends like Ben Harper, George Clinton, Michael Franti, Eric Bibb, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and about a million more. To name drop them all would take forever, and hurt my badly-recollecting brain.

I became the ‘Queen of Roots’ (to quote triple j’s recent press release), and represented the genre at festivals, music industry conferences, in Australia and overseas. I was the go-to girl, not just for the program but for roots music in Australia. I still can’t quite believe it. The passion took me to New Orleans Jazz Festival, Parihaka festival in New Zealand, the Australiasian Worldwide Music Expo, and from one side of Australia to the other.

Nahko Bear (Nahko & Medicine for the People), Ash Grunwald, me, and Nicky Bomba (Melbourne Ska Orchestra / Bustamento) after our AWME conference panel.

But for all of the titles and accolades, you know what actually matters to me? You. And the music. Through Roots N All, I became part of a community full of passionate music lovers and musicians. The warmth, love, acceptance and good vibes in the roots music scene in Australia is second to none. And the talent! Holy moly!

This entire journey has been about community. Amazing bands sent me their music, new friends shared their discoveries with me, industry leaders and legends embraced me as an equal and shared their spoils with me. It’s not a journey I walked alone, by any stretch of the imagination.

My twelve years at triple j gave me a lot of things, including lifelong friendships with some pretty amazing people. Name-drop worthy people and some who you’ve probably never heard of. But I won’t out them all here.

Connecting good music with good people is the reason I got into this business in the first place. Thank you for making it the highlight of my career so far. Big names and meeting famous people may impress some, but to me it has been the discovery of new music from bands no one has heard of that has been the best ever.

I still remember sitting with a young Bonjah on the hill at Raggamuffin festival, when no one else at triple j was playing their music yet. Being told by Dallas Frasca to check out a young surfer dude by the name of Kim Churchill. Getting a burnt CD in the mail with the funny name ‘Homemade Biscuits’ by some guy called Dan Sultan. I love that we were the first to share these artists with together, and so many more.

Dallas Frasca and I back in the early days. She was one of the first people I met in the roots music tribe, and remains one of my favourite humans.

During my time at triple j I also presented Weekend Lunch for a long time, and I loved spending our weekends together. Music, connection, community, and sharing is so important to me, and I feel so blessed that I got to do it through triple j for so long. I also ran the Brisbane office of triple j and trained up a slew of other presenters, including The Racket's Lochlan Watt. It seems I have an inextricable link to metal music that continues throughout my journey.

I could write a million more words about my time at triple j. There were so many highlights, so many people, and so many moments that blew my heart wide open and made me pinch myself that I got to experience this as my day job. Right up until the last day, I was still pinching myself.

If you have any questions, swing them my way. I’d love to continue the conversation with you… after all, it’s what we do right?

But, of course, we can’t do the same thing forever, and the time comes for new adventures. The time comes when being on a youth radio station doesn’t work when you’re 36 years old. 

For me, connection is still key. And I still want to do it with you, as we go on the next journey together. 

So what’s next?

Ah, the big question.

My first live broadcast from Byron Bay Blues & Roots Festival. Michael Franti. No pressure.