This is a collection of raw material dating back to the 1950s by journalist John Stapleton. It incorporates photographs, old diary notes, published stories of a more personal nature, unpublished manuscripts and the daily blogs which began in 2004 and have formed the source material for a number of books. Photographs by the author.
For a full chronological order refer to or merge with the collection of his journalism found here:
https://thejournalismofjohnstapleton.blogspot.com.au/
Vicki Vidikas, who I first encountered in the 1970s and knew for many years, including a particularly mad and memorable trip through Central Australia where she never stopped talking, was always a difficult person.
This is a note she sent me accompanying a story she was getting published.
Bruce Pascoe was her very long suffering publisher.
She was always complaining nobody paid her what she thought she was worth.
And here's a couple of stories about her after her death in 1998.
I saw her just a few weeks before she died, after she had left a gangster boyfriend and was running a very heavy heroin habit in and around Kings Cross.
A clear-eyed traveller captures the bohemian underbelly of the 20th century.
For Vicki Viidikas, life and writing were inextricable. She spun her writing out of the life she lived. She wrote and travelled endlessly, up and down the coast of Australia from Melbourne to Mullumbimby, through Thailand, India, Israel, England, France and Greece. In part it was the hippie trail, an ongoing search for experience, excess and enlightenment. She empathised with the varieties of religious experience she encountered, while remaining detached. She did a lot of drugs. She followed the path of the wandering troubadour. It is an honorable tradition. Arguably, it is the true tradition.
Vicki Viidikas Rediscovered: Ali Alizadeh Interviews Barry Scott
1 April 2010
In May 2010, Melbourne-based publisher Transit Lounge will release a much-anticipated collection of published and unpublished poetry and prose by the iconic Generation of '68 poet and l'enfant terrible, Vicki Viidikas(1948-1998). The book, simply titled Vicki Viidikas: New and Rediscovered, has been edited by Transit Lounge co-founder Barry Scott. Cordite's reviews editor Ali Alizadehspoke to him about Viidikas, her iconoclastic work, her unconventional life, and her legacy.
Ali Alizadeh: Could you talk about your decision to edit and publish Vicki Viidikas: New and Rediscovered? What's significant and exciting about Viidikas and her work?
Barry Scott: I first came to the writing of Vicki Viidikas through the prose poetry collection India Ink (Hale and Iremonger, 1984) and was so moved by her approach and subject matter that I quickly sought out her other three books, Wrappings and Knabel (Wild and Woolley) and Condition Red (UQP) all published in the seventies. A shared interest in India and spirituality can only partly explain the magnetic pull her writing exerts over me.
Vicki was drawn to outsiders and the empathetic way she writes about them could only come from someone who at times also felt marginalised and outraged at the way people who were individual or different could be ostracised. ‘I gravitate towards people who are misfits or trying to be themselves,' she said in a 1975 Vogue interview. For Viidikas writing was an emotional, intuitive act, often confessional but always carefully honed and realised.
Born in South Australia in 1941, Ian Farr trained at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He began work as a classical musician in 1961 with 4 years as a double bass player in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. This was followed by 5 years of music programming in the ABC's Federal Music Department. During this time he was active as a pianist, particularly in the area of contemporary classical music, giving a large number of first performances and and helping to form the group Project New Music, as well as composing songs and chamber music.
Since 1972 he worked mostly in the areas of improvised music and theatrical involvement, composing and performing music for radio drama, dance, theatre, mime, etc. Among the highlights of this work were participation in the 1972 South Pacific Arts Festival in Fiji and the 1973 Aquarius Festival at Nimbin.
He worked actively with singers and in cabaret, appearing frequently in Sydney and elsewhere with Margaret Roadknight, Jeannie Lewis and John Ewbank. In 1982 he came to the Adelaide Festival to perform at the Fringe Club with Mary Haire, and lived and worked there from then onwards, becoming a founding member of Etcetera and the Mambologists, and composing and performing for the State Theatre Company of South Australia.
