Email Sandy at sandyguywriter@gmail.com.
Sandy Guy’s life in media began at a Melbourne television station in the 1970s. Her lifelong wanderlust began during the same decade, when she and a friend drove an EJ Holden station wagon, for which they paid $100, from Victoria to far north Queensland and back.
Sandy spent ten happy years at Phillip Island when her children were small. Back in Melbourne, she was part of the vibrant and zany world of Lot’s Wife student newspaper at Monash University for several years, and she also worked back at the Channel 10 newsroom with her great boss, John Fife.
A secondment from Monash Uni to the University of Bristol saw Sandy and her kids pack their bags and head to the UK for a year. In Bristol, Sandy worked as a reporter for the university’s public affairs office.
Bristol University’s Director of Information, Don Carleton was an inspiring mentor to Sandy and encouraged her to complete her tertiary studies when she returned to Australia, which she did, graduating from Deakin University with honours.
While overseas, Sandy and the kids travelled in Ireland, backpacked around Europe on a shoestring, and visited North America.
Sandy has worked as a freelance journalist for more than 30-years. There was nothing glamorous about her decision to freelance – rather it was based around the needs of her sons Liam, who has cerebral palsy, and youngest son Dion, who she raised singlehandedly.
Sandy is a seasoned media all-rounder who has contributed to more than 200 publications worldwide, some for long periods of time: she was a regular contributor to The Age newspaper for 30-years; to RACV RoyalAuto and Australian Good Taste magazine for 17 years, and Qantas inflight magazine for 10 years.
Writing is Sandy’s life and, although now in her sixties, she shows no signs of slowing down.
In Sandy’s own words
I’ve been a traveller all my adult life, and to date I have visited some 60 countries, some such as Great Britain and Ireland many times.
History has long been a passion – I studied it – from visiting ancient Australian Aboriginal sites to exploring anything from castles to Neolithic villages across the British Isles and Europe.
I have been privileged through my work to have experienced so many unique and amazing places.
They include canoeing along a piranha-infested river in Brazil’s Pantanal region; joining Yolngu women at a women’s-only beach in Arnhem Land, Australia; diving on WWII planes in the tepid waters of Papua New Guinea; waking to the glorious vista of Mount Kangchenjunga at a tea estate in Darjeeling, India.
Walking across the Tar Steps in Exmoor, UK, which dates back to 1000BC; swimming in the Yasawa Island’s Sawa-i-Lau caves in Fiji; standing on the glacier at the peak of Jungfrau, Switzerland; and cruising amid the glorious islands that make up the Scottish Hebrides.
But it is the people I have met who have made my travels so special – from Gayili Yunupingu, one of the senior women leaders of Arnhem Land, to smiling tea pickers in India, the elders of the remote Trobriand Islands, the chatty lace-makers in Cyprus, coffeemakers in Thailand, and amazing young Filipino singers on the island of Bohol – to name but a few.
I have interviewed anyone from Hollywood stars, British royalty, celebrity chefs, academics and authors to medics working in remote villages in Papua New Guinea; women living on desolate islands on India’s Brahmaputra River, and lady boys in Thailand.
But of all the people I have interviewed over the years, the most important to me was Stan Quinn, a 100-year-old Gallipoli veteran, a living link to history. My article ran as the Anzac Day feature in The Age/SMH. And I still think about the extraordinary Stan Quinn today.
Sandy on the job in the Furneaux Islands, off Tasmania, writing for Australian Geographic about the 1797 Sydney Cove shipwreck
Research purposes – of course – Sandy contemplating an afternoon tea in London.
Sandy and Jon Murrie at Samba School in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Sandy and other international media in Appenzell, Switzerland
Sandy loves London
Sandy Guy 