SEK Hulme interview 17 November 2006

You modelled for the late famous photographer, Helmut Newton.

Yeah.

What happened? How did you meet Helmut?

I met Helmut at the university. I didn’t act, but I used to have friends who acted with MUDC, the Melbourne University Dramatic Company, and I did things like being property manager and that kind of thing. I think I was on the committee of the MUDC. Helmut had a wife, June, and Helmut was asked to do photographs of the sets and for the advertisement. So that was how I met Helmut. He had a studio down in Flinders Lane. I used to go down there sometimes just to visit and he said one day, would I like to make some money and come there and stand in a sweater or what-not and have my photograph taken. I was a student. I had very little money and this sounded like money for jam, which it was and so I used to go down there and stand in sweaters and find myself in the Paton and Baldwin’s knitting books. Paton and Baldwin sold wool and they had pictures of people standing in sweaters, so that ladies would know which needles and what wool to buy, etcetera, for that particular sweater. One year there was a girl called Denise French, a very pretty young model. She and I were photographed in a dinner jacket and she had a nice dress on and there was a Christmas tree. This was part of the Christmas poster for Kaiser Lingerie. I remember a little bit later sitting with some friends on the lawn outside Queen’s. Some chaps from Ormond were passing by and stopped to say good day. One said, “It’s funny, I was down at the shop. You should see it, Kaiser Lingerie, the fellow is a dead ringer for you” and I said, “Well, it is me.” “Oh, I didn’t know you did that kind of thing”, rather disapprovingly. Helmut took my graduation photograph, etc. He was a very interesting fellow, Helmut Newton.

He never asked you to pose in lingerie himself, did he?!

No, he didn’t. I did some also for another (photographer) called Bruno Benini. I think Bruno may still be alive, but he’s certainly been out of the trade for a long long time, I think. It’s curious because when I was at Oxford, down in London, I met another Australian photographer called David Moore and he said, “Look, you should do some of that over here”, so David Moore took some photographs of me, but I never - I’ve still got them. I never followed it up in England and you used to get photographs taken and send them to the modelling agencies if you wanted to get work and David Moore, of course, became very famous. He did, now I think, David, he was a hell of a nice fellow. In fact those three and in particular too I knew best Helmut and David, you know, first class, but it’s one of the good things about being a student. You make money in unexpected ways.

So to sum up then, your life at the Bar - any regrets? Anything you could be proud of in particular?

No, no regrets. I mean I’ve had the last year, regrettably, (being) deaf (which is) a nuisance, but no regrets for having come here. Like I said before, to think (there’s) all this and they pay you for it. It’s just crazy and I don’t think (there’s) anything I’m particularly proud of. I’m pleased with what I’ve done, but I had a good education. I had opportunities, and you’d be disappointed if you hadn’t done something. So I was very lucky to have been a barrister in the sense that when I was at school, it was one of the things that you were told not to think of doing unless you had a large private income because you didn’t make any money for about the first eight years and that, of course, kind of in the post war years that turned out not to be so. So, no, I’ve had a marvellous life in what I think is one of the world’s great jobs.

Thank you.

Conducted for the Bar Oral History project by Juliette Brodsky in Owen Dixon Chambers West and filmed by Rocco Fasano