Peter Doyle

Peter Doyle’s books include The Big Whatever (2015) and the City of Shadows: Sydney Police Photographs 1912-1948. He is currently completing a book of forensic photographs to be called Suburban Noir. He is an associate professor of Media at Macquarie University.
All essays by Peter Doyle

Passage
Before there were call centres, help desks, delivery bikes and Uber, before labour hire firms and all the rest started offering young people new ways of working long and hard for doubtful return, before the term ‘gig economy’ had come into being – before all that the one way to make a quick, modest dollar was to drive cabs on the night shift. It was a Sydney thing.

The Last Boogie Woogie
Richard tells me I should meet this old guy he knows, Jimmy Somerville, a strong union man, living legend – he remembers everything, Richard says – including that famous night during the war when tenor player Merv Acheson shot a bloke on stage at the 2KY Radiotorium over a missing shipment of illegal whisky.