Industri Communications –Tom McKenny

CMPA Honorary Voting Member, TOM MCKENNY recalls his involvement in the quarry industry and the development of his career in journalism.

THE quarry industry wasn’t something that I had bargained on becoming involved in when I started my journalism career in 1980. Beginning university at 17, I had more romantic notions of becoming a foreign correspondent, even a photojournalist in the vein of legendary Australian war reporter, Neil Davis.

What I didn’t know then was that careers inevitably take twists and turns and the path you start out on is not necessarily where you end up. Given that, my first university attempt amounted to little more than party, poetry and girls in a random conglomeration. It just needed more academic discipline mixed in.

That initial failure quickly resulted in me rebooting and joining the workforce in various positions including several years in the iron ore mining town of Newman, Western Australia.

Luck would have it that I stumbled on to one of the prime jobs on the site – practitioner in the art of driving anfo trucks and charging blasts in conjunction with a very colourful blast crew.

After a few years in the rough and tumble of the Pilbara, a momentary thoughtful lapse made me realise it wasn’t exactly the place to spend a lifetime. In hindsight investing in a bit of local real estate would’ve paid dividends for life.

Three years of travel followed and many years spent hitchhiking in some of the world’s most fabulous but predominately, less salubrious destinations (the good: Spain, Portugal Turkey; the not so great but incredibly interesting: north Africa, the middle east and central America).

In my mid-20s this was three years of pure indulgence. It did however, ultimately prepare my return to university for the next four years to eventually graduate in journalism at RMIT.

My first posting wasn’t to be the foreign correspondents club in downtown Tegucigalpa, Honduras, rather the similarly interesting surrounds of Phoenix Magazines in South Melbourne with a freelance gig for Quarry magazine.

Within a few weeks I was full time on staff and within months made editor of Quarry magazine. I was introduced to industry stalwart Basil Cocks who was acting as the Institute of Quarrying magazine representative. We’re still friends.

Basil soon had me in touch with the movers and shakers in the industry, not the least of whom was Ron Kerr. A memorable first meeting with Ron at Northern Quarries had me almost fill a notebook with anecdotes, information and titbits of quarrying industry gold. He managed to magically turn this back to dust declaring everything off the record at the end of the meeting. Of course, it wasn’t information Ron was providing; it was education.

In almost 10 years with Phoenix – which was one of the more colourful publishing companies around – I worked up the ranks to become managing editor of the group and finally general manager, before riding off into the sunset in 2003 for a short lived and mainly torturous stint in Public Relations.

The decade with Phoenix involved considerable dealings with the Institute of Quarrying and ergo, representatives of the three major quarrying companies. The Institute is a terrific organisation and performs an excellent role within the industry.

For a time it worked hand in glove with my objective of making Quarry a truly regional and industry wide representative magazine. I managed to boost circulation with distribution through Malaysia and New Zealand and was committed to furthering the magazine’s influence in the industry as a whole.

Unfortunately not everyone in the Institute was on the same page and the concerns and needs of major players tended to dominate proceedings with less bandwidth provided for ideas, concerns and issues of the smaller players or independents.

It created a circumstance where it was a battle to make the magazine truly representative of the entire industry within the dominant constraints. I believed the magazine should present a healthy forum for open, free discussion of quarrying industry issues whether it is regulatory, governmental or otherwise. That would have made it more attractive to readers, made it more representative of the industry and in doing so represent the industry better to the community. It would have also added to the commercial proposition allowing greater expansion, distribution and stability.

However, with the Institute clearly considering it an education only journal, we were often not on the same page as to content and expression. For these reasons I had no hesitation in assisting (where possible) to establish the CMPA. While I didn’t stick around Phoenix Magazines long enough, my ideal was to see Quarry magazine slowly but cleverly morph to become representative of both groups. In hindsight, this probably couldn’t have happened because of the clearly divergent philosophical rationales involved.

I do however; maintain that the industry would be far better represented in the greater public relations battle by having a single independent mouthpiece that represents all voices in the quarrying and associated industries, reporting in an inclusive, but impartial manner.

After leaving the PR industry with my dreams of sharp suits, endless lunches and attractive women crushed by a reality made up of unparalleled boredom and suffocating sycophancy, I struck a blow for independence and set up my own marketing, communications, public relations and advertising agency.

Within weeks of establishing Industri Communications, I had the support of leading players such as Caterpillar and William Adams and a raft of smaller independent companies over the years including Crushing Equipment and Kinder & Co.

Business grew over the years and I enjoyed the most creative and fulfilling period of my career. I continued to contribute to the CMPA where possible with cut-rate marketing, publishing and communications advice and continue to do so to this day – even though I have now slipped seamlessly into the agricultural industry after an offer I couldn’t refuse from an old hometown contact to try a tree change to Ballarat coincided with my family’s desire to move to a slower rural lifestyle.

I continue to marvel at the establishment and role the CMPA now plays. It is a truly remarkable feat to have organised often disparate businesses, individuals and groups to become a key agitator and representative body in the industry. We should have expected nothing less. Since the first meeting at the BP servo, it has been driven relentlessly by the current CMPA Chairperson John Mawson and the current Management Committee consisting of Peter Baenziger, Tim Bird, David Carrucan, Garry Cranny, David Eldridge, Robin Hocking, Basil Natoli, Tej Panesar, John Pititto and Steven Richardson. Now with a professional administration and management team in place its prosperity into the future I assure.

For further information contact Tom McKenny, Industri Communications on 0418 132 911.

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