Power Grads
Kelly Nestor
My name’s Kelly Nestor and I’m the new National Nine news reader in Adelaide. I’m just so delighted to finally end up here, and when I say end up here, it seems like I’ve been on the road to this job since I was a graduate.
I studied at the University of South Australia, which was the College of Advanced Education at Magill and that was in 1987, oh my god, that was my fresher year and I graduated in 1989.
What was really fabulous about the course when I began it was that it really had built within it so many different things that you could go off and do and there were elective choices and things even back then that were so exciting. I went off campus to Salisbury to learn editing and I also did some drama and I just started to add in different things that the entire faculty and also other faculties could offer me as a journalist and I just found that having those different things really did enable me to hit the ground running and to get a job almost straight away. In fact, I’ve got to say I jumped the gun somewhat in getting a job and I’ve got to say thank you very much to Ian Richards for helping me actually do that, to make that transition to work so quickly. So, thank you very much Ian, because in 1989 I was offered a job midway through the semester in the first semester to go and work for GTSBKN which is a regional broadcaster in South Australia. And I was actually given a job on the road as a cadet television journalist and with the jobs as they are, they continue to be that they’re like hen’s teeth anywhere, the school allowed me to leave the degree so to speak, as the in-house degree and do some external studies and still graduate with all my colleagues at the end of 1989. So, I thank Ian Richards for making that possible and I suppose I’m where I am today for that help and assistance.
I stayed quite some time in the regions. I worked for GTSBKN for probably close to three years, which at that time in my life it seemed like a very, very long time. I worked in places like Port Pirie, Whyalla, Clare and then I was also asked to go back and work in my home town which is Broken Hill over the border in New South Wales, hence GTSBKN. So, it was wonderful to also go back and have that experience back home and work as a journalist in that environment. So, I had about three years there before being able to make it to come back to Adelaide to work for a metropolitan station. So that was, it was the grounding that I needed though, I needed to go out to I suppose get those L plates and learn the craft a little bit more than I obviously did at university to then go on to metropolitan standard television.
Never give up, that’s the real key. Never give up and never take no for an answer because there will be so many times during your life and your career that people will say to you that you can’t do something. Just don’t accept it. If you’ve got a dream, if you’ve got a passion, then live it and make sure that you do it because you’re the only one that has to deal with the disappointment of actually not doing something that you’ve really wanted to do. So, don’t let someone else pour cold water over it or a bucket of cement because they don’t know your dream as well as you do. I’ve had people tell me from when I was nine years of age that oh, that’s a little bit too hard and not too many people get to do that, Kelly, so you might like to think about something else that you’d like to do. So, I just would never accept it.
So, all along the way I’ve had some brick walls that I’ve come up against and they’ll keep coming up, it doesn’t matter how old you are or how many years experience, they keep coming up but just always remind yourself that you’re the one with the dream so keep going for it.