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“You have to have lived in Canberra to know the sheer enormity of taking over from the wonderful Geoff Pryor...”
_____________________ By Judy Horacek
The Inkspot powers-that-be asked me to write a profile piece on David Pope because they thought, to quote ‘despite winning the crown, he’s a bit of a mystery.’
movement, political causes, running his Scratch! media website and, for a while publishing Scratch! Magazine*, his own magazine about radical cartooning.
That was how we met, when he
asked to interview me about a community environment cartooning project I’d been working on. His cartooning comes from
THE crown is of course the Gold Stanley for
a deeply held set of beliefs about what
2010, which joins his many silver Stanleys
matters in the world, and the importance
and Rotary Awards. But being David, he will
of fighting for what is right. It just isn’t
endeavour to keep his Stanleys shelf non-
a political rally if David Pope isn’t there
hierarchical I am sure.
(luckily he isn’t hard to spot).
David also wears the crown of editorial
As Heinrich Hinze, David had worked
cartoonist on the Canberra Times, taking over
as a freelancer at the Canberra Times
when Geoff Pryor retired in 2008. Given the
for years, but it was when he got the
way newspapers are going, he may also one
permanent job on the Canberra Times
day have the dubious honour of being the last
that he decided to sign his own name. He
editorial cartoonist ever to be appointed to a
went from being ‘the cartoonist David
full time in-house job - or is that me being too
Pope who signs himself H.Hinze’ to ‘the
pessimistic about our profession?
cartoonist formerly known as Heinrich
Hinze’ to ‘David Pope is on fire!’. (That last
But the mystery? Perhaps it’s that for
most of David’s cartooning life he’s signed
courtesy of the Talking Pictures segment
himself as Heinrich Hinze. The name came
on Insiders. They don’t say things like that
from his days in a punk band many years
about Pope on Insiders every single week,
ago where everyone had made-up names.
but pretty close.)
He cartooned as ‘Heinrich Hinze’ for a long
time, working freelance for drawing pictures
to know the sheer enormity of taking over
for the labour movement, the environment
from the wonderful Geoff Pryor, who had
You have to have lived in Canberra
been on the paper for 30 years. It was the ACT equivalent of taking over from Oprah.
At a giant goodbye celebratory dinner
for Geoff, a constant stream of people came up to David saying ‘You’re the new cartoonist eh? You’re never going to be able to live up to Geoff’.’
I wanted to bust in and say ‘He will
too, you just shut your face’ David of course, being more mature and generous of spirit than me, simply smiled at everyone and answered them modestly and with charm.
But David didn’t in fact live up to being
the ‘new Geoff’, because he stayed absolutely himself, bringing his own style and wisdom and wit to the job. And the stream of Letters to the Editor changed their tune almost instantly from ‘the-world-will-end-withoutPryor’ to ‘That new cartoonist is doing pretty damn well’. And the black bunting was taken down from the streets, and people began to walk their dogs again and go to the shops (but they didn’t go back to washing their cars with a hose, they had to face the fact that the water restrictions had nothing to do with Geoff Pryor’s decision to retire.)
David’s cartoons are small theatres,
drawing their stories from wide and varied sources. The players are of course a gallery of public figures, who he caricatures with a rapier wit, but also a collection of Everypersons – wide-eyed ordinary people who are battling and baffled. His cartoons fight for the small and weak against the powerful and corrupt, or the plain misguided, and his work always has a strong sense of integrity. I don’t think you can do cartoons better than that. Judy Horacek is a freelance cartoonist and illustrator now based in Melbourne.
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*Not to be confused with the hip hop magazine called Scratch, or Scratch the UK magazine about all things fingernail. David’s Scratch has the exclamation mark.