WHO ARE PATRICIA KARVELAS AND LUKE DUNDON?

By Anne White

On Tuesday, Patricia Karvelas and Luke Dundon spoke to a number of English classes about their careers as journalists. Their experience in radio and television shone, captivating us students as they introduced themselves, from their time at UHS to their work on RN Breakfast. 

Patricia, or PK, was introduced by Luke through a highlights reel of her best moments- and dance moves. For anyone else, it might have been embarrassing, but not for PK. She owned her dance moves and spoke energetically, a sign of her unfazed, bold personality that is critical for all good journalists to have. During her years at Uni High, PK revived ubique, (or post-ubique, as she called it) featuring her own opinion column, ‘Patricia on the world’ . The column was, well, opinionated, and covered a range of topics that were deemed ‘edgy’ at the time. She thinks that it’s very important for young people to have a voice, and that it’s really important to ‘build a portfolio’ and ‘keep getting published’. A school magazine is a perfect option to do so. 

At RN Breakfast, Patricia does most of the talking and interviews, while Luke works behind the scenes as her producer. Luke says that there’s a lot to do as a producer, such as finding and arranging topics and interviews. He says that there are a lot more people behind the screen than you can see on it. Luke has done a lot of hard work and faced many difficult hurdles throughout his career, and one thing that kept him going was the voice of Ms. Bobeff in his head, telling him that he should “stick with that writing thing”. 

PK and Luke tell aspiring journalists to own one’s mistakes, but also learn from them. 

It was so  great from Patricia Karvelas and Luke Dundon, and a lot of really insightful questions were asked by students. If you had a question that wasn’t asked during the talk, you can send it to mollie.bobeff@education.vic.gov.au.