Myf Warhurst: ‘I felt a bit lost. I’ve been too scared for too long’

The longtime presenter discusses the ‘brutal’ radio culture of the 90s, the shedding of inner-city life, and why ‘now is the time to push myself’

“Everyone knows she’s the most misbehaved dog on the river,” Myf Warhurst says as we reach the bank of the Yarra, well north of the city in the outer Melbourne suburb of Warrandyte. “Naughty and orange-haired.” As if on cue, Vyvyan – spelt like her namesake from the cult 80s comedy The Young Ones, also naughty and orange-haired – bounds into the water the moment she’s unleashed.

Warhurst is as effervescent and funny in person as she appears on our screens and airwaves, her raspy voice bringing a sardonic edge to her warm, self-deprecating sense of humour. She is a juggler. “I get busy busy busy, and can do a million things at once.” But she’s enjoying the serenity the proximity to the Yarra affords her. After years attached to other people’s projects – Spicks and Specks, but also large chunks of her radio career – Warhurst is finally making her own way.

Born in Portland near the border of South Australia, Warhurst had a somewhat peripatetic childhood, moving to Donald in central Victoria and then to Red Cliffs near Mildura. She loved growing up in the country – “I had horses and there was so much to do” – but when she reached the age of 17, she decided to pack up and move to Melbourne.

Warhurst’s elder brothers had already moved to the city, and the pull of excitement proved too much. “I wanted the world. We all did,” she says as she encourages Vyvyan out of the water with the promise of a treat. “I always wanted more.” Her eyes light up. “I just wanted to share what I loved.”

The world she entered straight out of university was public radio, volunteering at Triple R and PBS before taking on a paid role at Triple J. It was an industry rife with misogyny and chauvinism, although mitigated by some bolshie female colleagues. Triple J, in particular, “had a terrific history with Helen Razer and all that. So there wasn’t that sense that you weren’t welcome. But I started to realise in a broader sense how few women were there at the time.”

Warhurst also saw those women who were in positions of relative power being held to a higher standard than men. “It was brutal back in the 90s and 2000s. I didn’t cop any of it, because I was too young. But I could see if there were women who stepped outside the box, they were pretty promptly told to step back in.”

Certain organisations were worse than others, but there was a general sense in radio that women had to be “good sorts”, compliant and thick-skinned. “It was very blokey when I worked at Triple M for a while,” Warhurst says. “I didn’t belong there. And that was fine. I think it’s good to know where you don’t fit.”

The culture in television wasn’t much better, although again Warhurst was lucky to find her own niche within it. “When I started Spicks and Specks, and that was 2004, I don’t think there was a permanent woman on a panel show at that time.” Warhurst has nothing but praise for the men who worked on that show, including host Adam Hills and fellow panellist Alan Brough, with whom she developed a genuine friendship. “We don’t work enough together to get sick of each other, but I don’t think we would anyway.”

Passersby say hello as we wander along the curve in the river. Warhurst stops and chats occasionally, her tiny frame and jocular manner belying a certain ferocity under the surface. That gravelly voice – surely informed by smoky nights at inner-city Melbourne pubs – lends her speech a mordancy that is tempered by a general kindness and optimism, a willingness to see the best in people.

We head north along the bank of the river as the sun peaks through the late spring clouds, Vyvyan pulling Warhurst across the path at regular intervals. There is a busy road only metres from us, but we see and hear none of it, oblivious in our bubble of dogs, trees and flowing water. A band of white cockies lands at out feet before Vyvyan scares them back into the sky.

Warhurst’s relationship with music may be as an observer these days, but she not only comes from a family of musicians – she actively pursued a career in classical piano when she was fresh out of high school.

“I wasn’t good enough,” she says without shame. “I think I got in at Melbourne Uni on a country quota. I just didn’t have it, whereas my brothers have got it. It was a bit crushing, but that’s also good to know.”

As a professional observer and broadcaster, however, Warhurst has enjoyed rare longevity. Double J’s Bang On is an immensely successful ABC podcast that Warhurst hosts with Zan Rowe, and she’s now launched her own, The Moment. She still has time for other jobs, from voicing two characters on Bluey to ABC specials, and firmly believes we’ll see another iteration of Spicks and Specks: “It’ll come back, I’m sure of it.”

While The Moment features occasional conversations with guests – people such as Carly Findlay and Rowe, with whom she has a long and fruitful association – the majority of the time Warhurst herself unpicks culturally significant or noteworthy moments from the daily news cycle. Recent episodes covered topics as diverse as gay sheep and underboobs, but she has also broached performative masculinity, the empowerment of women through comedy, and the intersection of pets and homelessness.

“I’ve been trying to work out lately why I do what I do,” Warhurst says as we make our way back to our starting point. “Now that I’m driving the ship with this podcast, I realised I just like learning and then I like sharing.

“I don’t think I’m an arbiter of taste, but I’ve been around long enough now that people know what I like and will come to me for that.”

Warhurst describes this phase of her life as “a great unlearning for me. Unlearning how I think things have to be, or should be, or what I thought was the right way to do it. And that could be culturally. I think a lot of women experience that.” It’s also a way of stepping outside that box of expectation and reward she encountered as a teenager in the world of radio.

She describes the podcasting industry as “the wild west”, a place of experimentation and risk not unlike community radio in the 90s. “It feels like now is the time to push myself. I felt a bit lost. I’ve been too scared for too long.” And, rather than schlep to the city every morning, she gets to do it all from her home.

“It’s heaven out here,” she concedes, as the sun hits the water and reflects back at us like golden ticker tape. “There is something about starting your day [by the river] that is life changing. It just cleanses everything and I feel good.”

The shedding of inner-city life doesn’t have to mean a disengagement with culture or the wider world, and Warhurst reckons she has found a happy medium, the balance embodied somehow in the river itself. As we totter on its edge, it narrows and widens, creates eddies and catchments, but flows ceaselessly by us. It’s strangely comforting.

Moving out here “was a calling”, Warhurst says. “I just wanted to be back near the river, like I was as a kid. It must be good for the nervous system. I’m calm and I wake up in the morning and I’m out with the trees.” She laughs. “Maybe that’s a sign of getting older. I’m turning into the lady who talks to birds.”