Stan Grant: ‘I had a crazy career for someone who had been brought up the way I had'

The Guardian

11-07-2025

Midway through a stroll around Adelong in the Snowy Valley, two hours west of Canberra, walkers stumble upon a sign. It points in one direction to the 'past', and in the other to the 'future'. Walking with Stan Grant, in an area steeped with personal significance for the distinguished writer and broadcaster, the sign seems particularly apt.
To start with, says Grant, as he sets a brisk pace on a wintry Saturday afternoon, this is traditional country. 'This is Wiradjuri country,' says Grant, a Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi man, very much dressed for the walk in a brown coat, corduroy pants and boots. Grant grew up in the area; his father was an itinerant worker and so the family moved often throughout the region.
'I changed schools 14 times before I was even in high school,' he adds. 'When I think of home, I never think of a house – I think of a place and I think of a relationship to the place. This holds all of that.'
Grant returned to Adelong after he wound up his career at the ABC (although he still has a place in Sydney, and travels frequently). He and his wife, the sports journalist Tracey Holmes, have recently finished renovating a home on the town's outskirts – they have six acres. 'I bought it without even looking at it,' Grant laughs – recalling how he did not tell Holmes before going ahead with the purchase. 'But as it happens, Tracey's family go back five or six generations here as well' – to Chinese immigrants who worked on a gold mine on the edge of town in the 1800s.
After a peripatetic career – Grant has reported from over 80 countries, and spent time living in London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Beijing – the 61-year-old is back in his place. 'It felt like returning to something that I was deeply rooted in,' he says. As Grant guides me along a path on the banks of the Adelong Creek, his connection to the landscape is palpable. 'It's the essence of me,' he says.
Grant has had a remarkable career which would have seemed improbable when it began. 'I sort of fell into journalism,' he explains, as we crunch over autumnal leaves now lying on the winter footpath. 'I had no ambitions to do anything when I was younger, because no one in my family had finished high school, let alone gone to university.'
By the time Grant reached his final years of schooling, his family had moved to Canberra and Grant secured a mail boy job at the Institute of Aboriginal Studies (his uncle was a janitor there). 'That introduced me to a lot of Aboriginal people doing things that I'd never seen our people do – go to university, have these professional lives,' he says. 'That really inspired me.'
A career in journalism soon followed – working at home and abroad as a broadcaster, host and correspondent, including a lengthy, globe-trotting stint with CNN. In some ways it was the perfect fit for Grant. 'It really felt as if I'd found a home for all the things I loved – writing, reading,' he says (during our conversation he cites James Joyce, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Toni Morrison and William Faulkner). 'And because I'd lived an itinerant life, I didn't care about moving – I really thrived in that.' Grant won three Walkley Awards and a Logie, and has interviewed global figures from Nelson Mandela to Hillary Clinton and seven Australian prime ministers.
But aspects of the trade gnawed at him – a gnawing that has only become louder now that Grant has left the grind of news journalism, he says – pausing to say hello to a passing neighbour (Adelong is a town of barely a thousand people and Grant seems to be well-known).
'I was always very wary of the exploitative nature of journalism, the blood sport of journalism, the soulless part of the craft that reduces human beings to mere avatars in some larger psycho drama – usually political,' he says. 'I never respected that part of it.'
Walking along in the dappled afternoon sunlight, it is a theme Grant returns to. '24/7 news – nobody needs that.'
Grant hesitates, birds chirping in the background. He seems torn by these reflections. He spent much of his career in 24/7 news outlets. 'I had phenomenal experiences – a crazy career for someone who had been brought up the way I had,' he muses. 'There was no way that was in the stars for me – and yet I had that life.'
The creek gurgles beside him and for a moment Grant snaps out of these reflections. 'It's contemplative, Kieran, it's a very contemplative space here,' he muses. 'As soon as you hear water on rocks, you're taken to a different place.'
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We soon reach the midway point of our walk, the old mine near the Adelong Falls – where Grant and Holmes come to swim in the rock pools during summer. The remnants of the mine persist in rock walls – constructed by migrant Chinese miners, including Holmes' great, great grandfather.
Certainly, Grant does not regret his career in journalism – which ended in 2023 after he left the public broadcaster, although he continues to pen a weekly column in the Saturday Paper. 'There's no point – it is what it is – and it wasn't as if I wasn't doing other things,' Grant says, reeling off some of his recent extracurriculars – eight books, a documentary, a doctorate in theology, in the last decade alone. In his new phase he is a regular at his local Catholic church, and next month will perform in a play produced by Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre at the Merlyn Theatre. 'I think what it is now is that I'm very aware of how I use the time I have left to be able to speak to the things that sit at the core of my soul,' he says.
But Grant is more than willing to reflect on his exit from the ABC – which came after relentless criticism after his comments during coverage of the coronation of King Charles. Grant is unapologetic about his contribution to the panel, about the crown's legacy of colonialism in Australia; the broadcaster's independent ombudsman later found the network had not breached any editorial guidelines.
'I did not have a choice in that,' he says. 'I would have been a coward, and I would have been, I would have betrayed my own people who sacrificed to put me there, had I not brought my voice to that in a measured way.'
For Grant, the challenge of being a high profile Aboriginal journalist was not just the public backlash, the death threats, the lack of institutional support (ABC leadership later admitted regret over its handling of the Coronation broadcast, and apologised to staff following a damning cultural safety review). It was also the cultural load.
He felt it fell to him to defend, encourage and protect other Aboriginal staff or staff of colour, to be someone they turned to if they had experienced racism. 'That was an enormous burden.'
The scars of Grant's career evidently linger. 'It's always there,' he admits. But walking through Grant's home town, his past and future melded together, there is a sense that being here allows him to breathe again. . 'We've passed people today who have smiled and waved at us,' he says of how he retains his optimism. 'I experience this every day. Turn off the television – don't watch the nightly news. It is not going to tell you anything about our world. Be engaged, be informed, but don't be obsessed. Put social media away – there is nothing good there. And go out and talk to people, meet people.'
As if on cue, Grant passes someone else going for a weekend stroll and a dog bounds up to him. 'You should be open to that,' he laughs. 'To a little dog coming up to you and saying hello.'
Stan Grant will feature in the Malthouse Theatre production of Echo: Every Cold Hearted Oxygen on 16 July at the Merlyn Theatre.