cartoonist and caricaturist, was born in Melbourne. Self-taught as a cartoonist, he began displaying daily cartoons on the door of the men’s toilet while employed as a proof reader at the Canberra Times until editor John Allen began publishing his work in 1971. That year he won the Walkely Award for best cartoon, repeating this for 1972 and 1974, the year he transferred to the Sydney Morning Herald as its third cartoonist (with George Molnar and Emeric Vrbancich ) – though Falkingham had wanted him as staff cartoonist when Eyre Junior died in 1972. He contributed some of the stronger, more Rabelaisian cartoons rejected by the Herald to Max Suich at the National Times in the mid-1970s, e.g. Parliament House, Canberra, as a country dunny and what goes on inside and around it (Souter 487-88).
Pickering moved to News Ltd (the Australian ) in 1976 after the Herald declined to pay his salary into a private company for tax purposes; he was replaced by Patrick Cook . An original 1979 Pickering cartoon is at Mitchell Library [ML] PXD 764. 370 others dating from 24 August 1979 but mostly 1984-88, chiefly done for the Bulletin , are at ML PXD 739. They include caricatures of Andrew Peacock, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, James Fairfax, John Howard, Malcolm Fraser, Susan Ryan, Paul Keating, Bob Hawke, John Singleton and topics like the ABC, trade unions, royal family and Aboriginal issues. The State Library of new South Wales [SLNSW] photocopied 52 onto archival paper that were originally sent to the Bulletin by fax (PICMAN). Original (f.50) showing the BHP Building with a voice issuing from it, 'Believe it or not we looked out the window one day and we thought screw Newcastle’, published Bulletin 11 September 1984, 24 ('reduction 43%’), was used in the 1999 SLNSW b/w exhibition.
By the mid-1980s Pickering had produced lots of books of cartoons, including his 'famous Jungle Series '(?) and his celebrated calendars of politicians in the nude, Pickering’s Playmates . Then he retired from cartooning altogether, announcing that he was going to grow tomatoes – which he did. Later he became involved in horse racing. He was highly influential on Australian cartoonists in the 1970s and early 1980s, including Geoff Pryor who was appointed his successor on the Canberra Times in 1977.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
