cartoonist, began his career as daily cartoonist for the Melbourne Herald and Weekly Times’s Sun News-Pictorial in 1975, when John Morgan was editor. He claims he was always resigning over the rejection of his political cartoons following the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government on 11 November 1975, but was as regularly reinstated until a final resignation note was accepted (c.1982). Examples include a page of vignettes on life in the modern office, Business Matters , published in Melbourne Herald 1982 (ill. Rae 68). He then freelanced from a studio in his home in the outer Melbourne suburb of Eltham, where he lived with his wife Frances and three children. In 1983 he published Life Goes On! A Social Comment Cartoon Collection by Neil (Marion Books, Eltham). By then he had created five cartoon strips and panels. St Pip’s , with its naive Nurse Debbie Dox and monstrous Matron Morgoon, begun in April 1979 was also the subject of four pre-1983 cartoon anthologies. Other strips include Cliff , the talking koala who, like the archetypal Aussie, can’t win.
Neil is fond of talking animals. He also does a notable line in penguins, many contributed to the Bulletin since 1985, e.g. penguins swamped with mail in Charles Blunt gag. By 1985 he had published 10 cartoon books. He contributed a cartoon to the 1991 'Quit’ campaign , What about passive farting? (original ML PxD 672/31), published in the anthology Quit for Laughs (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992). In 1996 he won first prize in the 'Open Theme’ section at the Rotary National & International Awards for a Princess Di gag (ill. Inkspot 28, Spring 1997, 46). He signs his cartoons “Neil” with a tiny circle over the 'i’.
As political cartoonist for the Sunday Mail in Brisbane, Neil Matterson had one of his cartoons, Another Boatload , included in Bringing the House Down 2001 (NMA website).
(signs “Neil” with a tiny circle over the i)
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
