The last light of the day settles over the wetlands in Aspendale Gardens. The sky softens, shadows stretch across the reeds and the water catches what remains of the sun. Mark Tarpey walks the familiar paths with his dog, camera in hand, watching for the small changes in light that might make this moment worth capturing. At 72, after a working life spent listening closely to other people’s stories through sound and film, he still finds pleasure in stopping to look.
When asked why this ritual has become so special for him, he replied softly, “I just really think it’s quite peaceful.”
For Mark, a lifelong interest in people and their stories has extended well beyond the workplace. Having grown up in Melbourne, he developed an appreciation for the city’s live music scene, regularly visiting pubs and venues to see local bands. It was through that scene that he met his wife, Chrissie, on a cold rainy night when he stopped to give a lift to her and a friend who missed their bus.
Their life together has spanned decades of change, raising three children, while Mark built a career in television and documentary filmmaking.
Mark joined the ABC in 1975, initially working in staging before becoming a sound assistant and eventually a sound recordist. He worked there for 12 years before deciding to leave to work independently as a freelancer. The decision, which Chrissie initially feared, became a turning point for the couple.
“Everybody told me not to do it, but I did it anyway, and I had no regrets,” he said.
He went on to live a life of documentary filmmaking, travelling across Australia and overseas in productions for the BBC and more, spending much of his career capturing the voices and experiences of others. His career even expanded to acting in the 90s, working as a freelance extra for TV studios, including a small feature on Australian classic Neighbours . In any case, listening was central to his work; understanding what people said, how they said it and what might be lost when a story was taken out of context.
Yet now, what once came so easily to Mark has become much harder to navigate.
Over the years, he has watched the political opinions of some longtime friends change. People he once considered thoughtful and curious have turned to internet algorithms, embracing extremist political views and digesting online conspiracies, leaving him struggling to reconcile their beliefs with the people he thought he knew well.
“It’s just following a line of propaganda. I never thought that would have happened to them. They get all their information off the internet. They spend a lot of time just in their rooms, on the net,” he said scornfully.
The shift became particularly pronounced around the COVID-19 pandemic, when some of his friends began digesting Facebook conspiracy theories, including QAnon. Tarpey recalls questioning a journalist friend who had spent a career researching information before suddenly accepting claims circulating online.
“It’s crazy. I had friends who I thought were reasonably intelligent,” he said.
He recalls a conversation with his friend, “I’m quite a well-respected journalist, he said, and I replied, ‘Are you serious? You’ve spent your whole life researching and you’re listening to this crap?’”, Tarpey said.
His concern is shaped by more than personal frustration. During his career, Mark witnessed how easily information could be distorted when stripped out of context. Whilst covering the 1981 Lindy Chamberlain case in Darwin, he watched live courtroom testimony on monitors outside the courtroom, then saw commercial network’s broadcast reports distort and sensationalise the evidence presented just a few hours later.
Returning to Melbourne, he was struck by how firmly people had formed opinions about Chamberlain’s guilt, despite what he considered a misleading way to present evidence.
This experience remains relevant to his concerns about misinformation today. A 2024 News and Media Research Centre study found that 54% of Australians aged 70 and over scored in the “no ability” category for verifying information online. The findings highlight the challenges older Australians may face when assessing the credibility of online claims.
But for Mark, however, the consequences extend beyond public debate. Conversations with his friends have become something to navigate carefully, where political disagreements have isolated conversation to prevent disagreements and avoid damaging relationships.
His wife Chrissie remembers a time when open discussion was central to their social lives, particularly around the dinner table, where friends would gather for meals and exchange ideas. Now, those conversations have become less frequent, and some subjects remain untouched.
“Sad. I mean. We’re still friends, but we just can’t go into that territory,” she said.
Mark’s concerns about political division are also tied to a broader fear that people are losing their willingness to question information. He points to the influence of social media, propaganda, and increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence, arguing that people are too often encouraged to accept information that reinforces existing beliefs, rather than scrutinise it.
Yet Mark is not unwilling to consider the difficulty of knowing where the divide lies. During a conversation about their friends’ changing political views, Chrissie offers a moment of uncertainty.
“Maybe we’re the ones in the wrong,” she pondered.
Mark looked up from his lap, “That’s probably right,” he said.
The exchange offers a glimpse of the openness he fears may be disappearing: the willingness to question one’s own position, even when disagreement feels deeply personal. For Mark, preserving friendships means accepting that some conversations must remain unfinished, even when the distance becomes too much to ignore.
Each sunset, Mark returns to the wetlands, finding comfort in the familiar rhythms of the landscape. Beyond the water and reeds, life continues with Chrissie, their children and grandchildren, the family they have built across decades of change.
For a man who spent those decades listening closely to others, perhaps the hardest thing to capture is the moment understanding begins to slip away.
The friendships remain, the conversations continue, but the common ground beneath them feels less certain than it once did.
