Floor cleaners…they’re a tricky business. One minutes you desperately need them to clear up the mess on stage from some wacky stunt, and the next…you’re trying to film a harrowing scene of grief and loss with them whirring away in the background. Truthfully, each of these things has only happened once. But that doesn’t mean they can’t happen again!

Yes, I have a complicated relationship with these machines, perhaps due to the fact that my first television role was driving one. It was a in a sitcom set in Melbourne, and a commercial floor scrubber was given to me as my steed. I was to drive it around in the background while the main characters had an argument. I wasn’t told the context, I had no lines so I didn’t get a copy of the script and I wasn’t actually paid all that well. As showbiz experiences go, it wasn’t the best ever. But by golly, did I ever throw myself ino a role more? This was my debut! And if I had to be a blurry shape in the background driving a floor scrubber for a joke I never even understood, I was going to do it fabulously.

Except the director put a stop to that after he caught a glimpse of me trying to ride it past the camera while doing a handstand on the seat, so…it became a regular floor cleaner driver movement. I was still fabulous, though. They couldn’t take that away from me.

I suppose ever since then, I’ve felt a bit of a twinge whenever I’m out and I see a street sweeper. It reminds of me of when I was an unknown. And Melbourne has so many power sweepers, it just hammers it home all the time. But I need to turn it into strength. That role was my big break, and nothing can take that away from me! Not even riding it into a wall after the cameras stopped rolling! They’re surprisingly hard to control, really.

-Aubrey