Welcome To APJ

Hi there from Portia,

Welcome, my name, for all intents and purposes, is Portia Turbo. I am a Sydney-sider born and bred and had a sun filled childhood in modest middle class, schooled by Nuns and Jesuits, studied Fashion and briefly worked in the industry until, at about age 19, I became a professional Drag Queen and have been working in that capacity ever since all over the world; on stage (OMFG!! Everywhere), in film (Priscilla; Queen of the Desert), on radio ( OUTFM, 2DAY FM), in print (Outrage, Q, ExpressMagazineNZ), on TV (Raving reporter on MTV) and books (Mardi Gras). Currently I run Turbo Trivia nights at pubs and clubs around Sydney and feel like I’ve hardly worked a day in my life and am grateful that the universe continues to let me do what I love. Long have I suffered with potty mouth.

Currently I am not long in the perfume craving, I collected without knowledge, but wish to learn as much as I can.

There is some squirt bitch work in my past, distant now, working at the Guerlain counter during Xmas holidays at a small suburban department store in Sydney Australia. Since then I have been through the fragrance roller coaster; sometimes 50 fragrances, then 2, back up to 30, down to 6 and now, honestly you’d think me mental if I gave the number of different fragrances in full bottles, decants, and samples in my home.

I am fragrance omniverous, sluttish in my broad and sometimes good-taste-bypass buying. To smell EVERYTHING seems to be my current goal. Good, bad, indifferent, whatever. And hopefully, in the end, to be able to tell the difference. But of course its the journey I am enjoying, no destination in sight. I’m not niche centric, nor do I care if a celeb has brought it out, I have some pre existing favourites that you’ll get to meet but basically I’m a clean slate.

We decided to do an Aussie blog about perfume because at the time we couldn’t find what we were looking for down under to learn stuff from. We also like the idea of writing in a Southern Hemisphere time zone, so when we talk about spring there’s not a 6 month wait till the observation becomes valid.

We are hoping to hook you up to some really useful basic knowledge about perfumery, interview some noses, see some of what goes into the manufacture and promotion of perfume, find you good books on the subject, have some AWESOME competitions, direct you to interesting conversations or articles on blogs all over the world, tell you our thoughts and feelings on fragrance and the industry as we see it and a multitude of other outpourings that will, we hope, inspire, educate, interest, include, envelope and entertain you. There will be space for you to join the conversations too, you all know more than us anyway, I do beg though that there be a ZERO CYBER BULLYING code.

What letters do I have after my name that give me gravitas, none, sorry, kicked out of school at 15. What will we be offering that you can’t find elsewhere put better, researched with knowledge and years of history within the inner circle of the industry, I don’t know. I have a nose that can smell a bit and a mind that sometimes surprises me. Honestly, the sheer weight of perfume bloggery did give us pause for thought (and so much of it is excellent, progressive, informative and thought provoking), the exponential growth in the last 5 years is incredible, so even if we are just writing a journal for ourselves I would like to do that, and give our learning curve somewhere to come back to and follow later on, like a paper trail of our perfume history.

While I have no qualms about cash for comment, if we do ever become that kind of adventure there will be fair warnings. Having said that; cash for comment doesn’t mean you get us to lie, we will (I hope) always tell as much truth as we can and/or dare.

I just LOVE fragrance and would like to share my thoughts and learnings. The great thing for you is that hanging out with us is FREE! Exactly, nothing to lose, everything to gain, and maybe we’ll all make some super great friends along the way who also love fragrance in all its forms.

Other things I love include my amazing circle of friends from all over the world and all different walks of life, reading, cooking, a bath, greyhounds, homemaking, ironing (I KNOW!!), furniture, snack foods, sex, getting ready for work, swimming, pedicures, partners old and new, bed linen, gardening, sewing (actually I hate it but do it well), lying in bed after everyone has gone to work, the WWW, iconic imagery, dancing, my job, shopping, flirting, dinner parties, the feeling after you’ve cleaned the house before guests arrive, travel, art, cheese, etc etc etc

Welcome to the AustralianPerfumeJunkies.com blog, please come regularly and enjoy the ride.

Portia xx

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