I was just 16 when my father, John S Richardson III, died. He had testicular cancer that was not diagnosed until it was too late. He died a painful death in 1954 aged 44. It was no surprise that his death shook the family and his many friends.
As I finished my final months of schooling, John was taken aside by my father who convinced him that I was needed for our family’s newspaper and job printing business. Little did I know back then that my father was terminally ill.
I enjoyed learning to be a printer — skills that I still find useful. Additionally, I was permitted to write some of the news stories for our weekly newspaper, the Charlton Tribune — my tentative start in journalism.
When Dad died in Melbourne on his 18th wedding anniversary, my mother bravely took over the business, although her working background was mostly that of a book keeper rather than a business woman. Mum’s ambitions as a business woman were displayed when she started the Wycheproof News at the request of business men in a neighbouring town of Wycheproof. They were fed up with the truly dreadful Wycheproof Ensign, produced from time to time by Hugh Buchanan when he felt able. She then decided in a moment of madness to buy the unprofitable weekly newspapers, the Quambatook Times and Manangatang Courier, from the Page brothers when they moved to the town of Alexandra.
The newspapers were eventually sold after my mother married a Charlton farmer, Mr Bill Wood. I went on to work as a journalist for Radio 3BO, Bendigo, then Radio 3AW, Melbourne, then for 27 years, for BBC World Service radio and television in London.
If my father had survived his cancer, I have no doubt that the course of my professional and personal life would have been very different. This is impossible to predict.
