I loved Charlton, the small bush town in the Australian state of Victoria. But my life didn’t begin there and most likely won’t end there. I was born in September 1937 in Wonthaggi, where my father, John, was a printer/reporter on the Wonthaggi Sentinel. He married my mother, Rena Cox, in April 1936 in a double wedding with her twin sister, Eelin.
When the Second World War broke out, my father volunteered for service with the RAAF but was rejected on health grounds - he suffered from rheumatoid arthritis - and because he was in a reserved occupation, newspaper production.
In 1941, my father, accompanied by my mother, me and my
younger brother Jeffrey, left Wonthaggi for St Arnaud, where he became editor
of the St Arnaud Mercury. It was also where my elder sister Ruth
was born and where I started school. I’m told that on my first day at school I
wandered out of the classroom and was found in the headmaster’s office. Asked
why I was there, I told the headmaster:
“I’ve come to see what you do all day”. This curiosity was to serve me well
when I became a journalist many years later.
In May 1943, we moved to Charlton where my father took over the Charlton Tribune and there was another addition to the family with the arrival of my younger sister, Alison.
Despite being embarrassingly bad at sport – a definite negative in a small Australian town – I made some fine school friends, not least Ron Winsall, who became the best man at my marriage and remains a friend. I should also mention the late John O’Brien who lived a few doors away from me in Peel Street, Ian Nally, a son of the late Senior Constable Pat Nally, and Ken Wright with whom I had a modestly-profitable rabbiting business.
On reflection, I am amazed at the freedom my parents allowed me and my siblings. We would travel out to the Wooroonook Lakes on our bikes and spend much time in what we called “the cave” on Mt Dooboobetic, known to us as Curnow’s Hill. It wasn’t a cave at all. It was a hole blasted into the hill to investigate whether it was suitable to establish a blue-stone quarry. It wasn’t. We loved having picnics in the “cave” and when my siblings and I returned there many decades later, the initials scratched into the rock were still clearly visible. We also found the remains of our barbecue and the oil cans we used for seats.
I had a couple of after-school and Saturday morning jobs – first with the shoe repairer, Arthur Hibbert, then with the watch repairer and jeweller, John Woods. I recall putting a cheeky sign on Arthur’s shop door, Richardson and Hibbert, shoe repairers. I assume Arthur took this in good part.
I had planned to do an apprenticeship with John Woods when I
left school at 16, but it was not to be. He was taken aside one day by my
father who told him that I was needed in the Tribune. I was not to know
at that time that my father had testicular cancer.
My father died on April 9, 1954, on the 18th anniversary of his marriage to my mother. He was just 44. My mother vowed to keep the business in the family which she did with the additional aid of brother Jeffrey and several printers, most prominently the linotype operator and compositor Doug Arundel. She even expanded the business by starting a new newspaper, the Wycheproof News, and in a moment of madness, bought the Quambatook Times and the Manangatang Courier, which were printed in Quambatook. These purchases were made without proper consideration of who was to produce them. Hence, I was recalled at a few days’ notice from the Shepparton News where I had been completing my printing apprenticeship. I became editor and sole printer of the Quambatook Times and Manangatang Courier as I was turning 20. While there, I often listened to the BBC’s prestigious Radio Newsreel being relayed by the ABC. Who could have predicted that in the 1970s I would be in London and be one of the editors of that program!
My mother married a retired Charlton farmer William “Bill”
Wood in February 1960, and the newspapers were sold to Ian and Carol Cameron. I
stayed on for about a year until I was offered a reporter’s job with the Radio
3BO newsroom in Bendigo. I had two wonderful years there under editor David
Horsfall. During this time in Bendigo I met Rosemary Batson – the woman who became
my wonderful wife -- at the city’s Carlos and Rosita Ballroom.
In 1968 I fell out with Corbett – I can’t remember why – and
I decided it was time for me to gain experience abroad, preferably in New York.
But there was a problem: I didn’t have a Green Card needed to work in the United
States. Instead, to cut a long story short, Rosemary and I flew to London. She gained
an office job with the UK division of Costain Construction, the firm that had
employed her in Melbourne after our marriage, and I eventually won a post as a
lowly sub-editor’s job with the BBC World Service.
We had planned to stay in the UK for six months, but I kept being promoted by the BBC. Rosemary gave birth to two boys, Harley and Niall, and with a friend set up London Home-to-Home, a successful accommodation business for foreign tourists.
There were many proud highlights in my BBC career: being in charge of the team that covered the summits between Mikhail Gorbachev and the American presidents, Reagan and Bush, and being a witness and coverage editor of the student and worker uprising in Beijing in 1968. I was also a founding editor of BBC World Television, along with another ex-3AW journalist, Johan Ramsland.
There were, of course, moments best forgotten, such as the collapse of BBC Arabic Television at the hands of the Saudi Arabians who owned the satellite, but my spirits never failed to lift as I walked into Bush House, home of World Service, or the BBC Television Centre in White City.
My days will probably end in London, but my heart will always be in Charlton.
