Frank Avis' Memoirs of 42 Years in Radio

More From Bendigo

2007-11-20T12:00:00+10:00

I know I’m supposed to be sticking to my radio career, but having just mentioned John Laws I’m drawn to a wonderful story. I was driving somewhere in NSW in the 70’s when John was at the height of his career. His programme was being edited and sent to various country stations around Australia. One morning I happened to be listening to one of these outlets when a call came into John from a lady who said, "Mr Laws... Mr Laws... There’s a man living in my roof."

Now, I have this picture of John doing his show, sitting on auto-pilot, leaning back in the chair and saying "Yes" and "Oh really" at the appropriate places while reading his morning paper and letting the caller rave on. Every now and then you could almost see him lean forward, put down the paper and nod to his producer, "We’ve got a live one here, Stan." Then he’d go for it.

I could almost see him leaning forward and nodding to his producer as the lady started to tell him that there was a man living in her roof. Laws got right into it.

"What do you mean, living in your roof?"

"Well, I go into the kitchen for my dinner and I hear him moving about up there."

"Do you mean he’s living in the loft-above the ceiling-and you don’t know who he is?"

"He shouldn’t be there... No one’s ever lived in the roof before."

"Well, how did he get in there... I mean, how long’s he been in the roof?"

"I think he moved in when my son left home... It’s about 3 months ago... And he just stays there... I can hear him... He’s very quiet, but he moves around when he doesn’t think I’m listening".

"Well..." Laws now assumes the role of her counsellor, "He shouldn’t be there and you’ve got to get him out."

"I know... But he won’t go."

"Now listen, this is what I want you to do... And I want you to be very firm for me... I want you to make sure he hears you clearly... Can you be firm for me?"

"Yes, I’ll try."

"You leave the phone off the hook and go into the kitchen and yell out at the top of your voice... GET OUT OF MY HOUSE NOW! GET OUT! Will you do that?"

"Will he go then?"

"Yes, he’ll leave immediately. You’ll never have to worry about him again. Just put the phone down and tell him to get out. Then come back to the phone and one of my staff will talk to you, alright?"

"Thank you, Mr Laws."

The phone is heard being put on the table and there are footsteps moving away into the kitchen. Suddenly this woman’s voice screams out, "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE NOW! GET OUT!" There is a pause and she yells out again, "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" She is still yelling when the Producer cuts to an ad' break and on to the 11 o’clock news.

The following day I’m listening to the same station which continues with the John Laws’ show. Laws is sitting back comfortably in his chair when a woman caller gets on the show and says, "Mr Laws, my daughter-in-law is a witch."

You can almost see Laws lean forward, nodding to his producer, "We’ve got another one, mate."

"Well ma'am," he takes on the role of the friendly family mediator, "there are often tensions between mothers and their son’s wife... It’s quite common."

"No, you don’t understand... She’s a witch."

"Of course, and as I was trying to explain, these things usually work themselves out over a period of time and..."

"You’re not listening to me, Mr Laws. I’m trying to tell you that SHE IS A WITCH!"

Long pause...

"Do you mean, witch as in wearing a pointy hat and riding broomsticks? Are we talking here about a witch witch?"

"Yes, she’s got my son completely under her spell... He’s changed completely... He doesn’t talk to me anymore... Never comes home... He’s a completely different person."

"But, surely that doesn’t mean she’s a...?"

"I’ve been in the kitchen, God know what she’s mixing in there, what she’s been feeding him."

"I can’t talk to him... She’s got a spell on him... I’ve got to break the spell."

"But Madam, surely...?"

"You can just see it, the way she looks at me... Oh I know, you little vixen, what you’re up to..."

"Madam..."

"She’s got him now, but I’ll break the spell..."

"Madam!" (Laws' voice is getting a little louder)

"I know what she’s up to... I know she’s..."

"Madam!" (Getting louder)

"If she thinks she can come here with all her chants and potions and take my son..."

"MADAM!" (Extremely loud)

This final scream from Laws finally stops the tirade. The woman stops. There is this incredibly long silence as Laws pauses for effect. And then very quietly he says, "You don’t happen to have a man living up in your ceiling, do you?"

Producer fades to promo, commercials, 11 o’clock news.

Lovely line, perfect timing, your reporter nearly drives off a country road, laughing hysterically. Sorry about that, just another diversion.

Back to 3BO and another strange story.

It was a holiday Monday, I remember that, and I was on duty in the studio while Turps, Graham Turpie, was the duty journalist (I think Dave Horsefall was the Editor in those days), we suddenly started to get all of these phone calls about strange objects in the sky over Bendigo.

It was the late-50’s, maybe 1960, but in those days you didn’t run stories about such things on a conservative radio station in a very conservative city in a very conservative country. But when the number of calls get over 80 you have to do something. So Turps ran a story about the number of calls we were getting about these strange objects.

The calls kept coming in, all reporting these sightings. Eventually Graham had no option other than to go to one of these locations and actually see what they were talking about. I said to him that he’d probably need another impartial witness, suggesting he collect my wife on his way so there’d be two people reporting on the event. So Graham and Elizabeth went to one area where we were getting a lot of reports, not sure just where that was.

Graham could see the objects clearly but Elizabeth, who had excellent eyesight, was the best of all. She could see a large, cigar-shaped object, high in the sky-not moving-surrounded by smaller disc shapes which appeared to be flying around the main object, perhaps even flying in and then flying out again.

It was astonishing. We could, I guess, rule out up to 100 callers, suggesting they were suffering some sort of mass hallucination, but it was pretty hard to rule out Graham and my wife. So we continued to run the story.

I eventually got through to the duty officer at the nearest Victorian Air Force base, asking if he’d received any such reports. He had some difficulty not laughing at me. He repeatedly tried to fob me off, suggesting all we were seeing was a weather balloon. But I asked him how a weather balloon could stay in the same position in the sky for 8 hours without moving.

He didn’t like this and then made it clear that if I thought he was ordering a plane to go into the area to check on these things, then I had better forget it. That pretty much ended the conversation.

The objects remained in the sky for the early part of the afternoon, but then the reports stopped coming in. By the time I signed off, they were gone. This was a most baffling mystery which sent me off on another hunt for ten years or so, reading all of the literature I could get, especially after another extraordinary incident which happened a few years later when I moved to Hobart.

Remember, I never sighted these things myself, but the people who witnessed them were beyond questioning. There is no doubt they saw something very unusual that day in Bendigo.

I hope you don’t mind me taking along these byways with the Yowie story and now these UFO’s but I am reporting them exactly as they happened. Where possible I’ll name names so that you’ll know they’re absolutely authentic.

When these ramblings resume I’ll move from Victoria across Bass Strait to Tasmania and over 5 years with 7HO, Hobart.

Bendigo and John Laws

2007-11-07T12:00:00+10:00

I’ve just looked back on some of my previous entries and realised the rapid onset of senility is white-anting the product. For example, I did my army training at Holsworthy, no “e”. Please make the necessary alterations as you see fit and accept my apologies for any other errors you may find especially in the spelling of people’s names. That being said, let us press on with life post-army. I didn’t take up the offer to resume my career at 2LF, agreeing instead to join Lawrie Shaw and the doyen of 2GB "voices", Richard Gaze. Barry Michael also joined the team late in my tenure and, if I remember correctly, I also met Barry late in my time at 2LF.

Less said about this period the better, although Lawrie introduced me to a lot of terrific literature and music while Richard was just wonderful to be around. Just hearing him do a time call on 2GB was worth turning on the radio.

I spent a pointless year in Sydney trying to break into radio acting but I just didn’t have the voice for that job and should have realised this much earlier. I did a stack of auditions including one with Lyndal Barbour, who kindly took me aside afterwards and warned that it might take a few attempts before I broke through. This was extremely kind of her. Sadly, I never broke through and—down to my last 10 shillings (whatever they were)—I went down to AWA to see if they had any openings on their network. Luckily, they needed somebody at 3BO, Bendigo, and so I boarded a train and went south with the ducks. Down to Melbourne and then on to Bendigo. The Manager there was a Frank McManus, I think Eric Pattison was his deputy and I remember Russ Pilley, Al Scown, Des Nicholas, Campbell Spain (from his fields of waving corn), Ted Bell, Des Tocchini, Graeme Turpie, Bill Moore, Dick Turner and Doug Richards.

I ended up doing breakfast with Ted Bell which became highly successful but which was, not to put too fine a point on it, at times decidedly weird. One morning he saw a workman fixing the roof of an adjacent building and took a mike with 20 metres of cable to continue the show outside with the builder. A lot of this stuff really came off. Another time we had a pie and treacle fight in the front window of a homewares store. I can still smell the treacle in my hair. Ted was also a hypnotist and ventriloquist. I saw him one night doing the warm up for Frank Ifield and he was absolutely brilliant in a routine with the ventriloquist’s doll. Whatever happened to Ted?

I remember taking my trusty recorder up into a helicopter when (I think it was) TAA was introducing helicopters to the public with a series of flights across Victoria. The pilot was a captain Neil McMillan. It was my first and only chopper flight.

A week later I picked up the morning Sun to find that Captain McMillan and a Miss Australia entrant had died when the chopper crashed in a provincial city. One week earlier and it could have been me.

I actually followed not far behind John Laws, who had had a brief career in Bendigo. It did give me the opportunity to read one of his old announcer’s logs which had remained in the studio. Apparently, at one time, John had left the studio and accidentally missed the opening of the 7PM news bulletin from the ABC.

The manager was so incensed that he issued a firm memo, directing that the duty announcer must remain in the studio chair from 6:55 'til he took the ABC landline. Nothing was allowed to interfere with this directive... Not severe illness, mayhem, even an earthquake. The memo made it clear that there was no option. Stay in that chair 'til the news went to air or face the ultimate punishment.

This time it seems somebody had wandered into the studio about 10 to 7 and thrown a cigarette butt into a waste bin. Mind you, it’s 50 years ago so my memory is going to be tested but the announcer’s log book, signed by John Laws, went something along these lines:

Funny, a short time after the announcers were seen in the library, laughing hysterically at John’s report, it magically disappeared, never to be sighted again. Who has it? It’s worth a fortune. Maybe we can find it and could get Lawsie to sign it again?

There is another wonderful story out of 3BO in the 50’s. When John laws moved on to try his luck in Sydney, a senior executive with the station is alleged to have taken him aside and advised him to try another career. John was advised that he’d "never make it in radio". This remains one of the most famous lines in radio folklore.

I actually happened to be in Sydney the night John got his breakthrough gig. I think it was either 2UE or 2SM, but I remember hearing the news at 6PM and the opening bars of Eydie Gorme’s Frenesi. The music dropped and the voice said, "Hello world, this is Long John." Straight into Frenesi. Bang. It was like a tsunami had rolled across the industry. You knew from "Hello" that this man was going to be a superstar. The mike loved him and he obviously loved being there.

John laws dominated the Sydney radio era from the mid-to-late 50’s right through to 2007. That puts him up there with the greatest names in the business including Jack Davey, Roy Rene, Tony Withers and Eric Baume. You can fill in your own nominations.

Next time we meet, or rather next time I manage to stop daydreaming and actually do something productive, I’ll tell you about a very strange incident—oh no, not another one!—which happened in Bendigo in the late-50’s.

Frank's National Service

2007-11-01T12:00:00+10:00

I was sitting down with three of my children at Manly today, sipping Gloria Jeans as the gentle ocean breezes wafted in off the water (It’s not easy but somebody has to do it) and they were all throwing out hints about the lack of a new episode. Suitably chastened, I immediately raced to the computer on my return in the evening.

It was 1956 and the biggest thing in my life was whether my birthdate would come up in the national service lottery. Actually, it was a funny thing - I knew my number was going to be chosen. Don’t know how, but I had no doubt I was heading for three months of national service. And so it proved to be.

We assembled at Young station one night and headed down to Sydney on the overnight train, bound for our camp at Holesworth. It was a dreadful journey, only matched by the arrival which was equally dreadful. It was never "Holesworthy", by the way, but always referred to as "Holes-bloody-worthy".

Actually everything had a bloody in it at National Service... Sometimes even worse.

We were outfitted and out on the parade ground immediately. Our Sergeant/mentor was Sgt Dummett, nicknamed Daddy Dummett, and we loved the man. There’s no doubt we would have followed him into harm’s way if required. Luckily, I happened to find myself between Korea and the war in Vietnam. I don’t make jokes about that. I was a very lucky young man.

We arrived at Holes-bloody-worthy in the middle of winter to find ourselves sleeping in tents with little or no protection from the elements. We went to bed with our army socks on, often wearing two sets of pyjamas and with our army greatcoat covering our two blankets. We were dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn and sent to the showers which were freezing. Technically, they were hot, but I never found anyone who had any hot water.

The trick in nasho was to get yourself into some exclusive sporting group, because sporting rivalry in the services was really red hot. We were determined to uphold the Army’s honour in the 13th NS intake.

My first breakthrough was to get into the boxing squad. Forgive me for a bit of background here, but a mate of mine, John Harmer, and I trained for a year or so at a well known Sydney gym. For the life of me I can’t think of the name but it was in George Street, on your way down to Circular Quay. Anyway, in those days a lot of the amateur boxing was arranged by the Police Boys’ Clubs across the nation and I switched over to the Burwood club for the annual state championships. I was fighting as a lightweight at the time and trained by the most decent bloke, a Sergeant at the Burwood Centre. Somehow I got into the quarter or semi-finals and I kept hearing about this young superstar who was favoured to win the title that year. His name was Robert Blue, nicknamed Bobby Blue. Every training night it was all I heard… This Bobby Blue fella.

Well, when we won our way through to the finals, the Sergeant called me aside, fixed me with a long and mournful gaze and said, "Frank, we got him." Always the innocent, I naturally asked, "We got who?"

The dreaded reply came, "We got Bobby Blue, next Tuesday night." Trying to find something positive to say, the Sergeant continued, "but we had to fight him sooner or later, if we wanted to win the title."

"Sure," I thought, "but why couldn’t it be later than Tuesday night."

For the next week, the Sergeant drilled me over and over again, telling me that Blue had this big left hand. He didn’t mess about, he threw it the minute the fight started, and it rarely missed. So the Sergeant said over and over again, "He’s going to throw the left in the first few seconds... Be prepared for it." We spent hours tucking in my chin and putting up my right glove in defence. Never has a fighter been warned more often or prepared more carefully for one punch.

So Tuesday night dawned. I hadn’t realized but one of my schoolmates had spread the word through the school that I was fighting in the state titles that night and when I walked out into the ring there were over a dozen boys from the school screaming and yelling. They even heaped abuse on my opponent when he stepped into the ring. "Jeez," I thought, "why are they doing that? Why would they want to get him any angrier? These aren’t supporters," I thought to myself, "these are complete idiots."

I remember the bell going and making my way out to the centre of the ring. Then somebody exploded a very large missile inside my head. You guessed it. I was warned about it, I trained relentlessly for it and Bobby Blue hit me with it in the first two seconds of the fight. All I remember for about 10 seconds was the strange realisation that you really do see stars... Isn’t that amazing? There were galaxies running across my head. Suddenly, they cleared and I looked up to see Bobby Blue charging straight at me, with a snarling smile on his lips and the word KILL imprinted on his brain. He didn’t worry about defence. He was coming at me, with one thought in mind... DESTROY... DESTROY.

To this day no one knows what happened but 18 months of training suddenly worked. There was Mr Blue coming at me, his jaw wide open and my right hand suddenly decided to launch itself straight at him. I know I didn’t tell it to. For some reason, my right hand looked at the situation and thought, "If I don’t do something here, this goose is going to go to hospital for a very long time." So, my right hand went WHACK. The whole thing was sort of like Chariots of Fire... It was all in slow motion. First my opponent was coming in ready to finish me, then all of a sudden he was staggering back, with this amazed look on his face and then falling to the canvas, taking an 8 count. My school mates were beside themselves. They were up on their chairs going berserk, while the police Sergeant in my corner was apparently sobbing hysterically. They’d never seen him cry before.

Look, I won’t prolong this except to say Bobby beat the count and got up as mad as a hornet, proceeding to rip me to shreds over the next couple of rounds. I don’t know what happened to him after that, but he sure had a big left hand.

Anyway, the boxing squad kept me going nicely in the nashos for three weeks, managing to successfully escape overnight guard duty in that time, 'til sadly I was taken to hospital with an eye infection, missing out on the boxing championships.

Now, guard duty was horrible, leaving you standing at attention with your 303 for hours and hours overnight, rain or whatever. I’d successfully managed to get through my first month without guard duty. Big plus.

But what about the next few weeks? The answer: join the 10 mile running team, special diets, lots of training time, no overnight duties. Wonderful, it got me through the next week or two, when we suffered a shattering loss in the distance runnings... Third out of three entries.

It destroyed our coach, poor devil. Anyway, again, no guard duty. What to do next? This decision was taken out of my hands when Paul Horne wrote to me, announcing that Love’s a Luxury had been chosen to take part in the state Arts Council Awards. Unfortunately, it was to be performed smack in the middle of my national service. I don’t know how Paul managed it, but I found myself called into the Captain’s office to be told I was being given special leave to appear, but I could only leave the day before the performance and I had to be back the day after. There were no rehearsals... Just get there, do it and get back. I don’t think the Captain was greatly impressed by the decision.

So, back to Young to perform before another ecstatic, packed audience but only to be told by the judge that he would have preferred, "Hamlet". We didn’t win. He said I would have been a good Hamlet.

Shakespeare and I both knew a lot better. I mean do you think anybody who wrote King Lear is completely stupid.

So I returned to Holesworthy with just a week of training to go. I had managed to escape all guard duty.

Then on my final night, in pouring rain and freezing conditions the Corporal came into our tent asking innocently how many guard duties I’d done. It was impossible to lie. My final night was spent on guard duty.

They get you in the end, don’t they? I don’t know whether national service really taught me much but I guess I learned to fire the 303, the Bren Gun, Owen Gun and lob the odd hand grenade. You never know when you might need that sort of expertise, particularly in radio.

At the end of training, I accepted Lawrie Shaw’s offer to join him, and 2GB’S famous Richard Gaze, in the Paint It Yourself show across NSW and Queensland. No fault of Lawrie’s or Richard’s, but I absolutely hated it. I won’t bore you with the details.

In the next episode, I fail to make it as a radio actor in Sydney and head back to country radio and further adventures.

The Ball Broadcast

2007-10-17T12:00:00+10:00

So here we are in the town of Young back in the mid-50’s. Now I have to introduce you to one of the most horrific episodes in my career.

Worse than being trapped in the 2MG studios alone late at night... Worse than doing breakfast at 2LF in the middle of winter... and even worse than seeing yowies lurking in the undergrowth. This is one of the nightmares of any radioman’s career... The dreaded BALL BROADCAST.

I’ve seen grown men flee the radio industry and return to their previous occupation measuring ball bearings, after being subjected to this most awful of events, the BALL BROADCAST. It can sneak up on you when you’re least expecting it and when it strikes – the results can be terminal.

It happened to me this way. Things were going pretty well at 2LF when one afternoon somebody told me I’d be doing the BALL BROADCAST on Friday night. I got dressed in my best suit – and pretty ordinary it was too – and went to the Town Hall, accompanied by a girl from accounts who was to do the frock descriptions and the technician who was to ensure the excitement of the evening was captured for posterity (and you can take that any way you want to, ok?).

When I walked in I was surrounded by the cream of Young society, and without being intentionally nasty, isn’t that a contradiction in terminology? The women were dressed in their finest and, to my surprise, all the men seemed to be decked out in Scottish regalia. Here we were out in the middle of the Australian wheat and wool belt and all these blokes are running round dressed up like Bonnie Prince Charley. I found it quite bizarre.

Anyway Ric Colson and his Band got things going and it was on. I should say from the start that I always found this dancing thing highly embarrassing. I didn’t mind watching professional dancers but to watch all of these average Joe’s treading on each other’s toes was quite bizarre. So I went on describing how great all the men looked wearing their skirts when about an hour in I got an urgent message from management which read briefly, ”They’re kilts you bloody idiot!”.I found out that night that Frank and ball broadcasts really didn’t mix well. I did three of them I think and always mention with pride that I managed to get to the end without rolling on the floor and bursting out into hysterical laughter.

During my time at 2LF somebody mentioned to Paul Horne, who had the local shoe shop, that I’d trained at the Sydney Independent. Paul and wife Patricia were mad keen amateur theatricals and he quickly set up a meeting to plan a local production. I wasn’t really interested but everyone was enthusiastic and it was pretty hard to stop the train once it’d left the station. Paul and I didn’t get close when it came to theatre. I wanted to do a quality material, Paul’s choice was a broad English farce. And I’m talking really “broad” here. Well, I’d better publically admit it here. Paul knew a lot more about the local audience than I did. Naturally, as in 99% of all English theatre the male leads inevitably had to dress up as women for whatever reason. What is it with the English and dresses? Oh well, we all said yes and so Paul put “Love’s a Luxury” with yours truly as Bobby Bentley into full scale production. The dreadful thing is that after a week or so I really started to enjoy it all again. My memory was sensational in those times. I knew my lines in the first week and knew everybody else’s lines in a fortnight.

Paul booked the Young Town Hall for two nights as I faced up to the reality of finishing the show around 11, getting home by 12, and then getting up at 4.30 for breakfast. I asked Paul how bookings were going and he smiled and said “it was looking pretty good”. 15 minutes before the curtain went up I took a peek out through the curtains and found it was indeed “pretty good”. The hall, a very large hall, was absolutely packed. We swung into Loves a Luxury with all stops out. They wanted farce. We gave ‘em farce. And the audience loved it. We got curtain call after curtain call. We were superstars.

The look on Paul’s face was enough to make it all worthwhile. He was elated. The local paper gave the show the biggest thumbs up you’ve ever seen in your life. My review roughly placed me up there with Sir Michael Redgrave and Larry Olivier. And word of mouth was sensational.

Our second night was packed enough for Paul to book us for another weekend. We even went on tour. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. What really happened is we piled into two cars one Friday night and performed in Harden, again to an absolutely packed house. Ah, these were heady days.

The local paper even started campaigning for us to be a candidate for the Arts Council’s annual theatre awards. Life it seemed was just about perfect. Except for one little problem. Somewhere in an office deep in Australian bureaucracy, somebody was pulling my birthdate out of a hat. I was just about to learn that my number had come up for National Service.

Goodbye Young, goodbye radio career for three months and goodbye “Love’s a Luxury”. Hello living in tents, digging tunnels, firing 303’s, Bren guns and Owen guns and lobbing hand grenades.

I’ll tell you about that experience next time we meet. Thanks for reading my recollections. Tell your friends.

Young and Yowies

2007-10-03T12:00:00+10:00

I transferred from 2MG Mudgee to 2LF Young I think around Winter 1955. Young was bigger than Mudgee and a really nice town.

My memory’s a bit creaky these days but when I arrived I’m fairly sure Mr Marchant was still Manager but soon to retire to make way for Bill Marsden, Colin Humphries (later of 2GB and 2CH) was Chief Announcer, John O’Reilly (later of ABC Sport, Sydney) called the Rugby League which was absolutely huge in the country in those days, definitely attracting a lot more attention in the country than the Sydney league. I remember Lawrie Shaw, Ian Nicholls, John Caughey and I think Ian Elstob(?).

Sadly, l went almost instantly into Breakfast which I hated because I didn’t sleep that well in those early years. I recall going to work at 4:30 in the morning in mid-winter when the ground was frozen. When you walked on the grass it didn’t bend, it cracked.

I confess there were also a couple of occasions when Chief Engineer Bob Milne (later of 2GB) had to come into the Robertson’s house early in the morning to pull yours truly out of bed. This was a time when no one locked their doors at night , not even in Sydney. And many neighbours had a gate in their fence, connecting the two houses. Neighbours dropped in regularly for a “cuppa”. I loved those days in Australia, an atmosphere only recreated in Sydney during the amazing 2000 Olympics, and then – unhappily – for just the briefest time.

Ian Nicholls arrived from Melbourne not long after me and—unfortunately for him—ended up doing the 9-1 womens’ shift. Now, things were pretty quiet in Young at the time and I seized on just about anything I could find to provide a bit of extra excitement/humour.

Once I found out where Nicko was boarding that was pretty much the end of his life as he knew it. Around 8:30 I’d start describing how Ian had just left the house and where he was en route. Obviously these reports started out as complete fabrications but after a short time, women started to call me and tell me where Ian was. This was marvellous. Soon, they were hanging out at the front gate yelling encouragement to Nick and even suggesting that if he didn’t get a move on he might be late.

This was lots of fun for me but a total embarrassment for Nicko. So, he changed his route to work, taking a longer, but less predictable journey. Didn’t work, pal, did it? The women were on to it like a flash, reporting to me immediately that you were no longer taking your normal path but had now switched to another road. Not only that but my spies were now reporting in on what Nicko was wearing, information which was embellished cruelly by the breakfast announcer to bring even further embarrassment to his colleague.

Ian still wakes up at 2 O’clock every morning, in a cold sweat, after dreaming that he’s walking down a quiet street in Young and suddenly hundreds of housewives race out of their front doors to cheer his daily walk to work. I’m amazed that he still talks to me but he does. Indeed we had a Gloria Jeans coffee near Central a little while back while he was in Sydney and it was wonderful.

I should say, I love this guy. He’s a radio legend. Anything you want to know, ring him. He knows all the history and where quite a few skeletons are buried.

By the way, I broke a rule earlier on when I used the phrase, “in Young”. One of the first lectures I got on arrival was that I could say “2LF, Young,” and, “2LF at Young,” but never, “2LF, in Young”. Apparently that term had a different significance in the country areas, something to do with falling pregnant, and for reasons I still don’t understand this generated all sorts of excitement, when mentioned in the local community. I couldn’t figure it out but I adhered to the memo and never used, “in young”.

The other big dispute in those days was with the major record labels. They argued the radio industry should pay to use their product. The stations argued in turn that if they didn’t play the records no one would hear them so there wouldn’t be any sales at all. This went on for a time, forcing all stations to wire off parts of the music library, isolating the record labels in question, so that no one would inadvertently trigger a major legal action.

During that time we all got used to these extremely large records, as big as a giant pizza, called, I think, World Records. These contained as many as 12 tracks on one side and we flogged the living daylights out of them while the dispute raged on. When it stopped, we just removed the chicken wire and went back to business as usual.

It was during this time that something occurred that left me totally mystified and still does. I’ve only told this story in public once before, on the Brian Bury radio show, and in writing it down today I know I’ll risk being laughed-at as a bit of a goose. But I’ll tell the story exactly as it happened, with the firm note to doubters that I wasn’t drunk, indeed I hardly drink at all even today.

I boarded with Mrs Robertson and her son Cyril at Young and we were invited to go rabbit shooting on her daughter Thelma‘s farming property just out of Town. I went there with two friends, packing our 22’s and plenty of ammunition. We’d made our way to the side of a hill where the bottom was completely cleared but up above remained heavy forest and bushland. All of a sudden there was this tremendous noise, like a train was coming from behind us. Second later this huge big red kangaroo came careering past, within a metre or two, scaring the life out of all three of us. We went berserk firing round after round at this big 'roo as it disappeared down the hill. This was clearly not politically correct, but in 55-56 what did we know. We were just galahs like all the other youths of the time.

Anyway, as the 'roo headed away, for some reason I looked up the hill and there standing at the edge of the bush was this creature looking straight at me, eating leaves from a tree complete unconcerned. My mates were still firing wildly and yelling but this creature wasn’t even remotely spooked. It looked almost human, with two arms and legs, but was covered in dirty red-orange hair.

We were about 25 metres away I’m guessing. I’d put its height at around 5 feet, sorry I can’t convert that to whatever we use these days. But it wasn’t tall. One thing I remember, and will always carry with me, is that it looked straight into my eyes. There was this mesmerizing contact. The animal/creature had big brown, sorrowful eyes. I will never forget them.

When I saw this creature I must have said something pretty dramatic and with a certain amount of vigour, because my two mates stopped shooting immediately and looked at me in amazement. Obviously I got their attention and I remember explaining how I’d “seen something” and turning back to the forest up the hill. “Please God,” I begged, and remember I’m an atheist, ”Please God, let it still be there”. IT WASN’T. As we all turned and looked in the direction I was pointing, all that could be seen was the rustle of the leaves.

I then faced a momentous decision. Did I tell my friends the whole story and go charging up into the bush trying to find it risking being labelled an idiot, or did I lie and try to change the subject, with some lame excuse? I chose the latter. Now, you’ll ask yourself why? Let me explain. I was an incredibly innocent 18 year old. You would be amazed how innocent. Perhaps if I describe it this way. An 18 year old in ’56 was about as sophisticated as a 12 year old in 2007. I had absolutely no benchmark in making my decision. There were no terms of reference. And do you know what I was thinking? Not about the creature and what I’d just seen, but about my friends and what they were thinking about me and most important of all... WOULD THEY TELL ANYONE? Was I going to be totally embarrassed and pointed out as a whacko? This was my total concern. So I blurted out something stupid and we continued on our way, with both mates looking at me from time to time, wondering what the hell I was on about.

So we returned to the farmhouse where Thelma had prepared a beautiful afternoon tea of scones, jam and cream. We sat there, and I just pleaded inside for my friends not to say anything. Which they didn’t for a time, 'til Jim returned from his chores to have afternoon tea with us.

“How did you go?” he said and I lifted my head, hoping beyond all hope that my friends would forget the incident. And they were fine for a few minutes, reporting that we hadn’t bagged one rabbit. I don’t think we even saw one. Then just when I thought all was well, one of them said, “Oh and Frank saw something, up there in the bush,” at which point the two burst into giggles, like a couple of 13 year old schoolgirls.

Farmer Jim looked across and asked what it was, and I remember making some stupid excuse, like it might have been a cow or something. I looked up and Jim’s eyes met mine. My jaw dropped. The subject was never mentioned again even though Jim and I met several times but I knew the minute he looked at me that afternoon. The thing I’d seen, he’d seen it too. I confess that made things a lot better.

Time went by and I pushed the creature back into a corner of my mind, marked “too hard basket”. It stayed there 'til 1975.

I was relaxing in Perth, having morning tea, and thumbing through the Sunday paper when I turned a page and there it was... the creature looking straight at me. This wasn’t approximately like what I’d seen. It looked exactly like it, barring the colour obviously. It was an artist’s impression of the YOWIE, a creature which went way back into aboriginal folklore. The article was by the Yowie hunter, Rex Gilroy.

I rang Rex the next morning and we spoke at length about my sighting and how it was identical to hundreds of other such incidents. He told me the aboriginies had a long history of accepting that their country was also populated by a “great hairy man” and that this had been the case for as long as they could remember.

Now, I had never heard the term Yowie before. I’d never read about it and to my best recollection no one had ever mentioned it even in an aside. This was extraordinary information. Rex was leading an expedition in the Blue Mountains in the next few months and I followed every step of the trek, reading everything I could about the hunt. It came to nothing.

I spent the next 10 years researching this subject and – just like the YETI and the BIGFOOT – I produced absolutely nothing. No one had captured a live Yowie. There were no skeletal remains and no one had ever found their habitat. As archeologists will tell you, nothing walks on this planet without leaving a trace. If we can find the bones of dinosaurs from 65 million years ago, we can surely find the bones of a Yowie. No one has.

In the end I had to do what I’d had to do in many of my searches into famous crimes... I had to admit that you went with the evidence. It said overwhelmingly that there was no such thing.

So, that’s how it finished up. I saw this thing: it wasn’t an hallucination. But I have to accept that it just doesn’t exist. This remains a complete mystery to me. I have no explanation. All I can offer, at the risk of a great deal of embarrassment, is to describe the incident exactly as it happened. I’m still hunting through my records, looking for that newspaper article. When I find it I’ll make sure it’s posted as part of this series.

When we next meet up, I’ll be telling you about my stage comeback – and we’re not talking King Lear here folks – and of my birth date coming up for national service.

In the meantime, for those of you looking for a bit of adventure... get your boots and backpack on and go find me a Yowie. PLEASE!!!!!!!!! I’m begging you.

Mudgee Floods

2007-09-05T12:00:00+10:00

It’s raining in Sydney as I start today’s chapter but nothing like Mudgee in early 1955.

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen rain like it, that February, torrential rain that just kept falling. We went to work as usual but slowly, little by little, the water got closer and closer until one day it soaked into the transmitting tower’s ground mat, undermining our transmission.

I remember leaving work one evening with the water lapping the building and everyone saying, "No, it can’t flood the station. It’s not possible."

I was staying, I think, at the Court House Hotel where guests paid around 2 pounds a week for the shared lodging and three meals a day seven days a week. And the meals were full-on. Anyway, it was pouring when I went to bed at around ten o’clock that night and I remember thinking, "Will it ever stop?" At two A.M there was a lot of banging on my bedroom window. I opened it up and there was the Manager Bill Marsden with another staff member, standing outside in the middle of another deluge. Bill screamed out that the water had entered the back door and that we had to lift the transmitter before it got any further. I quickly dressed and joined the others in a rescue operation.

The plan was to get a boat and to row out to the station, but when we went to get the boat there was bad news. It was out of action. All that we could find was one of those spare fuel belly tanks that aircraft carried in World War Two. It was quite large and buoyant, able to support the three of us in the water (well Mr Marsden said it was okay and he was the manager).

We got down to the station but couldn’t really see much. Brian(?) was on duty--well, he couldn’t escape so he had to be on duty--and all we could see was the one light shining from the building. What we did see, however, was that there was no way we were going to row our belly tank across to the front door. The river was in full flood. We would have lost 30 yards downstream for every 10 yards we rowed towards the building. Bill Marsden then had one of those episodes of lateral thinking that have changed the course of history from time to time.

Now, when I tell this story to people it’s obvious that quite a few simply don’t believe it. All I can say is that I’m going to recount this tale exactly as I remember it. If anything, the actual event that early morning was probably much worse than you’re about to read.

Bill’s decision was to make use of the fast flowing river and the buoyancy of the belly tank by going upstream, where there was a dividing fence, making our way along the fence and letting the tank go when we were roughly in line. We were being soaked by the rain, driven almost sideways at us, as we slowly edged our way along the fence.

Now, what I have to tell you about fences is that they have posts every few yards and when it’s flooding guess where all the animals and insects gather for safety?.That’s right, on top of the fence posts. So we pulled ourselves along the fence touching God knows what as we made our way to the launch point. There were snakes, spiders and other creatures which still cause me to break out in a cold sweat at three o’clock in the morning.

The noise of the wind and rain was like being in the middle of a tornado. It was my job to let go of the fencing when Mr Marsden gave me the order. The trouble was the noise was so deafening that all I could hear was, "#####*****++++++".

I cocked my ear and said, ”Did you say let go Mr Marsden?”

"######******," came the reply. "Was that let go Mr Marsden?" I said.

"######******," came the reply, the voice going higher as it screamed.

"Should I let go Mr..." I started.

"Will you bloody let go," came the hysterical scream alongside me.

And I let go. And the tank went downstream like a rocket. We couldn’t see anything, not even the light from the studio. It was pitch black and cyclonic winds were blowing monsoonal rain straight into our faces. Suddenly, on our left I saw something. "Mr Marsden," I said. "What’s that there?"

"It’s the transmitting tower wires," he screamed. "Grab them or we’re gone."

I didn’t like the sound of that, especially the "gone" part. Did it mean we would go too far or did it mean we’d never come back. So we threw our arms out and hung on to the wires. Then we saw Brian at the back door, with a flashlight. "Brian," we screamed out. "We’re hanging on to the tower wires. Throw us a rope and we’ll pull our way over." Brian made several attempts but couldn’t get the rope anywhere near us. "Brian," yelled Mr Marsden. "You’ll have to put something heavy on the end of the rope to get it here."

The last thing I remember was this rope coming straight at me with a large hammer on the end. I thought drowning was a better option than being wiped out by a hostile hammer and leapt from the belly tank to swim across to the studio. As I recall the two others did the same. We arrived in the studio soaked. Actually, I discovered during those days that there is a point of wetness where we get so wet that it really doesn’t matter. You just give up and assume that this is how life is going to be. Wet. Well, the four of us lifted the transmitter, putting bricks underneath as we lifted it up inch by inch.

This was one of the most wonderful periods of my life. 2MG stayed on air, although we’d lost 40 percent of our signal strength and I stayed in the studio forever. I loved the drama. We were relaying urgent police messages, telling people that there loved ones were okay, sending messages from mothers to daughters. This was real radio. This is what it’s for.

I remember one day I spent 18 hours straight on air because the surrounds were still flooded and it was so difficult to get relief into the studio. When I emerged, that is when Bill and Ron rowed over to the studio to physically force me to go back to the hotel for a sleep, the storm had broken. The sun was out, shining on the real Mudgee the beautiful sunny, summery Mudgee I knew from the past 4 months.

I got in the boat and looked up and there on the dry land where dozens of people just standing there. Some had brought in refreshments and they were sharing tea and scones/cakes with the others. It was like an early Woody Allen movie.

As we rowed closer they started to applaud. The locals had gathered outside the station to pay tribute to the staff of 2MG who had refused to retreat. I don’t know how the others responded to this but I’ve got to be honest... I felt like a God.

I got back to my bed and I went into a 12 hour sleep feeling like I could conquer the world. It wasn’t long after that that Bill Marsden took me into his office and said that my period at 2MG would have to end because I had apparently only replaced someone who’d been away for a year. Then he told me he’d also be moving on, replacing Mr Marchant as Manager of 2LF Young. "Would I like to transfer with him?" Well, I mean I’d followed this bloke into a raging river. Would I follow him to 2LF? Of course I would.

And so on to 2LF, Lambing Flats, and an incident in my life in the country which remains the most mysterious and inexplicable thing that has ever happened to me. You probably won’t believe this story either when I recount this strange tale in the next episode of my radio career.

On Air in Mudgee

2007-08-25T12:00:00+10:00

This is sadly going to develop into a series of digressions (I think I warned you about this possibility earlier on). I think I should tell you a little about the NSW Railways back in the 50’s.

When I left school I went to work for General Electric for 2 Pounds a week (try to live on that Tom Cruise) but I only stayed there for a few months because my Uncle had pulled a few strings to get me a job in the Railways. "You can stay there for life," he told me, "Once you’re in you can never be sacked."

You have no idea how right he was.

I went to work at the HQ of the Railway Refreshment Rooms at Central Station. They ran all of the railway cafes around the state. I was a message boy and filing clerk and lasted about 9 months.

I arrived in the office which was run by Mr Turner and had desks for four people. The first day I arrived the guy on the next desk shuffled a few papers around and then put his head down and went to sleep. Mr Turner looked up and "huffed and puffed" but did nothing. I knew the man was asleep because he was snoring.

Anyway he woke up when the tea lady came in at 10:15, shuffled a few more papers and then put his head down and went back to sleep. He woke to go to lunch, went back to sleep, woke for afternoon tea, slept again and then went home at 5:00. I won’t say this happened every day but it certainly happened a lot.

In the meantime I was loving my job getting to know all of the underground stairs and tunnels at Central Station. I was given 90 minutes to complete my morning and afternoon mail runs and by the time I left had got it down to 13 minutes flat. I don’t know whether anyone ever broke the Central Station record.

But there was one route I took which nearly got me arrested, possibly even hanged. It was during the 1954 royal visit.

I had this little operation where I raced up a flight of steps, normally used by the boiler room engineers, ran out on to the main country platform and ran down another set of steps, saving up to 15 minutes. I was very proud of this tactic.

I hadn’t realized that the main country platform was out of bounds this morning because the Royals were taking a special train into the country. I came up the steps, running the 100 at about 11.5, careered out the door and ran straight into all of the dignitaries saying farewell to the Royals. Dead in front of me, just two metres away, were the Queen and the Duke. They looked at me in amazement. Official's jaws dropped.

I was beyond embarrassment. I’m not sure what lies beyond, but I was there. I looked at the Queen, then at the Duke and thought, "I’ve got to get out of here." I did a big leap to the left, hit the other doorway (thank God they hadn’t locked it) and disappeared.

I never heard what happened. But there’s a bit of railway folklore from the 50’s which tells of a strange apparition... A young man, carrying a suitcase... Who suddenly appeared and then disappeared in the blinking of an eye in front of the Queen and Prince Phillip. Some say it was the Ghost of Central Station--like a Railways version of the Flying Dutchman--and that he continues to haunt the bowels of Central Station to this very day.

Back at the office we had this senior clerk who would have to be described as one step left of a buffoon. Why they employed him I will never know, but one day I happened to be adding a leave application to his personal file and noticed that he’d been investigated for stealing 37,000 Pounds from the Department some years earlier.

The Railways had done a deal with this bloke for him to continue working and pay off his debt, or as much as he could, before he retired. It took a while for that to sink in, but I thought, "Hang on, here’s the Railways using its own money to recover its losses." I’ve never been strong in maths but I knew that wasn’t going to work.

But my uncle was right. In those days the unions were the Gods and nobody ever got sacked. But I knew immediately I had to get out of there and managed to do so going into radio.

So I went from one place where nobody got sacked to another industry where a lot of people got sacked... Often. Tell me about it.

2MG, the station and the transmitter, were on the edge of town, on the river flats.

There was a hotel, I think the Woolpack(?), just across the road. I got to know the ropes doing a few day shifts here and there. The funny thing is I never worried about the job. I did it as if I’d been in radio forever.

I remember listening to 2MG on my first Saturday night there and a presenter, I think it was Brian someone, did a ballroom programme using well known orchestral records and fake applause. He mixed them together so well I thought it was the real thing. I loved the way he did that show.

You can imagine how excited I was when Mr Marsden gave me my first night shift.

It was such a big moment that he even came in himself to make sure I was okay. And it went well. Really well until it came to sign-off time. I’d done the last show and put away the advertising log when I put the mic' on to start signing off. For no reason I decided to give the sponsor of the last half-hour an extra plug saying something like, "And our thanks to...". Then I suddenly realised I had no idea who had sponsored the last programme. The manager’s face appeared in a small window, in the studio door his eyes showing concern as I paused.

"Our thanks to..." I repeated, "To, er..." and I blurted out the name of a well known local business.

The manager’s eyes suddenly appeared to be haunted. He shook his head from side to side. So I just kept going and mentioned another well known local business. Again, horror. Anguish. So I gave it another shot with my third well known business. And this time I got it. The manager looked faintly relieved as I finally said goodnight. He drove me home that night, but the journey was deafeningly silent.

After a while I mumbled, "That wasn’t good was it?" After long consideration he responded, "No."

We never spoke of this again.

Now when you did nights at 2MG you were ALONE… All alone.

Once the hotel closed down over on the corner it was as if you’d been stranded on the far side of the moon. The presenter sat in a chair in the studio and behind him was this large, wall size window. Beyond the window were the river flats and beyond that--only the local surveyor knows.

But I’d be sitting in the chair at 10:30 at night and I’d get this awful feeling that there was something at the window, looking at me. Something unspeakably horrible. Slowly I’d turn around, sweating in terror, but there was nothing there. Just the imagination of a very young 17 year old.

17 year olds in 1954 were roughly akin to 12 year olds in 2007. We were all unbelievably naive.

What was particularly difficult for me was leaving the premises late at night. You closed the station down and your last act was to turn off the front light and make the long walk down the gravel driveway on to the main road and then back into town. It was pitch black and you knew... You just knew... There were terrible things walking behind you all the way... Just waiting to pounce.

One night I was walking down the driveway and I heard footsteps. I froze, "Don’t be stupid, you’re listening to your own footsteps, you idiot."

So I set off again down the path, and the other footsteps set off again. So I stopped. And the other footsteps stopped. I had to face it. There was something out there, somewhere to my left, getting closer with each step. I was about to face the monster of the Mudgee River flats, the monster who’d been lurking behind the window, waiting patiently for me to come outside.

The hairs on the back of my head were standing on end. I didn’t have time to check but I think my eyebrows were at right angles. I emerged from the 2MG gate and the steps were almost upon me. Suddenly on my left a man emerged from the darkness. It was dark but I could see his face was white, sweat staining his forehead. We had both been walking down separate roads at the same time and for about ten minutes that night we’d scared the living daylights out of each other. I’ll never forget that evening.

Just as I’ll never forget the great Mudgee flood.

But I think it’s best I pause for a while, allowing you to recover from the preceding drama. We’ll pick up the flood story and a tale which you won’t believe when we next meet.

First Days in Mudgee

2007-08-22T12:00:00+10:00

When we last met I was about to get on the train, at the age of 17, to start my career at 2MG, Mudgee.
But this is all happening live folks courtesy of my aging memory. As I write one thing, I suddenly remember something I should have told you about earlier on.

So, forgive me if I take you back to the Savoy Players in Sydney with Allan Kitson starring in a particularly gruesome Grand Guinol effort where he was supposed to die, bitten by a spider which was lowered from above down on to his head.

Unfortunately as this final act reached its climax it became obvious that Allan and the descending spider simply weren’t going to meet in the same place on stage. The audience sat there not wondering about whether Allan would die in the end, but wondering whether the spider was going to hit its target.

Allan, preparing for the big finale, was also getting worried as he’d said his final line and the spider wasn’t in sight. He started to take a few upward glances to see if he could track down this elusive spider.

He moved left but the spider seemed to move right. Then he moved right but the spider had already over-corrected and was going in the other direction. Suddenly, sick of all of this indecision, Allan grabbed the spider, stuck it on top of his head, and died magnificently on centre stage.

The audience applauded to a man, not so much for the play. But they loved how Allan triumphed over that bloody spider.

So, with all these memories I went to Central Station and caught the train to Mudgee.

I absolutely loved the town. The manager Bill Marsden met me at the station and installed me in a local hotel which was to be my base. The weather was absolutely glorious. Ok, it was hot in summer but it wasn’t an oppressive heat and at 17, when you’re learning to be an announcer, who cares about the heat.

I remember several names from those days... Assistant Manager Ron Camplin and two announcers Peter Pauling and I think it was Bob Wallbrink(?). When we needed a technician I think I remember Bill Dennis(?) had to ride his motorbike over from another Macquarie station. And boy did we need a technician!

The transmitter was in the room adjoining the studio and anything out of the ordinary would cause it to blow a fuse. One of the first things I had to learn was how to change a fuse in the TX without electrocuting myself or--more importantly--without damaging the transmitter.

It took only some sudden laughter in Jack Davey’s Ask Me Another or Bob Dyer’s Pick a Box for the TX to blow a fuse. Ah, they were the days.

Anyway, in my early days there I assisted in starting a system of index cards for the music library.

The manager found me typing away in the library one afternoon and remarked that I could type really fast. And I responded by telling him that I’d worked 9 months in the State Railways where I learned to touch type and do Pittman’s shorthand. This was a very serious error of judgement and Mr Marsden promptly promoted me to become 2MG’s resident journalist who, by a remarkable fluke, would be covering one of the biggest court stories ever to hit Mudgee starting tomorrow. I’d never been to court, didn’t want to go to court, but I was the only person on staff who did shorthand and typing.

I turned up the next day to find out that I was supposed to be covering a complex defamation case against the local newspaper. For a day and a half I took copious notes mostly in shorthand that even I couldn’t read. And I wrote it.

Then suddenly early the next afternoon the judge called the prosecution and defence over to the bench, announced that the parties had agreed to a settlement and gave a brief outline of what that settlement was. I’ve got to be honest--I didn’t have a clue about the statement. The judge left as did the public until all that was left was the lonely 17 year old figure in the press gallery (I was the only person in the press gallery because the local paper was represented by the defendant, the Editor).

So there we were the last two people left in the court. The Editor writing his copy for the following day and me trying to make sense of 48 feet of copy, written in Pittman’s shorthand.

After a while he looked across to me, asking what I thought of the decision.

I made several grunting noises, busily shuffling paper and he finally looked across and said "You don’t have a clue what happened here today do you?". I think I had the look of a drowning man.

He smiled and said "I’ll write your story for you" and that’s how my first big story made it on to radio, written by the defendant in the case I was supposed to be covering.

To this day I still have no idea what the verdict was. But I made sure I didn’t cover any court cases for a long time afterwards.

When we next catch up--I’ll tell what it was like to work for the Railways in the 50’s and about the great Mudgee floods of the mid-50’s.

The Beginning

2007-08-19T12:00:00+10:00

I wasn't originally trained for radio. I actually trained as an actor in Sydney, attending the Doris Fitton Independent Theatre on Sydney's northside. If I remember correctly our group was trained by visiting British actor John Alden. It's a long time ago but I'm pretty sure one of my fellow classmates was actress Elizabeth Waterhouse. I think she went on to star in the Sydney season of "The Diary of Anne Frank".

I had earlier done some work in the chorus of the Campsie Operatic Society (I remember we had a reasonably professional staging of "No No Nanette" at the Ashfield Town Hall to packed houses). They were the days when people went out to a lot of live shows, both professional and amateur. Sydney's "Little Theatre" was particularly exciting with thousands seeing productions like the Phillip Street Theatre's "Around the Loop". I still remember Gordon Chater delivering lines like "alacka and alassa... my canal's been pinched by Nasser" etc etc.

Anyway, I was always attracted to this area and desperately wanted to be an actor, particularly after seeing the Stratford season of Anthony Quayle, Barbara Jefford, Keith Michell and Leo McKern doing Shakespeare classics like "Othello".

So, after the Independent training I signed up with William Lynch and his Savoy Players who performed at, was it the old 2UW Radiotorium in Sydney? I had a part in one of the plays in a Grand Guinol series during which I was forced to make a career change. Let me explain while apologising for inflicting some medical history on you. For some years I had been suffering a strange malaise where my eyesight would suddenly fragment, I'd suffer memory loss and an inability for my voice to say what my brain was telling it to. For a teenager it was overwhelming. I thought I was going to die. This condition persisted until I was in my 30's when it slowly disappeared. I spent years terrified until I saw a doctor in Hobart in the 60's and he listened to the symptoms and pronounced "Oh, you've just got a severe form of migraine... Lots of people have it... It might go away, if not you'll just have to put up with the attacks". I wish I'd known it was ordinary old migraine back in the mid-50's.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, we were in the middle of a performance one Wednesday night when it struck. I somehow bluffed my way through but it was clear to me that night that it was the end of any acting plans. You can't suffer one of those attacks in the middle of King Lear. Now the Savoy Players also featured a couple of up and coming members called Allan Kitson and Chris Beard.

I am in the striped shirt and Chris Beard is on the far left of the picture
Just as I was revising my career plans, Mr Lynch announced that Chris Beard had just passed the audition at Macquarie Broadcasting to head off to 2MG, Mudgee, as a trainee announcer. This was quite a coup for the group and there was much celebrating. Anyway, I happened to be in the office one lunchtime a few days later and a very forlorn Chris went in to see Mr Lynch to tell him that his family refused to allow him to leave Sydney and that he had to tell Macquarie he couldn't take the job afterall. I saw this as an amazing act of fate and sneakily immediately rang 2GB to ask about the possibility of any trainee work in radio which might be on offer. The network head responded that there was an opening which amazingly had just happened with a promising young man unable to take up an offer in the country. "Could I come down and do an audition?" I was there within the hour and had the job an hour later, right on my 17th birthday in 1954. The career change I had been forced to consider materialised thanks to the "fickle finger of fate".

Chris Beard went on to write the Channel 7 Revue Series in the early 60's (with Allan) and eventually on to Canada and "Laugh In" fame while I caught the train to Mudgee. What would have happened, I wonder, had Chris taken the job in radio?

Let me just observe in passing that my early years in the trade were probably "the golden age of radio". Jack Davey was the King and you'd have to wait 9 months to get a ticket to see him record one of his shows at the 2GB centre in Phillip Street. People also queued up to get a ticket to see the actors do the Sunday night Caltex radio theatre live in the famous auditorium. This was the era of Davey, Mrs 'Obbs, Yes What, The Search for the Golden Boomerang, Tony Withers, Bob Dyer and John Harper ('arper 'ere). When I think about it, I straddled the two eras--the golden age which preceded the arrival of TV and then the next 40 years which saw radio change and I fear degenerate dramatically.

So there I was, an incredibly innocent 17 year old trying to convince my Aunty to let me enter radio. She didn't like it, but something swayed her--it might have been my birthday--and she said "You'll never be happy until you try this... So you may as well do it.".

In the next episode I board the train to Mudgee and 2MG. Welcome to radio in the 50's.