“FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE”
Autobiography by John Pearce – OBE
Edited by Bruce Carty – Ph.D.

CHAPTER 1.   There is a temptation to start with the line "I was born at an early age." But, I can top that. I wasn't supposed to be born at all! Oh, nothing to do with lack of contraceptive knowledge back in those pre-pill days, days when men walked into pharmacies, asking to speak to "the male chemist". I was born because my brother had died.
 My dear old Pommy dad was the last of the line. It was a pretty long line, dating back several centuries, and having a title somewhere - probably lost due to non-payment of rates, or other handouts demanded of the King of the day. That the line should be preserved meant a lot in those days. My dad had a couple of sisters who had also come to live in Australia. They both married, but none of them to anyone called Pearce. My dad's firstborn was Edward; but, at the age of about eleven, he died of something people don't much die of these days {well, not as much as they did} - rheumatic fever. By this time my sister was very much alive, a couple of years younger than the lamented late Ted. But she would never be a male Pearce, able to carry on the name. And that's where I came into being. I've never believed I have lived on borrowed time, but, if Edward has been sitting on a cloud "up there" watching all these years, thank you, older brother, for letting me have a great life.
 Amazing the progress in relatively few years. My mother and father were born in the same year that Daimler Benz took out the patent on the motor car. They lived to see a man on the moon. I was born at about the time when the first commercial radio station came into being in Australia.
 First memories? I don't think I ever liked my mother. {And there's one for the psychologists!}. Loved her I may have. But I certainly have no memories of "like". And I do have memories of dislike. Not that she was not a remarkable woman. A several generation Australian, her family came from the manufacturing side of the tracks.
 My sister, one with a far better penchant for detail than I, has the family tree on the Pearce side, accurately detailed back to the titled gent in England centuries ago. On our mum's side things were somewhat more vague. They say that, if you scratch any Australian deep enough, you'll find Irish. There was certainly some O'Meras down there somewhere. However, one of her forbears went into manufacturing, and cornered a market in a product. Years later, some cousins and I sold our share in what had then become a fairly important conglomerate to an Australian multi-national. Along the lines, my mum had acquired the ability to handle money. She worked to a simple principle: if you don't spend it, you have a lot of it left.
 Was she mean? Damn right she was! As a kid, I was sent to do the family shopping on Saturday mornings, equipped with a list of where to shop, what to buy, and how much not to spend. I had to keep a list of what I spent, and answer an inquisition upon return. I hated that bit. Mind you, all this was very handy when my dear old Pommy dad made a business miscalculation and was bankrupted. Mother's ability to stretch the pennies kept us going.
 Maybe it was a sign on the times, but I remember her as a terrible snob. A neighbour, a little looked down upon because he was a wholesale fruit and veg dealer and a very rich one, whereas my dad, an accountant in his own business, and "professional", remarried. But his second wife {they said in whispered tones} had been a barmaid at the pub near the fruit markets. I was almost banned from playing with the son of the family. This would have been a pity, as they lived on a double block in suburban Hurstville, and had rolled out a cricket wicket, which was where I practised my left arm spinners.
 I shall always remember the time these neighbours moved. We lived in a two-storey house. It had not been two-storeyed to start with, but we had built upon a quite humble weatherboard house, quadrupling it in size, and boasting such things as a billiard room. Into this room - upstairs front - on the day of the move . . . my mother. She had made herself a Thermos of coffee {she didn't drink tea}, and had cut some sandwiches. Never having been invited into the house opposite - probably because she had never invited them to our place – mother watched each article of furniture taken out into the vans of Grace Bros Removals. It was her day.
 Snobbery went a little further. Our local doctor, a general practitioner, specialising in surgery, had been long cultivated socially. Indeed, my mum spoke of his wife as "Mrs Doctor Smith". In one way I was glad, as the medico's two sons went into their dad's calling, one of them becoming my best man when my bride and I flew up from Hobart to marry in the old School Chapel at Shore, and didn't have any male friends to stand at my elbow.
 Mother was a wonderful shopper. She understood she had the one thing going for her that assured a win - time. If she wanted something, she rang David Jones, and demanded to speak to the buyer of the relevant department. No-one else would do. If the buyer wasn't available, she would wait, right there on the telephone. When the hapless buyer came along, mother would use the same opening line, "I am an account customer". This was before the days when department stores handed out accounts to anyone who could write their name in running writing. And Bankcard hadn't been invented. She would then berate the official until she got what she wanted. At his end, he saw the clock upon his office wall ticking along, and, realising the inevitable, gave in. She would then tell us, with great pride, of her success.
 Mother never joined anything unless she could run it. She was certainly the boss of the women’s' committee of the U.A.P., the right wing political party that fell to bits, to be resurrected by Bob Menzies when he formed the Liberals. I have memories of the large political meetings taking place at home. I don't know if much political discussion took place, but the meetings, held in our billiard room, were very social. Or as social as Hurstville could expect to be. Brought up when she was, mother had some wonderful manual homemaking skills. She knitted. Never stopped. With three chromed needles, she knitted my father's socks. They were of the finest quality wool, but I suspect were less than fashionable. And, when they wore out, they were darned. Everything was darned! We only threw out things when the amount of darning exceeded the amount of the original garment.
 Dad had enough money for three assistances in the home. One day each week, a lady came to do the washing. This started with the cutting of wood to boil the copper. Took one whole day. Dad had no interest in gardening - and I have inherited that. So we had a garden requiring minimum maintenance, and a chap came in to do it. Never knew my old man behind a lawn mower. It would have been out of character. And we had a live-in maid. For the princely sum of one pound {two dollars, though worth a lot more in today's living standards} per week plus keep, she worked six days and nights. She was permitted a day off, and, in addition, only one other night out. But she had to be back by nine-thirty. Sounds like slave labour? We were in Depression times, and people were queued up to work for that, and even less.
 In contrast with her many other talents, mum was a lousy cook. She had no interest in the culinary arts. On the maid's day off, we seemed to eat those dishes that had been prepared for us. Overall, there was no food problem that couldn't be overcome by putting another couple of cups of water into yesterday's stew. Dad was allowed to cook  Sunday tea. He screwed a mincing machine to the kitchen table, took all the leftovers from the fridge {we had one of the first ones, better than others' ice chests}, and chucked them, with spices, into a hot pan. I seem to recall it was the meal I most looked forward to all week! That same kitchen and table was once recreated into an operating theatre, to remove my tonsils. There was quite a little bit of home surgery in those days.
 I knew the facts, but never understood, of how my early education got completely mucked up. I was just two years of age, and the family, parents, sister and I, were on holiday. We boarded a ship in Melbourne for Launceston, Tasmania. Somewhere mid Bass Strait, the folks ran afoul of either a head shrinker, psychiatrist or phrenologist. He examined little two year old me and pronounced, "This boy will become a genius. Don't send him to school until he's eight." For far too long they believed him. Thus it wasn't until I was almost seven, and the realisation must have come that every other kid of similar age was leaping ahead, education driven, that I was hurried along to school. But it was not to be the local Hurstville School, where my playmates went, but the Prep School at St John's in Darlinghurst; a long way from Hurstville. My sister was then attending S.C.E.G.G.S. at Darlinghurst, and had the job of delivering me in the mornings. However, after school ended, I had to find my way back home. It was a bus or tram to Central Station, and then a train home. And I was only seven.
 Two things I remember. I had one shilling [10 cents] "emergency money", if ever I got into strife or lost. I also won a prize at the end of the year. The book is still here, right beside me {somewhat stuck together with cellulose tape these days}. It is "The Rival Captains", a book about English school days, by Richard Bird. The face plate says that I won the prize in Form One for "Conduct"; and it was signed by the Headmaster, a Mr Marsh. I treasure it, because so few prizes were ever to follow it. I never knew if it was snobbery, or, being charitable, wanting the best for their son, that got me sent to Sydney's top school, the Sydney Church of England Grammar School at North Sydney, known as Shore. I started about the time the Harbour Bridge was opened. This was a good thing as, as one of the few students living south of "the ditch", getting to school would have been impossible without it. As it was, it was just difficult, and time consuming. The other kids walked down the hill to North Sydney station, and took the train half a dozen stops up the North Shore. I got one in the opposite direction, changing at Central for another half hour of travel to Hurstville. The only other student I remember going my way was much older, the son of a judge, who, because of the age difference, had no desire to chaperone an eight year old. But travel was safer in those days.
 When my dad had his business reversal, the family did everything to keep me at this top school. And, for that I have had cause to thank them. So enamoured was I of the school, that we sent our own four sons there. So I was, for the last few years, the poorest kid at the richest school in Sydney. I was the kid with the darned pants. I don't remember anyone ever commenting upon it - but I knew! The end of my education and the beginning of World War Two were coinciding. I cared little for education. My mum had told me from first memories, that {if I was a good boy} I would inherit my father's accountancy practice. The very last thing I ever aspired to was become a chartered accountant.
 I couldn't wait to be out of school and into broadcasting. I did a little before turning eighteen and getting to the Air Force. During that time, my mother told her friends that I was only "filling in" until the war was over, when I would return to become an accountant. How she was able to justify this, following my terrible results in maths I will never be able to resolve. Indeed, I had so turned off anything to do with figures that, when I realised I had to master trigonometry to become a pilot or navigator, I self-taught in three months!
 In the Air Force I must have done a few things right, as I qualified as a pilot, and was commissioned with the rank of Pilot Officer when the course ended, and the wings were pinned on. My mother's reaction was to ask me how much more money an officer got than a sergeant, the rank all the other graduate pilots were awarded. If the message that, as an officer, I became a "gentleman by act of parliament" got to my mother, she never commented upon it.
 The big post-war decision: back to broadcasting, or get a job in flying? I had actually done more aviation than radio, but decided on my first love, grabbing a job in country radio. My mother then told her friends, the job was "temporary until he gets a job with the ABC!" I think she had an idea that, being non-commercial, ABC radio, though appealing to a far smaller audience, carried more prestige.
 When my parents’ marriage was approaching sixty years of togetherness, mother's organising ability reached fever point. Almost daily I was reminded that it was my duty to get the wheels rolling so they would get the traditional telegrams from the Queen, the Governor General, the Premier, State Governor and political dignitaries. All I did was ring up a mate of mine, a minister in the State Government, and he hit the relevant button. When people were summoned to the sixtieth anniversary afternoon tea at their home unit at Kirribilli, I was cued to read the telegrams. At this time, mother feigned absolute surprise that the telegrams had been forthcoming.
 There was a sadness underlying all of this family life. Pre-war, my sister had gone to America to further her university studies. On the way back by ship, she met an Australian of the same age who had been in the US. Their love blossomed, and they announced their intention to marry. But this didn't suit mother at all! As the very much younger brother I was kept away from the details, except those that mother told me. I never made up my mind if she disapproved of my sister's intended, or maybe she had picked out another husband for her.
 Unhappily, my sister left home, married this man, and lived an idyllic life, except she never spoke to her mother again! My dear old Pommy dad had been instructed that he was not to speak to my sister either - ever again. I know they corresponded, and probably had the occasional clandestine meeting, but that was that!
 My father had been born in Birmingham, England, and brought up in London. Like so many Brits, he was steeped in tradition, and, when there wasn't any, they made it up. They had lived in Kingston-upon-Thames, a London suburb. When he came to Australia, he named his first home Kingston. He gave it to me as my middle name. And, I'm sure to make him happy, I handed it to my firstborn {although I gave him a couple more names to play with as well}. As a child, a wild storm had caught dad outdoors. A chimney pot fell, grazing his elbow, which never set completely straight. Thus, he was ineligible for military service in World War One. {It may also have had something to do with the rotten golf he played!}.
 Like many wonderful Poms of his era, he came to Australia to "find his fortune". Maybe it was his home discipline, but, at the age of nineteen, he organised a trip from London down to Cape Town in South Africa for a holiday with an aunt. He had no intention of staying there, remained on the ship and came to Australia. The day he arrived {or so went the story he told so proudly}, he was on deck when the Pilot came about off Sydney Heads. My dad borrowed his copy of the "Sydney Morning Herald" and, by the time the ship docked, he had written applications for three jobs as accountants' clerks. He got one with the famous firm of Yarwoods.
 My association with him, apart from being the carrier of the family name, father to son, was his intent to have me brought up as a proper English schoolboy. Maybe Shore, then the closest thing to an English private school, was a part of this. But he also directed my reading. He bought the full library of Richmal Crompton books - Tom Merry, Billy Bunter and all that stuff. My comic reading was "Gem" and Magnet". Again English. Mind you, there probably wasn't much other stuff available then anyway. He spoke of Britain as the "Old Country', as did so many. We were then Colonials, still learning from The Mother Country. However, when Australia played the Brits at cricket, my old man was very pro-Australian, possibly because of Bradman, and the thrashing he was handing out to the English.
 Yes, cricket was all that could be good in life. Because of the elbow, he had never played it; but this did not prevent his obsession with the game. Living in Hurstville, he became a member of the St George Cricket Club, rising to the position of Vice President when, under Frank Cush, the same Donald George Bradman was lured down from Bowral to play with St George. I was allowed to stay up late one night, as some of the wives of the touring Australian cricket team assembled at our Hurstville home. At great expense, as it was in those days, my dad had arranged a phone call from our place to the hotel where the Australian cricketers were staying in England. One by one the wives spoke. It was such a big deal in those days; the press reported it the next morning!
 In winter it was, of course, soccer. Pre World War Two, soccer was a game played on back paddocks by ex-patriot Brits. There were several teams in Sydney. But the real strength of the code came from the Wollongong and Newcastle regions. British coal miners had settled there, bringing their brand of football with them. I was taken to watch, against St George, who played on a small ground where the present Taj Mahal Leagues Club is situated.
 At school the only winter sport was Rugby Union, and so, come my introduction to Shore, I didn't even know the rules. I was never too good at the sport anyway, not being much fond of body contact. However, I had a real love for cricket. Back in those days, offices worked a five and a half day week, and my dad, being the boss, was able to take off Saturday mornings to watch me play cricket. Had it not been for the war's intervention, I might have been proficient at the sport. As a spectator, I certainly have ever followed it, presently being a member of the Primary Club, a benevolent organisation, raising money through cricket for the physically handicapped. I've been a member of the Sydney Cricket Ground since the minimum age, my eleventh birthday.
 I was also taken, some Saturdays, to watch my dad play his rotten golf. He played on a course at North Brighton, near Botany Bay. It's not there any more, having been acquired for extensions to Sydney Airport. But, its location reshaped my life. As a dutiful son and caddie, I was supposed to watch where my dad's shots went, for they rarely finished on the fairway. Instead, I fear my eyes were directed skywards, watching aircraft like Gipsy Moths, Puss Moths, Klemm Swallows and the like, landing at Mascot Airport. It was then that I made a decision: "One day I will fly one of those." By the age of nineteen I had. Just as, years before, I had come home from the long train ride from school, thrown my bag in the corner, turned on the radio and decreed: "One day I will speak on that." Again, by the age of nineteen, I had done that also.
 Somehow I feel I have been going backwards, ever so slowly, ever since.
 After school, I did a stint in an advertising agency as office boy, and then selling records in a music store, all the time readying myself for a radio career. I cracked my first radio job in the country - and more of that later - then the Air Force career, and back into radio; both country and Hobart. By the time I was ready to return to Sydney to live, I was married with two sons. Thus, I was never to live with my parents again. Living in Sydney, we saw them, as dutiful sons and daughters-in-law do, but were never overly close. They loved their grandchildren. I was just so sorry that they never saw my sister's children, their first grandkids.
 Their eyesight was failing. Following his retirement, my dad did some work with the Masonic Lodge, of which he had had associations way back in the Hurstville days. Living at Kirribilli, he was able to catch a ferry to the city, and spend a hour or so browsing at one of his clubs. Years later, one of my sons said of my father something I'd love to hear said of me one day, "He was a lovely old bloke!"
 However, with their failing health, they moved into a geriatric hospital only a couple of hundred metres from our home. They died within the same year, well into the second half of their eighties. At their request, they were each cremated privately and frugally, their ashes scattered. There is no headstone, or plaque commemorating their premises. It was their wish. Anyhow, mother would have thought it a terrible waste of money!
 That part of the story having been etched, let's get to talking about the Wonderful, Wonderful Wireless.
CHAPTER 2:  Wireless - okay, radio if you like - still mystifies me. How I can sit in a radio studio and be heard, completely unassisted by cabling, in another part of the nation {or the world}, is one of the mysteries rivalling the Big Bang Theory, or why men and women are different. At this very moment, as I sit at my computer writing these words, my room is literally bursting at the seams with radio signals. I can't hear any of them, because nothing is switched on at this end. But, if we analysed it, the room is full of the radiations from radio stations, car and mobile telephones, aircraft communications. It is a enigma, indeed.
 Picture then a young boy being allowed to wind up the gramophone and play records spinning at 78 revolutions per minute. At the end of each playing, the spring-driven motor had to be rewound, and the steel stylus changed. When one tired of this - for I knew every note of every record, many of them opera, in my father's collection - there was the pianola. I sat at the keyboard and pedalled as the paper roll played the pre-recorded music. Down the right hand side of the paper was printed the words of the song; and I used to sing along with the music.
 But the greatest of all was the radio - wireless then. Earliest memories were of receivers with the valves on the front. Your prestige was in telling that you had a 6-valve radio set, while most of your neighbours had only a four or five. There were far less stations on the air in those days, and far less radio interference from motors or electrical welders. Thus it was possible to hear stations far away on the ordinary broadcast (AM) band. I have some programs of the day, where the newspapers published what Melbourne, Brisbane and even Adelaide stations were to broadcast. And the transmitters were far less powerful than today's.
 Right from the start, radio had difficulty in understanding its medium. Whereas, when television came to Australia in the latter half of the 1950s, it thought it was a radio show in front of three cameras, radio initially thought of itself as a concert hall in front of a microphone instead of an audience. Much of the music broadcast was live, and early photographs show the performers in dinner suits. Yet this was what people wanted. Or did they just want to while away time, playing with this new riddle, electronic puzzle? But then radio realised that there was not one audience "put there" but a number of them. Today we call it demographics. All right it might have been to have the whole family together after dinner, to listen to a musical concert, the news, or a comment upon that news. But, at other times of the day, more selective audiences were in need of more selective programming.
 By the time the lady of the house had rid herself of the family for the day - dad to work, kids to school - she was ready for a piece of radio selected for her taste. Initially this took the form of assistance with the management of the home. Kindly-sounding lady announcers broadcast recipes. Listeners wrote in with happy, handy hints, and the lady announcers read them out on the air. There were no hard news comments, as ladies of those days were rarely educated much beyond primary levels, except in the areas of domestic science.
 As well as these educational programs, radio started having people read stories. Initially they were read by elocutionists with plummy voices. Later the readers started introducing a little "character" into the readings. And that was the nucleus of the radio play or serial. Unlike what television has done, intermingling sub-plots of terrible things happening to the cast, radio serials scheduled for daytime had lots of "nice" things happening to the cast. And most of the "nice" was either love or charity. Housewives did not find it difficult to relate. As today, when women forgathered, some of the conversation revolved around the characters in the radio serials.
 The full length radio plays were theatre, complete in one episode.
 News commentators appeared, following main evening news bulletins. These editorials were not the pithy ninety second versions of today, but took as long as ten minutes! Eric Baume, the greatest of them all, and whose program segments I had the honour of producing towards the end of his life, took ten minutes following the ten o'clock news each Monday to Friday, ending with his catchcry, "This I Believe!"  {In the industry it was known as "Don't you believe it"; while his morning comment, "I'm On Your Side" became amended to "I'm Up Your Backside!"}
 In the afternoons, from about four o'clock onwards, we came to the children's programs. And they were real children's programs. There were no government regulatory bodies, driven by amateur psychologists, telling the Government to tell radio stations what they should, or should not broadcast. Indeed, until after World War Two, the Government, through the Postmaster General's Department {the licensing authority} imposed restrictions only on the technical quality of transmissions, and the Department of Health vetted advertising for medicines, so no charlatan could advertise a cure for cancer or the common cold. Parents checked what their after-school children were listening to. The children themselves, the best critics at any time, turned off the stuff today's psychologists probably say they should listen to, but they hated!
 Into this world came I. Nothing they could ever teach me at that school half a city away, could be as engrossing as radio and children's sessions. What point in learning by rote the Kings of England, if one could tune radio and hear serials or juvenile performers? The Sydney scene was monopolised by a man called George Saunders who did the kids show on 2GB. With him, a man broadcasting under the name of Bimbo, and pianist Jack Lumsdaine. Each day they would have a whole new show, pitched at the juvenile audience and winning with it. They didn't have the benefit of today's audience surveys in those days, yet good radio programmers knew when a show was "working".
 Over at 2SM, a station owned until recently by the Roman Catholic Church, Uncle Tom ran his Gang show. It was all live. Kids came into the studios and sang, or recited, or answered the odd quiz question for a small prize. One became a member of Uncle Tom's Gang by sending in {or bringing in} three Steam Roller wrappers and sixpence for postage. My parents, quite bigoted when it came to the Catholic faith, were less than happy when they discovered that I had popped in to 2SM and joined up one afternoon on the way home from school. Sort of felt it was letting down the Church of England!
 Uncle Tom was John Dunne, one of the first and greatest of all Sydney broadcasters. And again it was my pleasure to work with him when I finally joined 2GB a generation later.  Mix, then, the sheer magic of radio the illusion, with radio the performing, and it is little wonder that, above all else, I had said, "One day I'll talk on that."
 One little urban myth in passing. It was said of George Saunders, Uncle George of 2GB, that, at the end of one program, the panel operator forgot to turn off the microphone and George was clearly heard saying, "That will do the little bastards for tonight." I passed on the story in hushed tones, only to find someone claiming that the same was said of a children's compere in Melbourne. When I got to Canada in wartime and someone discovered I had had a little time in radio, I was told what had happened to a master of ceremonies at the end of the children's show in Ottawa. And then, when I finally arrived in London ........ Sorry, but I feel this is the urban myth of broadcasting. And I write it for those who swear that they actually heard it!
 As a schoolboy, I saved the little pocket money handed out and bought my own microphone. This could be plugged into the back of the wireless set {we were probably almost calling it radio by then}, and speaking through the loud speaker. Now, if I could only move the speaker to a different room from the radio, I had a closed circuit radio station of my very own. On this I could speak, and even sing to the backing of the player piano. My dear old Pommy dad brought home from his office a very old portable typewriter, no longer required or of value, and I became a writer of radio scripts. Thus, when school wanted neither me - nor me it - any longer, I was ready for radio.
 Scanning the "Herald" Saturdays, I came across an advertisement for an office boy {they didn't call them "junior executive in charge of mailing" in those days} with Lintas Advertising. Lintas was then owned by Lever Brothers - Levers International Advertising Service; and I've checked that staff records from those days no longer exist to embarrass them with my presence on the staff lists.
 I was "in the business", even if it didn't much seem like it. As third of three office boys, I needed to be at the GPO at eight each morning, plucking the mail from the post office box. Back to the office to sort and deliver it. Then to top up the executive water bottles . . . all very American. General office duties followed, culminating each late afternoon in putting the mail back into the GPO for dissemination to newspapers and radio stations. There was one incident at this time. The senior office boy, disgruntled for some reason, was given notice to end his employment at the end of the week. Instead of posting the mail at the post office on his last day, he posted it down the slit in the door of the goods lift. Thus all the schedules for placement of the Agency's commercials for the whole of Australia were lost. Soon after, it was revealed that the second office boy had been in collusion, and I was promoted to senior!
 In the same building was the office of Australia's Amateur Hour, the nation's leading radio talent show.. I decided to audition. A self-taught pianist, with an excellent ear for tone and pitch, but with no academic training except for a few lessons on the ukulele, and playing everything {for reasons not known} in the key of E-flat, I auditioned in my lunch hour. The result was a pretty immediate "don't call us, we'll call you" or "come back when you can play the piano." Radio is a business where one should be used to rebuffs - but rarely is. That was the first of many.
 But then came another advertisement in the Saturday "Herald". Wanted was a junior salesman for a city record store. The second opening in my career was dawning. I don't remember why I was chosen, but I was. Sure I was keeping abreast of the days' pop music scene. My very first paycheck at Lintas left me with enough for a pair of two-tone shoes - very advertising! The second sent me to buy a Benny Goodman record. Little did I know that, many a year later, I would have the privilege of meeting the King of Swing.
 Records were all seventy-eights in those days. Everything except classical was on a ten inch shellac disk which would smash if dropped. The top labels: HMV, Colombia, Decca sold for three shillings and sixpence [35 cents], and the Regal Zonophones at two shillings and nine pence [27 cents].
 But all the time I was looking for a job in radio. I knew the rules. Nobody gets a job unless they have done a stint, an apprenticeship, in the country. There were no schools teaching broadcasting anywhere in Australia. The people living in the bush didn't realise they were second class citizens; or, if they did, they never expressed it. They too, were mystified at the magic of the transmission making it all the way from the studio in town to the milking shed, or the lounge room on the farm. And then the enchanted day. The advertisement read, "Junior Announcer Wanted. No experience necessary. Apply xxxx".
 And it was here that my old Pommy dad showed more initiative than you could ever expect from a chartered accountant. Don't just write an application telling them that you went to the best school and studied English. Go and make a recording and submit it with your application. Together we shot into the city. My dad never learned to drive a car, so we went everywhere by train. Chas E. Blanks Studio made instant recordings on acetate over steel, therefore unbreakable. You would get about three minutes on a side for one pound [$2] - a lot of money in those days. What would I say on the audition, realising it was a finished recording and could not be edited? I clipped some news from the morning's paper, and also some advertisements written for newspapers. With these in hand, I nervously entered the studio, down near Circular Quay, and made the recording. We shot up town and popped the disk, along with the written application under a door in Pitt Street.
 They called me Monday, asking for me to come along for a further audition at the Sydney studios of 2GZ, Orange. There I met one of the announcers, Lloyd Berrell, who was to go on to greatness in several media fields. This being the first time I'd ever been in a radio studio, he sat me behind the console, explaining that all I had to do was, when cued through the glass, turn on the microphone and read from the audition script. It wasn't being recorded, but was being heard somewhere else in the building. {I didn't even know for which station I was auditioning!}. The only other warning Lloyd gave before disappearing was: "There's a trap. You'll be required to back announce something by the Halle Orchestra. Remember it's hallay, not hail." I never met him again to thank him.
 Moments after the audition was ended, and before the sweat had settled, I was asked downstairs, where I was offered a job as junior announcer at 2KM, Kempsey [since renamed 2MC], on the North Coast of New South Wales. Could I leave for Kempsey as soon as possible, as the person I was replacing had had a better offer and wanted out as soon as possible? The salary was mentioned - so small that ...... well, who cared, I would have done it for nothing!
 The announcer I replaced was Leon Becker, a friend to this day. We followed each other {usually me following him} in show business, in the Air Force, and presently in Rotary. I was not only to take his place at 2KM, but also his bed at Miss Weeks' Boarding House. He told me good things for remembering, including a little bit about the blonde girl two doors down the street!
 It was farewell to the record store in Sydney, and ready for the bush. My mother and father helped me pack my clothes into one suitcase, to which was attached a travelling rug. In the other hand, my ukulele in its case. I was trained to Central, where I insisted that, once I had been settled in my carriage, my parents should leave. In those days, it was a distinct loss of face for a grown man {as I almost was} to cry in public.
 The train was old, the carriages known as dog boxes, each compartment holding a dozen people, with a little door leading to a toilet. However the compartments were not inter-connected. Thus, once you were in your nook, there you stayed. My dad pressed into my hand a five pound note - a lot of money - without mother seeing it happen, and also six stamped envelopes, making sure I'd write home. It was farewell time, and they left. Now the train wasn't full by any means. Indeed, it was almost empty; and the compartment I'd selected made me the only occupant.
 Glancing at my watch every half minute, I noted the time approaching 8.10 pm, the scheduled departure. It would be a lonely night. Or so I thought. But there was a commotion on the platform, and a group arrived, looking for accommodation. Seeing my area all but unoccupied, they tore open the door, depositing a young couple. With cries of "Happy Honeymoon!' the door was closed, and the train moved out. The three occupants in my part of the world were a young radio-announcer-to-be and a honeymoon couple. Though I hid beneath my travelling rug in the name of propriety, I was never able to tell my mother and father what I witnessed during the 500 kilometre journey.
That night, I grew up - in more ways than one!
CHAPTER 3:  Don't you just hate those chapters that commence, "........the next morning"? However, there seems to be no other way. And so . . .
 The next morning, when it was barely light, the train pulled in to Kempsey Railway Station. There to meet me was my first ever - and just about the best - radio boss. He was - maybe still is - Max Baker. In the years since, I have often had cause to thank him for that initial discipline. In those formative months, he used to threaten me with the sack about three times a week. And I believed him at least one of those times.
 I guess he must have driven me to Miss Weeks' Boarding Establishment, where I was to be the only boarder. This delightful motherly soul was to be a de facto parent for the year, doing washing, providing food and showing disapproval when the bush telegraph told her I had been out the previous evening with a young lady of whom she did not approve.
 But then it was down to the radio station. First, however, the one thing more important than the station - it's audience. Kempsey was, and maybe still is, a dairying town on the Macleay River. In those days it didn't get any income from tourism. There was no need for motels, as the only people staying overnight were company representatives, then called Commercial Travellers. So the economy revolved around the cow.
I remember in later years flying down to a dairying district on the south coast of New South Wales. Sitting next to me in the old DC-3 was a Catholic priest. I asked him what sort of folk were his parishioners. He looked at me somewhat sadly and, in a gentle Irish brogue, replied, "Fine people, Mr Pearce. Fine people. Unhappily, however, not possessing the native intelligence of the animals they husband."  I never met the dairy people, and so cannot comment if the Macleay farmers had the intelligence of their bovine incomes.
The town was built in the wrong place! Years later, when I was piloting an aircraft over Kempsey, it became obvious. The original path of the river was right through the middle of the town. There were some floods after I left, and the town was inundated. The radio station was submarined twice, and had to move its studios up on high ground near the railway station. {Last time through the town, I note 2MC, its present ego, had moved back to the site of the bridge that flooded, and was located next to the pub. Not a good place for thirsty announcers. Far too convenient!}.
 2KM was in a shop, an ordinary single-fronted shop, right in the middle of town, opposite a radio and electrical store and the Ambulance Station. It was a very compact operation. For not only did the small shop contain, from front to rear, the offices and the one studio, but also the transmitter. And, in the transmitter room the record library. Thinking back, the station would not have had more than three hundred records - all seventy-eights - meaning only six hundred individual piece of music. If that doesn't sound very much, one should remember the musical taste of the audience. Today we call it Country and Western. Then it was Hillbilly. And country folk liked to hear singers accompanied by their own single guitar backing, rendering the songs of the bush. Generally they seems to be about mother, animals or death!
These times we take radio for granted as a twenty-four hour operation. Pre World War Two, there were only two or three all night stations in the whole of Australia.
 2KM kept strange broadcast hours. It did not open in the mornings until seven-thirty. Later I worked out that this was good programming indeed. The farm milking people would be back in their houses, the morning chores over and breakfast on the table. Seven-thirty was just right for locals working in the town, getting ready for a day's toil, and also getting the kids off to school. So the breakfast session went from seven-thirty until eleven, at which time the station closed transmission.
 At four in the afternoon we stoked up the old transmitter and went back on the air with a children's session, followed by the evening programming. However, it was all over at ten, as any non-sinners then went to bed, so to be ready for the morrow's milking. Transmission hours were slightly different at weekends, but not all that much.
 Max Baker deposited me at the studios. The single-fronted shop still had display windows, where the station made some pretence at exhibiting promotional material. Inside the front door was cheap and shaky partitioning.
The first employee I met had a lot of jobs. She was the receptionist, manager's secretary, advertising scheduler, and part-time announcer. Behind the partition was a desk with typewriter which was to be my domain for the next year. The manager's office was the only other room - though not a room, as the partition didn't go all the way to the roof.
 The building was then divided with a soundproof wall. Behind the double doors, the one studio. To the right as you entered, an announcer's desk, with two turntables and a mixing console. Out of context complete were a baby grand piano and a grandfather clock! The floor was partly covered in coir matting. When the station had opened a few years before, the Sydney-based owners, reluctant to spend any more than necessary, told the initial manager to furnish the place on contra. He had gone to the local furniture store, offering radio advertising in return for furnishings. Seems that nobody had ever wanted to buy either a baby grand piano or a grandfather clock; and only someone completely colour blind, would have purchased the other studio furniture: a three-piece uncut maquette lounge suite with a swirly pattern that did nothing for one's stomach early in the morning.
 A single door led to the transmitter room and record library. The building ended there, with an single outdoor lavatory in the back yard. There was also a single mast for the transmitter, and a second one in the paddock next door. I never bothered to discover if we owned that land. But, it didn't seem to matter.
 In the years after I left, the two floods, a couple of years apart, won the station some new broadcasting equipment from its insurers. Also something happened to the record library. A week under water, and all the labels floated off the records. Thus, although they were not unplayable, you didn't know what you were playing. And this could be said to be a disadvantage! The insurers wrote off the record library, and the station had a wonderful fire sale, selling records at sixpence [five cents] each, unlabelled.
 My duties were to be breakfast announcer, copywriter, program selector - all of which seemed reasonable. But, as the staff was only four - I omitted to mention the one technician who, realising he could not be expected to be on duty all the time the station was on the air, used to go fishing for a few days at a time! - there was a lot of extra things to be done.
 My first chore in the mornings, half-an-hour before the station opened at seven-thirty, was to start turning on the transmitter. Four or five switches had to be activated in the right order and to a time table. Get it wrong, and you had to go back to the start and do it again. The manager had thought up something for me to do while the transmitter was warming up. I was to take the broom and sweep the footpath outside our shop-radio station. Looking back upon that time, I realise it was pretty hard to start a session with a swelled head, if you had had ten minutes on the end of a broom first.
Monica, the office girl-cum-manager's-secretary was on the air when I arrived that morning. Her specialty was women’s affairs. Some recorded music, but also happy cooking hints, and other tips for a jollier home life. Listeners wrote letters to the station, and she read them. It was pretty folksy stuff - but, that was what the people wanted to hear.
 Eleven o'clock, and the station closed down, until the beginning of the children's session at four. Here was my chance to learn the operation of the announcing desk. Max, my manager and tutor, ran me through the operations, and then left me to practise. Every time something happened I couldn't control, I'd call for his help. However, by afternoon, approaching four, I was a passable operator.
 The children's session consisted of recorded stories, and birthday calls. As well as this, two afternoons each week we played host to live kids, who came to perform and send greetings.
In my application for employment, I had said I played the piano. It would have been more accurate to say, "played some things upon the piano". However, I realised it was expected of me that, if at all possible, I should accompany the kids' singing. I watched Monica handle the children's session, without live kids, and thought that I could look after that one, my last task of each day.
 The walk from Miss Weeks'' Boarding Establishment took abut fifteen minutes. The next morning, I was on the doorstep at seven {not yet having been entrusted with a front door key} and Max drove along a few minutes later.
 The station was to open at seven-thirty with himself behind the desk. After the standard opening of a kookaburra recording and "God Save the King" {we were awfully patriotic in those days}, he said good morning and introduced me to the listeners.
 I had been saved from a terrible decision. My mum didn't have me christened John, but Jack, a name I'd always hated. Her reason was that, at the time, all Johns were nicknamed Jack. So, my folks figured to shortcut the system, calling me Jack. As I was about to "go professional", here was a chance to change it. Instead of Jack, it would be John {or even Johnnie} and, rather than Pearce, how about a play in my middle initial? Had I not seen, been shown, the light at the last minute, I would have been "Johnnie Kay". But, from this extreme, John Pearce seemed more than reasonable. From then on the only people calling me Jack were my mother and father. My sister always called me by a nickname.
 Back to the program. While our first record of the morning was playing, Max and I swapped seats. He stood behind me for the next ten minutes, ready to reach over and correct any presentation mistakes. Then, with seven-forty-five upcoming, we readied to cross to the news. In those days, all radio news came from the ABC. So I quickly learned the technique of presenting a program, at the same time listening on a pair of headphones for a cue from the ABC originating station.
 We crossed to ten minutes of news, and I tried to disguise my sweaty palms. Casually Max said, "I'm just popping out for a moment, Back in time for the end of the news. If I'm not, you know what to do. Close the ABC fader and get on with the program. Play the music and do the commercials, and give 'em plenty of time calls."
 He left the studio - and that was the last I saw of him for the next hour and ten minutes! I didn't know that he was sitting across the road, having a cup of tea with the Ambulance people, one ear on the radio, ready to dive in and rescue me should such be necessary. I'm not claiming that the presentation was without fault, but, as they often say even these days "when you start and finish on time, who remembers what goes in between?"
 I shared the women's morning program with Monica, as I recall, and then when we shut the station down at eleven, extra-curricular chores commenced. First I filed away the records Max had played the night before. Then the ones we'd played that morning. And then I became a copywriter!
 The manager was also the sales manager - indeed, the only salesman. He would visit the advertisers and make notes of the lines they wanted advertised. It was then up to me to form them in to a selling format. This was not always easy, as radio being new, the advertiser wanted his commercial to be little more than a elongated price list with a name and address at the end. What more can I say than . . . we did our best?
 I would scoot home for lunch, and back again to copywriting in the afternoon. Nearing four, I'd get some records ready for the kids' show, and Monica supplied the birthday calls.
One point we should make here. We were the local line of communication. There was a local newspaper, but it only published twice a week. Anything more immediate came from the radio. Thus, local news and personal matters, like cheerio calls, were ours. At five shillings [50 cents] each, they represented a significant part of the station's income. Funeral announcements cost fifty percent more. Seemingly it was easier to get money from the dead than the living.
 In sending birthday calls to the young - we also did them to the not young at any time of the day - the call often came with a message stating where a present was hidden. Many a time it was, "follow the string attached to the wireless."
 And so to the twice a week we were invaded by live children. I think I would have done better had a whip been supplied. Yet the mystery of a radio studio probably helped discipline the young.
 If everything thus far had been a baptism of fire - teaching swimming by throwing one in off the end of the jetty - the first live children's show was the topper.
 As well as the microphone on the announcing desk, there was another one in the centre of the studio. It was from this one that the kids performed. We would line up someone to recite or sing, or just to send a greeting, call them to the centre microphone and get them talking/singing.
All was going well, until I called one little girl who seemed agitated, hand up, trying to attract my attention. I made her next to the microphone. "And what would you like to do," I asked. "Nothing," she replied; "but my little brother just did wee-wee behind the piano!" He had!
 To say it was the talk of the town the next day was an understatement. I think it might have been one of the times Max threatened to sack me.
CHAPTER 4:  Memory is a fickle beast. Also stories told and re-told over a span of half-a-century tend to alter, as the better points are amplified with each telling. Yet there are several memories of those early days in Kempsey worth chronicling.
 One of the tasks of this teenage broadcaster was to introduce to the air the ladies from the Red Cross, the CWA and other organisations. The radio station wanted to be known as being community minded. Each of these groups was given about ten minutes, at the same time once per week, to broadcast news of their activities. The ladies were used to their tasks, would wander into the studio, sit at the central microphone and, on cue, do their little bit. Usually these broadcasts took place just before the station closed for siesta at eleven. After a few weeks, one of the ladies invited me to take lunch at her town house. She came from a farm down the river, keeping a house in Kempsey for social reasons, I guess. Thinking it would be a change from Miss Weeks' luncheon fare, I agreed and, soon after noon, my copywriting chores ended, I walked to the house. It was summer, and I was welcomed to a darkened house, the blinds drawn. It wasn't until I got inside that I realised she had changed from the dress she wore for the broadcast, into "something flowing". Flowing indeed. It was only a matter of seconds before it "flowed" right down to the floor, revealing the lady in her nothingness.
 A couple of points need to be made. I had never seen a naked female form, and thus was as scared as hell. Secondly, the lady was at least in her mid-thirties, making her about double my age. Maybe I was to regret the rapid decision; but I exited, mumbling.
 The following week when she came to broadcast, not a mention was made of the encounter, neither by word nor gesture. Thinking back, there could have been worse ways to lose one's innocence.
 I mentioned the station's income from revenue for classified advertising. Mostly the charge was two shillings and sixpence [25 cents] for birthday calls, although buy and sell and lost dogs were five shillings [50 cents]. Funeral announcements were different - and more costly.
 Because the local newspaper only published twice weekly, it would have been possible for someone to die and get buried without their friends ever knowing about it. This would never have done, as a funeral was a "big thing" in the bush. A person's status was measured by the number of cars in the funeral procession. Radio covered this vacuum with funeral announcements. The broadcasting of them was delicate. You could not come out of a hillbilly singer into a funeral announcement. Also folklore had it that, on some other station, a funeral announcement was followed immediately by a Fats Waller rendition of "I'll be glad when you're dead and gone, you rascal you." To obviate any such problems, the station had fixed times for death and funeral announcements. Every studio had a set of gongs used for cuing, and resembled dinner chimes. Before a funeral announcement, the announcer would hit the lowest-pitched gong three times slowly and then fade to a recording of "Largo" by Handel, a dirge by any other name. After some twenty to thirty seconds of this, the announcement would commence: "It is with deep regret that we announce the passing of......." and so on, ending with funeral arrangements, and suffixed with the name and phone number of the undertaker. This was, of course, meant as a point of contact for further information; but it was also a blatant commercial for the undertaker. Then twenty or so more bars of Mr Handel's music and three more gongs.
 The town had two morticians. They had been in open and less than friendly, competition for a couple of generations - or so the story went. I don't know why their credit wasn't good with the radio station; but I was under strict instructions should either of them appear with a funeral announcement for broadcast, it had to be accompanied by the coinage of seven shillings and sixpence. One of the two had a habit of coming to the studios in less than sober condition. We started the rumour that he drank the embalming fluid; but had to stop that, as too many believed it. He would arrive, ring the bell, and wait for the announcer to have a record playing and able to leave the studio. We would race to the front door, take the funeral announcement written in a broad-nib pen, and the money. If you weren't quick, the undertaker would pop his foot in the door, uttering the words, "I knew the deceased well." And then try to tell you the lineage of the dear departed.
 I was looking at my Sydney radio studio the other day, comparing its facilities and operation with those first days in Kempsey. Today, themes, recorded commercials and a lot of the music is played in from endless cartridges. Then, everything was on disc. Music records were recorded at seventy-eight r.p.m. Anything longer had to be recorded at 33.3 r.p.m. on massive discs, sixteen inches in diameter. To change the turntable speed was not just a matter of clicking a lever or hitting a switch. The turntables were of variable speed. To get them to the desired revolutions, you needed to put a stroboscope on the turntable, and adjust the speed until the lines of the stroboscope appeared to be stationary. And you did all this while talking, preparing the next program segment.
 The microphones were very directional, meaning that if you turned your face away only a few degrees, your voice disappeared. This, then, required a more than usual degree of contortion.
 And there was one other trick, changing needles. Unlike today's diamond or sapphire styli, those old seventy-eights were played with steel needles. And one only lasted one playing, meaning it had to be changed at the end of each three minutes. The way one did this was ingenious. As it was necessary to be facing the microphone at all times, one had to remove the worn needle by twisting the holding screw with one hand. The used needle would then fall through a hole in the desk, into a jar beneath. That was the easy bit. But, if you used both hands to insert the new needle and do it up, you would be off microphone. So we devised the method of getting the new needle and sticking it into the skin of the second finger, guiding it into the chuck of the pickup and doing it up with forefinger and thumb. Also, as you had a turntable on either side, one had to be ambidextrous. In those days, if anyone told you he was a radio announcer, you said, "Show me your fingers, both hands." If there wasn't a piece of hardened, callused skin on the second finger, he was lying.
 Morning radio soap operas were just emerging. But, in those days long pre-television, the evening radio serial was as is "Neighbours" or "Home and Away" today. The greatest of the shows was "Dad and Dave" a radio serial, sponsored nationally by Wrigley’s, and based on the Steel Rudd characters. The players were from the stable of George Edwards, a great radio actor, and a man of many voices. {It was said unkindly that he developed the ability to do lots of voices to save him employing more actors!}. Dad and Dave lived in Snake Gully. Dad was only ever known as Dad, and his wife as Mum. Their son was Dave, in love with Mabel, the daughter of Bill Smith, with whom Dad was mostly feuding. Each year the show had a highlight. Just as today any series has to have a Christmas show, "Dad and Dave" had the running of the Snake Gully Cup. It was broadcast nationally on the first Tuesday night in November, which also happens to be the day of another horse race, at Flemington in Melbourne. To people listening around Australia, the Snake Gully Cup rivalled the Melbourne Cup in interest.
 It was then that this young radio announcer, having been brought up in a sheltered environment, and only having heard whispers of SPs, starting price bookmakers, totally illegal of course, but operating from every hotel in the nation. That one was working out of the Kempsey Hotel - or one of them - was, or should have been, sufficient shock. However, to discover that he was making a book on the outcome of the Snake Gully Cup was terrifying in more ways then one. For, you see, I knew the result in advance!
 In those times, we didn't have the proliferation of intrastate airlines, and all radio programs came by train. To make sure everyone got their shows on time, they were usually at the radio stations at least a week in advance of broadcast date. One of my jobs at 2KM was the unpacking of the radio transcriptions, and checking them for broadcast. Thus, about four days before the date of the running of the Snake Gully Cup, I had heard the show! I wish I could remember the strength of the temptation. Suffice it to say that I either resisted the temptation to have a bet, or was too moral so to do. I let the race run without my money. It was a pity in a way as, that year, neither Dad's nor Bill Smith's horses - the first and second favourites - won. Ted Ramsey's nag did - at twelve to one, massive odds!
 I have but one other memory of Kempsey. Max, the boss, did six nights a week on the air, and I did Sunday night. And Sunday was different. No children's session. The station opening was at six with a devotional program shared by the various churches. These mostly consisted of the "man of the cloth" appearing with a handful of hymn records for us to play, interspersing his meaningful messages. This was followed at six-thirty by a half hour of live dance music by the local dance band, four players, piano, saxophone violin and drums. They did not broadcast from the studios, which was a good thing as, one week in five the Salvation Army band crowded in to play.
 The dance band broadcast from the Rendezvous Ballroom, a large tin enclosure in the next street to the studios. It should have been a straightforward operation - but it wasn't. Firstly it was necessary for me to find the band. The leader was a barman at the pub, and had consumed more than a little of his employer's brew in the course of service, quite illegally, on Sunday morning. I discovered which was his room at the hotel, and on the way to work, called and make sure he was not only awake, but out of bed and off in the general direction of the Rendezvous.
 In the cavernous empty dance hall, the echo must have made the band sound like twenty players. Our technician had set up a microphone on the stage, turned it on and checked it. The only other piece of equipment was a radio receiver, used by the band to get the cue to commence. If there had been another person to compere the half hour {they had tried the bandleader but his lack of sobriety showed clearly}, it would only have been a matter of me giving the cue at the studio and opening the line to the Rendezvous. But I had to be the compere as well.
 We had tried my doing it at the studio with a list of music numbers the band was to play. This was unreliable, as they often changed in the middle of the show. The only answer was for me to be there - virtually in two places at once. So, at six-thirty, the religious gent having left, I would make the opening announcement, and throw open the fader for the band to start playing its theme tune. Then, remembering not to lock the door in my hurried exit, I would race around to the Rendezvous, where the band would still be playing the opening theme until my arrival.
 I would look at the name of the first number from the music stand, introduce it, and away we went. At two minutes to seven, I'd sign off, thanking the band, and telling the listeners it would all happen again the following week. The band would then commence the closing theme, and keep playing it until I was able to race back to the studio, fade them out and cross for the seven o'clock news. May sound crazy; but somehow I looked forward to Sunday nights.
 It was here that I first ran into that terrifying word FAME. Years later I was to hear Eric Baume comment upon someone in our business, saying, "My boy, how few of us can handle success!" Never was there a phrase with more truth. If you have been "in the business" for many years, there is always the chance of falling into the trap marked, "Believing Your Own Publicity". But, when you are a teenager, away from home for the first time, having led a cloistered existence and all, and then suddenly becoming a public figure, it's can be a little heavy to handle.
 The first circumstance you note is when people are looking at you in the street - people you know you don't know. Then you hear, in a crowd, a voice saying, "That's him!" {You resist the temptation either to say, "That's me", or "That should be, that's he not him."}.
 Unlike any of the other media of entertainment, radio is one of illusion. You can turn on television at any time and look at the third hair in the left nostril of your favourite newsreader. On radio, you hear a voice - and have the privilege of making it to appear anything you like. Thus, in public, when you hear someone has recognised you - or guessed it - you need to handle it with a rare modesty. It is your chance to appear perfectly normal; even if you know that other people think you not to be. Some of my mates in radio have taken this adoration to extremes, using it as the first stepping stone of seduction. But really - you know - that's hardly fair. That is, if you believe seduction should be fair. But I ramble .......
 I cannot remember how I got the Canberra job. Watched the papers and applied for it, I guess. However, it was a career step-up, and so I took it, realising that I only had a few months until I reached eighteen, and was able to join the Air Force. 2CA Canberra was a member station of the once-great Macquarie Network. It took a lot of feature programs from 2GB in Sydney, the key station of the network. These came in on landline. I can't remember what I did there. Eric Coleman, he of the magnificent voice and the brother of Hollywood actor Ronald, was the feature announcer. In those days, radio made much of the deep, resonant voice, particularly at nights. Over at the ABC, announcers were trying their best to sound like an audition for the BBC, down to the point of speaking of "Orstralia" and the "Orsten motor car". On quality commercial stations, we were looking for an educated, public school accent.
 Sitting in a radio studio at night, the only person in the building, listening to shows coming down the landline, and breaking at the end of each of them for station identification is the ultimate in boredom. I remember one of the things we did to fill in the time was toast things on the studio radiator. Arnott’s Biscuits had sent us tin after tin of Nice {pronounced "neece"} biscuits. They had sugar on top. Put them on the radiator until the sugar started to melt, and you had a rare delicacy. I wonder why Arnott’s never thought of it? Probably didn't have the experience of a radio studio at night.
 There was the occasion when, on crossing to 2GB for the news, I opened the wrong fader, putting to air the adjacent studio where one of my colleagues was phoning the lady with whom he had spent the previous evening. I was out in the record library, putting away records, and didn't hear all the phones ringing. We were both on the carpet the next morning, he for using the station's telephones for STD calls, and I for not listening to the show going to air.
 Canberra, as I remember it, was a lonely place. I lived in a boarding house in Ainslie, where I was the only non-public servant. Listening to their conversation, it might just as well have been in Urdu. For mine, I was not to be trusted, as I took neither the two minutes to eight bus, nor the five past.
I was more than happy when my birthday came along, and King George invited me to free flying lessons with his Air Force.
 
CHAPTER 5:  While I was away in the Air Force, a lot was happening to radio in Australia. Amazingly, most of it was good. For the very isolation of Australia forced the home-grown product to thrive.
 The thirties had brought some of the world's radio shows to Australia to compete with the amateurs, left over from theatre days, who were straining to come to grips with this illusionary medium. But there were already inroads from both Britain, with some BBC shows sent here by ship. Mostly, these took the form of instant records made of BBC shows as they went to air, rather than shows pre-produced for radio.
 Across the Pacific, however, things were a lot more serious. America, via Hollywood, was the entertainment hub of the world. Top radio shows were emerging either from Los Angeles, often using film talent, or from New York, still smarting because the West coast had stolen its market.
 "The Lux Radio Theatre" came to Australia. These one-hour plays were Sunday night. At eight o’clock across the nation, lights dimmed and people listened, becoming a part of the great play enactments.
There were other shows as well. One I remember was titled, "The Honourable Archie", and featured this wafty young Englishman, living in America, tended by his Japanese man servant Frank Watanabe. {I'm sure this was to bite the dust after Pearl Harbour, when it was necessary to hate all Japanese, even fictitious ones, and man-servanting wafty English nobleman.}
But, as it happened, Pearl Harbour was the saviour of the Australian radio production business. The Pacific Ocean, then a war zone, could not be relied upon as a continuous sea road for radio transcriptions. So, Australia suddenly had to do it itself.
And, when the war ended, necessity had, indeed, mothered inventiveness, and we were producing the best radio in the world, and for a far smaller price. And the world has never caught us up!
If only our young sister, television, had had the same chance - denial of overseas material - we could be watching far more of the home-grown product, without government over-regulation.
Our actors, brought up in the George Edwards school, and with other groups of players, developed tremendous talents. Script writers and adaptors took some of the world's great classics and modified them for radio, either as whole plays or for serialisation. Or they wrote local stuff, like "Dad and Dave" and many others.
Actors and actresses developed magnificent character voices, and the ability to perform a script at sight, being able to cover small mistakes as they did so. This was important,. as they were playing straight to disc, and were paid "per episode", meaning an episode completed and accepted. A bad mistake led to a re-take at no extra pay.
 It would not be unusual for an actor to record five quarter hour episodes of a serial in the morning, and rush to a different part of town to do five more of a different show, with, of course, different characters and different voices, in the afternoon. Then, if they were lucky, there might be a play at night.
 The full plays were rehearsed in full. But the serials - the "soap operas", as they became known - were often "flown". The actors picked up the scrips and did it all from sight. And still we were the best in the world!
Another aspect was the non-drama shows. Jack Davey sky-rocketed from a nice young New Zealand boy who sang songs on the 2GB breakfast session, to their top quizmaster. His sparkling and razor-sharp wit, with a mind way ahead of others, gave wartime folk what they most needed: thirty minutes of meaningless fun, with nobody ever having to ask: "What did he mean by that?"
He took his shows to military camps, and {as Bob Hope also discovered} played to the most receptive audience imaginable. Just get one mention of the Commanding Officer's name in a kindly context and the nasty Sergeant in a less than genteel situation, and it was difficult to stop the audience reaction to get on with the show. There were others, of course, but Jack Davey was the greatest. And, when the war ended, others never caught him.
 All this happened while I was out of Australia, and so I was not aware of the wonderful strides made in the few short wartime years.
 And so it was The Peace. What to do? Where lay the career path? Blame the Air Force. I did. But, by the time World War Two ended, the authorities had worked out a fool proof way to get people in. However, the idea of discharging them back to civilian life was far from smooth, almost like they hadn't even thought of us winning!
 My moment of decision had arrived. The fork in the road pointed to remaining in flying, or going back into radio. And I had nobody from whom to get advice. Well, not on the radio side.
 In flying, there were a couple of offers. One was to stay in the Air Force, but nobody was plugging any great re-enlist schemes. The other was to join the Navy Fleet Air Arm. I applied for both. But, while on leave, back home in Sydney, I received telegrams, requesting me to report for interviews. And, as a spur of the moment decision, I wired them both back, "Thanks, but have changed mind."
 The rash of aircrew, no longer required either in the European or Pacific Theatres were returned to home Australia. They could only be sent either on extended leave {which would not be a good idea, as many, unwinding from a war, would become "lost"; or posted to flying training units. Mostly they did the latter.
 In Benalla, Victoria, I discovered that I had no yen to go back to flying Tiger Moths. Flat to the boards with less than eighty knots held no joys for this fly boy. So I went to the Commanding Officer and gently suggested that, as morale was "pretty ordinary", he might permit me to write and produce a stage show. He was delighted that anyone could think of anything for his troops to do. I was given the facilities of the camp.
 Amazing what you find when you go looking. In the paint shop was a sergeant who had been a set designer and scene painter for J. C. Williamsons, the great stage producers. There was a chap who had run his own dance band in Melbourne. There was a woman who had taught ballet. Together, with myself doing the writing of most of the comedy material, and compering the whole show, we got almost three hours up, ready and rehearsed in short order.
 I seem to remember we did two or three shows in the camp theatre, before taking it "on the road" to neighbouring towns for the Red Cross. Then, just as things were suggesting a second show, I got posted.
 Not very far away, but to Deniliquin, New South Wales, where I was asked to fly Airspeed Oxfords, a twin engine training aircraft. I didn't like them - few did - and did as little flying as was necessary.
 In town I discovered a local radio station, 2QN. Somehow I met up with the owner and, as I was only doing Air Force duties by day, asked him if there might be any casual announcing at night. The owner was delighted, as he didn't have to pay me much money at all.
 Then I heard {can't remember the source}: "Don't think of trying to get into city radio. The sheilas have got all the jobs while we were at the war."
 And that prompted the next turning point in what was developing as my career.
 CHAPTER 6:  The year at 2QN Deniliquin did nothing for my career. Nor, let it be said in all truth, did I do much for 2QN.
 Coming out of a highly disciplined life in the Air Force, with someone to tell me when to get up, what to eat, what to do all day, and when to go to bed, self-reliance came hard. When I finally left R.A.A.F. Station Deniliquin, the place was a ghost town. Indeed, there was a final signal stating that the two remaining officers, another Flight Lieutenant and I, were to shut up shop and hand the keys to the local Police. A squadron was coming down from New Guinea to wind up its operation; but we were not needed to be there as a welcoming committee.
 The night before departure, the other bloke - whose name I've long since forgotten - pulled rank on me, for he was senior to me by a few months, and stated that he had no intention of returning to Melbourne for discharge by train. He ordered me to fly him there at first light the next day. In the confusion, anything seemed reasonable. So, I did it, landing at Essendon and refuelling the shaky old Oxford for the return trip.
 But, on the way back I rebelled. The thought of locking up the last aircraft in a hangar and getting to my native Sydney for discharge by means of a bus to Finley - for only Victorian trains go to Deniliquin NSW - and then a train to Sydney was less appealing than my friend's direct rail journey from Denny {as Deniliquin is locally known} to Melbourne. And so, on the trip back by air from Melbourne, my plot was formulated.
 I locked up the unit and gave the police the keys. But didn't put the last aircraft away. I flew it to Sydney, refuelling at Wagga on the way. I landed at Mascot, left the aircraft with a gaggle of mixed breeds on a general Air Force Communications Flight parking line, and got a lift home with my kit to my parents' place. Two days later I was discharged from the Royal Australian Air Force. What happened to the Oxford? I never bothered to inquire, as it might have had them coming, looking for me. But, as where I left it is now a busy part of Sydney Airport, I'm sure you'd notice if it was still there. I guess I had no thought that I had stolen an aircraft. We just didn't think that way those days. The Air Force's fleet of Oxfords were junked after the war anyway. They had no place in the civilian scheme of things. Avro Ansons, a similar, but slightly larger training aircraft, did move into civilian flying. Indeed a couple of feeder airlines commenced bringing the bush closer to the city with them.
 A grateful Government did offer me a few things at time of discharge. They gave me a civilian suit, or the clothing coupons with which to buy one, also those for a pair of shoes and a hat! Happily I had a fair stock of underwear, including black socks. And officers' shirts were of the very best quality. For summer, take the badges off officers' safari suits and one was presentable to the rest of the world. They also offered ten pounds [$20] worth of "tools of trade" to settle one back into civilian life. I took a good dictionary and a thesaurus. They also offered courses in training, up to university courses, for the non-military world. I knocked them all back, though later wished I'd learned shorthand.
 For I had a job! I had met up with the man who owned 2QN Deniliquin, and asked him for what would be my first post-war job. As I came very cheap, he agreed. I was to be paid this small salary, plus ten per cent of any advertising I could bring in. How the owner came to have a radio station licence was a bit of a mystery, Must have got it in a corn flakes packet. He had very little interest in it. He was in the movie business, renting town halls in Northern Victoria and showing movies. Probably did very well. The radio station did a lot of promotion for his movie showings, which was understandable. Also in the back of the radio station was a small, and very ancient, printery where advanced programs for his movies were produced each month. The station was a couple of rooms attached to a condemned dance hall. The equipment was pretty antiquated, as nothing new had come forward during the war. But, although transmission hours weren't very long, we seemed to be able to keep on the air, and, having no competition either from commercial or ABC sources, were listened to.
 But, as I say, I was relaxing from the war. I lived in a pub on the other side of the Edwards River. It was run by Mr Percy Lynch. His ongoing line was, "Call me Dr Lynch. I make 'em well in the morning; and crook again the same night." His wife really ran the place, and Percy seldom left the bar. In busy nights, the local starting price bookmaker, who also lived there, did most of the work in the bar.
 I was introduced to country life, seeing great mobs of sheep arriving in the town, the drovers, having delivered them to the sale yards, coming to stay at the pub. They would arrive with their cheques, sign them over to "Dr" Lynch, sit at the end of the bar, announcing, "Let me know when she's cut out, used up, and I'll get back on the road." Often the money lasted for three weeks, sometimes a little less. Between moments of heavy drinking, they were given a bed.
 It was six o'clock closing of hotels in those days. But the hour was more honoured in the breach than the observance. Surely, strictly at six the street doors would close. But, everyone knew where the back door was. A long way from Macquarie Street, Sydney, where the laws were made, the locals and the police ran the town the way it needed to be run. As long as there was no noise from the bars heard as one walked past, trading proceeded. Occasionally there had to be a raid. The way it seemed to work was the Police Sergeant would phone the first pub on his round, announcing he'd be along in fifteen minutes. The publican would then clear his bar of all locals, and phone the next pub. {I seem to remember there were eleven hotels for a population of only five thousand, speaking highly of the thirst in those parts}. By the time the sergeant arrived, all was in order.
 Into play came the Bone Fide Travellers law, dating back long before the motor car. If you had slept the previous night more than ten miles away, you were entitled to drinks, a bed and stabling for your horse. The most important document any hotel carried was a Guests' Register, always kept under the bar.
 When the phone call came, the Register would appear, and anyone in the bar would be entered as a guest, staying the night and being given a room number. In return, they also stated - upon a stack of Bibles if necessary - that they had slept more than ten miles distant the previous night. Idly looking at the book one day, I noted that some people asserted they had been so far away the previous evening that it would have taken an aircraft to get to Deniliquin in a day. And they didn't have those sort of aircraft in those days. But the constabulary was satisfied.
 The cops were more interested in other antiquated laws, one of which was that it was illegal to carry a firearm on a Sunday! In the Motor Traffic Act it was also stated that any minister of religion had the right to drive to the head of a queue at a ferry. As there were no ferries in the Riverina, that did not apply!
 I got a rotten cold once. The publican's wife cured me overnight. She put me to bed with every blanket she could muster, and brought me a bottle of rum and a jug of hot water. She kept replenishing the hot water. By the time I awoke the next morning, there was no sign of the cold. I had sweated it out of the body. However, I was so weak, that I could hardly stand.
 I also played cricket. Seem to remember getting a few wickets; and had the rare distinction of being bowled first ball opening the batting in the first match of the season! Thus, to this very day, I claim membership of the exclusive Primary Club. Our team played one picnic match I shall never forget. We played a team from one of Faulkner's massive sheep stations nearby. We learned that the secret of the game was to win the toss and bat first. Even if the visitors didn't score many runs, having any in the scorebook was essential, as lunch consisted of standing around a beer keg, drinking and eating fat mutton sandwiches. And lunch had been known to drag on for an hour and a half, by which time it was better to bowl and field than try to watch a ball come towards you and your wicket.
 Cars were almost unobtainable. I bought my first one from a bloke in the Air Force. I was later to discover that I was a seventeenth registered owner, as it was sold from one pilot to another as they left on a posting elsewhere. I was the last Air Force owner. It was a Citroen, of a model I have never seen since. A tiny tourer, it had very little power left in its 1927 engine. And I remember the gearbox seemed to work sideways. If one had it today, and was able to restore it, it could be worth a fortune. Later I got rid of it, replacing it with an even older car - or really a utility - a Hupmobile of 1924 vintage. It had more power - when it decided to go.
 I haven't said much about broadcasting in those days, because I can remember so little. As I said earlier, I made little contribution to the radio station, which was in no position to show me the way to go. I think both the owner and myself were not heartbroken when I got the next step up the ladder.
 But, a few fond and fleeting memories of the town, which I have always sworn to revisit - though revisiting is not often a good idea, as memories have long since overtaken reality. It was very hot in summer, and I must have been one of the few people who swam home for lunch, the pub being on the other bank of the river. I met up and made friends with the local photographer, who taught me some of the art I have practised since. I remember being good enough one weekend to stand in for him and, with his wife's assistance, take some studio shots of a wedding party. Also that weekend I photographed a young child. The photographer's wife taught me a trick I have used many times since: tie a couple of the kid's fingers together with sticky tape. The puzzled expressions on its face make for wonderful studies in the camera art.
 I feel a little guilty, having so few broadcasting memories of that year. But, settling up my final hotel bill with "Dr" Percy, I got in my old Hupmobile and set out down to the Murray and Swan Hill. 
CHAPTER 7:  In the days when broadcasting meant radio, and not television and/or radio, the Victorian Broadcasting Network consisted of a head office in Melbourne and three country stations. The main one was in Hamilton, the second best was in Sale and what was left went to Swan Hill, way north on the River Murray, the dividing line between Australia and Victoria. I got a job as an announcer at the latter. I can't remember how I got it, not even how I learned about it. Read it in the paper, maybe. However, it was mine; and I arrived after the adventure of the drive in my vintage Hupmobile. It was certainly a change from the little station I had left, where the owner was more interested in movies. 3SH Swan Hill had a manager and a staff of eleven, including three technicians.
 Now it should be understood that, while announcers tried to make speech with technicians, the latter considered announcers the people without whom the stations of Australia could broadcast a pure, undistorted tone, without all that program nonsense. They also had a habit of snorting if asked to bend their technical expertise towards any form of programming never before attempted. Their favourite phrase was, "I'm telling you now - it won't work!"
 Ensconced in a boarding house, I was taken to meet the people at the radio station. It was situated in an old weatherboard house on the edge of town, the last house on the Murray Valley Highway. It consisted of two studios, a room containing the transmitter, a separate room for the record library and tea making, a general office with three or four desks and typewriters, and the manager's office. The latter fronted the entrance, so the incumbent could see anyone who entered or left, including the staff. Outside, there was a single toilet - of which more later in the story. For reasons unknown, it could be locked either from within or without. Down at the end of the property, and under the aerial, was a shed containing an engine to supply electricity should the town power fail. In those days each town made its own electricity, in the days before they were all connected to the state-wide grid.
 On the air at the time of my arrival was Beth Nicol, the lady announcer, and one destined to become a very good friend in the business. She was the sister of Don Nicol, headline variety performer. Beth had been brought up in showbiz, and with her blonde hair and good looks, had trodden the boards in many a show. She looked up at me as we were introduced while she had a record playing and said, "You don't look a bad sort of a bastard. Have they told you about the manager yet?" I confessed that "they" hadn't. "You'll find out," she said, deepening a mystery.
 Several other characters worked for 3SH. One was an announcer called John {whose surname I'll preserve for propriety} whose party trick was being able to break wind quite noisily. This could be quite disconcerting in a radio studio, especially if you, the announcer, were reading something on the air at the time! As an encore, he could walk across the studio, breaking wind each time his left foot hit the ground.
 It was a fun station, possibly because we were all relaxing because the manager wasn't! He took his job very seriously. It had been his first managership, and he was starting a career in that area, very conscious that his staff should call him "Mister", at all times, even when introducing him on the air. For he did the odd announcing shift if there was sickness. He also took a delight in broadcasting the football, which I seem to remember he did well. I'm not sure of this as the code was Australian football, and I came from the Rugby end of the nation. Yet, thinking back, it was a little odd hearing an announcer referred to at all times on air as "Mister". In all fairness, he went on to eminence in radio managership. So, maybe he was right at the time.
 Harry Lithgow was a great guy. He remained to become the station manager, only to die far too young, well after I left, of some terrible thing that had no right to take him away. A good country announcer. I don't want that to sound patronising. Some country announcers are, as Harry was, an excellent person in that slot. Others of us were on our way to "higher plains", though the country people rejected the very idea of capital city radio being better than theirs.
 Harry loved his bit of fun, and generally knew better than we when to stop. I recall once having set fire to a script as he was reading it on the air. He retaliated the following day by waiting until I was reading a complex two minute announcement, and then slowly pouring the contents of a water jug all over me!
 Unlike 2QN, 3SH was on the air all day, without a break in the afternoons. We closed for the night at eleven, opening at six the next morning. And that led to quite a story.
 We had a breakfast announcer who was very fond of women. Dammit, we all were! On one evening, he and his lady of the time spent many a long hour of bliss together. The following morning when he arrived, somewhat bleary-eyed at the studio a few minutes before the station's opening, he saw a pile of records on the desk in front of him. With them there was a note from the evening announcer of the night before. It said: "Fred, the boss rang. Said not to play the usual music you play, but stuff like this. I have picked some to start you off."
 The breakfast bloke looked at the music selected. Without exception it was dirge stuff, certainly not the sort of music with which to wake up the population. Thinking it a pretty weak practical joke, the brekky bloke went to the record library to choose his usual mixture of bright and noisy big band stuff, interspersed with country music. With this he opened the station at six. All went well for the first twelve minutes, until the phone rang. It was the technician from the ABC station at Shepparton, down the track a few miles. "I want to compliment you," he said; "I've been listening up and down the dial, and you are the only station playing decent music. The rest are playing dreary stuff - just because the bloody King died last night!"
 Our young announcer's nocturnal cuddling had not included listening to the news broadcasts before popping into bed for a few hours of shut-eye.
 Monday to Friday the announcing shifts worked much like they do today. Breakfast, morning, afternoon and night. There was no separate drive time show, as people didn't have anywhere to drive. Instead that time was for kids. But this time without any live ankle-biters in the studios.
 Weekends were a little different. 3SH broadcast racing. This we got on landline from Melbourne, interspersing our own commercials. The broadcasting of racing was very important to country people. The TAB had not been invented, but every pub in every town had illegal bookmakers. And there would have been hell to pay if the punters weren't able to punt, however outside the law it was.
 On Saturday mornings, as I remember it, we had a program where we gave racing tips. Some expert would come along and try to pick the winners for the afternoon's racing. Somehow we lost him, and the Boss said that, as I was the announcer on duty at the time, and as the spot was sponsored, I would have to be the racing tipster. Now, I can tell you to this day I only know a horse as an uncomfortable rectangular beast with a leg at each corner. Nevertheless, I got hold of the morning's Melbourne newspaper which gave a list of numbers before the name of each horse. I looked for the numbers one or two, assuming that, if the horses had run either first or second at their last starts, they had every chance of doing it again. I don't think I ever checked to see if any of my tips won. Just wasn’t interested in finding out! I didn't have the job for many weeks.
 I well remember Christmas Day at 3SH, Swan Hill. As a major gesture of community service, the station devoted all day to a radiothon {though we just called it an "appeal" then} for the local hospital. A noble effort. We asked our listeners to phone in pledges; and phone they did. The whole staff, along with volunteers, gave of their time as required. Rather than play records all day between acknowledging pledges, we broadcast live entertainment.
 We asked anyone who could sing to come along and do so on the air. They did. We had a relay of pianists who either played accompaniments from the performers' music, or adlibbed if they didn't have any music. Most of the performers, however, being hillbilly singers, brought their own guitars with them. Thus, on that hot Christmas afternoon, working in relays of two, Beth and I found ourselves in charge of the program. While one would read donations and pledges, the other would be lining-up the next performer.
 I was behind the desk and at the controls, as Beth signalled that she was ready. I opened her microphone in the centre of the large studio. She introduced the performer. "Now?" he asked. We both nodded. He took a deep breath and struck the first chord on his guitar. A string broke. "Shit! he exclaimed, straight into the mike. {The next day the Boss asked me why I hadn't cut him off before he said it! But seven second delay wasn't invented for another fifteen years}.
 And that brought us to the amazing Bernie Walsh. He was a technician. In those days you called them Engineers, though they held no degree in engineering. For them, a certificate of competence to maintain broadcast equipment. Such a certificate meant solid employment for life, as long as they didn't transgress.
 Folklore had it that the General Manager of the network once paid a surprise visit to one of the stations, stopping at the transmitter building on the way into the town. Here he was said to have discovered the duty technician in bed and asleep in the mid-morning. At Swan Hill, such was not possible, as the transmitter was in the studio building. However, most everything else was possible, much of it due to the number one technician, the Chief Engineer, Bernie Walsh. A good Catholic boy, Bernie, unmarried, was born for three things, drinking, golf, and dancing. I joined him in two of them, not having been brought up to the finer examples of ballroom and old time dancing. I had always used it as an excuse to have a damn good cuddle to the rhythm of the pop tunes of the day. Bernie was a dancer.
 This strange fellow, totally lovable, was timid to the point of being frightened of girls, though he would snort and be the last to admit it. Girls were for dancing, and he would wax lyrically about the accomplishments of one or the other of them on the dance floor. However, the moment the music ended, Bernie, like all good country men, would take the girl back to her seat, and then repair outside the dance hall, where the men and boys gathered around the tank where the booze was kept. Fraternising with women while the music was not playing was dangerous, he once explained to me. "Do that, and the next thing you're bloody married to them!"
 He loved his beer. Not that, in those immediate post-war days, there was much of it about. It was necessary to be a regular to get beer at the bar, and that meant drinking at only one of the town's three pubs. Once a month, the regulars got a quota of bottled beer, never much more than four bottles. However, this brought out the best in the country Australian male, sharing.
 Rationing meant only four or five gallons of petrol for your car per month. But, if half a dozen of you got together and left your ration coupons at the same service station, there never seemed to be a shortage of the precious fuel. The same went for beer.
 In times when there wasn't any bottled beer, we did one of two things, drank sherry and lemonade on the river bank - long and refreshing and mildly alcoholic. The other option was to brew one's own.
 A few of us - and I'm sure Bernie would have been one of them - living in the same boarding house, had a shot at three batches of home brew. The first was undoubtedly the best, though few would drink it, as it was green in colour. We learned not to make it in a copper utensil. The second reached the bottling stage. The recipe called for it to be stored a few days in bottles before opening and consuming. Something must have gone fatally wrong, as days and nights were permeated with the sound of bottles exploding! I can't remember the fate of the third batch. We probably drank it - and gave up.
 As there were three technicians to keep the station up and running, at least one of them was off duty at any one time. My shift was as evening announcer; not a very arduous task. However, it meant that I couldn't join any of my colleagues in the pubs before going to work. The answer was discovered in golf.
 The Boss insisted that we announcers did something other than our air work, as it looked a lot better if everyone on the staff appeared to do a 40 hour week. Therefore I was in charge of the record library in the mornings, and also the dispatch and receipt of recorded feature programs. Each afternoon I would play golf.
 I'd never had a lesson, though had played a fair bit of cricket. And it is said that, if you can play one ball sport, you can probably play them all. Certainly applied to Don Bradman. However, without any instruction, and only a handful of hand-me-down golf clubs, great excitement was generated if any of us "broke the hundred". Fortunately Bernie and I were about as bad as each other, and got on well. Not that we saw a lot of each other during a round. Both spending as much time as each other in the rough, we met only on the tee and the green; and had to trust each other when it came to counting the number of strokes taken. It was good fun. Stubborn Bernie, on one occasion, decided the only club working for him was his 5-iron, and tried to prove it by leaving all his other clubs back at home, even putting with his 5. His scores were about the same; and he had the rest of the sticks with him the next time we played.
 We all smoked in those days. All men did. It was a sign of our manhood - or was supposed to be. With the smoking came the coughs, and Bernie had the worst I have ever heard. He would smoke and cough until he was crying. We lived in the same boarding house. On the way home one night after the station had closed, Bernie got a coughing fit and had to hold onto a tree to steady himself. "That's the end," he hacked to me; "that's the last time I'll ever smoke. If you ever see me smoke again, you can remind me to drop my pants in the middle of Campbell Street. Here, take them" thrusting his cigarettes and matches toward me. "Take them, I say." I did.
 Half an hour later, reading just before going to sleep, my door opened, and there was Bernie. He sat on my bed and we talked, as we often did - as good mates do. Without reference to anything that had gone on before, he reached for my bedside table, took one of my cigarettes and lit it. I never reminded him to drop his pants in Swan Hill's main street.
 The smokes didn't get him. Fifty years later we still correspond - about once a year. He got out of radio and now does a bit of farming outside a little Victorian town with a totally forgettable name. But I shall never forget him.
 Without any recording facilities, all local programs had to be broadcast live, with the broadcasters in the studio. It should be remembered that radio was still a novelty. The newspaper people, keen to retain their advertising monopoly, spread the word that we were, at best, a gimmick. Nevertheless, results to advertisers made it quite apparent that we were a serious means to getting to the spending dollar {or pound, as it was then}.
 This was the first time I had been involved in an election. I can't remember if it was for State or Federal, and I guess that's not a bit important. Candidates had two ways of getting their messages to voters. Really there were three, if you counted the party commercials, recorded in the capital cities and sent to country stations. But, if the local candidate was to get the local message across, he needed either to have a commercial written for him and broadcast by the station's announcers, or come and broadcast them in person. If there were to be a number of single commercials, it would be necessary for the station announcer to do them. However, each candidate, in the belief that the sound of his own voice would be better received than a professional broadcaster, would buy five and ten minute political statements. These he would broadcast personally and "live".
 Into my program at 3SH came one of these gentlemen in a lead-up to the coming election. He had never broadcast before. This levelled the playing field, as I had never had a politician on the other side of a microphone either. He entered the smaller studio, as I had a three minute record playing. A quick shake of the hand, and I sat him across the desk. We had a single ribbon-style microphone hanging from the ceiling between us. The trick was to balance the voices by moving closer to, or further from, the microphone. The candidate came equipped with several pages of hand-written material. I explained that, as soon as the music finished, I would turn on the microphone and introduce him, at which time he would read his prepared address to the multitude. Nothing too hard about that – thought I.
 The record finished. I back-announced it and said: "And now a political statement by Mr Fredrick Schlunk {or whatever his name} the Country Party candidate for the coming election. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Schlunk." I smiled at him and pointed. He stared back, transfixed. I smiled and pointed to him again. "Now?" he asked. "If you please, sir." His eyes dropped to the script, which by then was shuddering with as fine a case of nerves as I had thus far witnessed. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began; "it is with deliberation that I come before you today......"
 I released my pent-up breath. I'd got him started, after an admitted shaky beginning. But, there was more to come. It was then he decided that the studio lighting wasn't to his liking, and insufficient to illuminate his oscillating script. By turning ninety degrees, he could read it better from the light of the Control Room next door. The problem in doing that was that he was facing more away from the sensitive microphone than towards it. I quietly moved around the desk and, taking him by the shoulders, turned him towards the mike. But this suited him not one bit. I don't know if he considered my gesture the overture to an improper suggestion, but he shrugged my hands away, and continued on addressing the studio door. I tried to move the microphone nearer him but, as it was attached to the ceiling, little could be done. Coming to the end of his script, he urged the folk out there in radioland to vote for him. I thanked him and went to the next record, as the Boss ushered him from the studio. I never heard what was said of me outside in the passage, caring little anyway. And our paths never again crossed.
 In my time at 3SH, we had a copywriter by name of Mal Cochran, an Irishman who had been a professional golfer before a motor accident that changed both his future career path and country of residence. Like many people from that part of the world, he was never happy unless he had a teapot at his elbow. The electric hot water jug was in the record library, my domain. His desk was outside in the general office. He would come in, fill the jug to the top, and turn it on. As it reached boiling point, I'd call, "Water's boiling, Mal." "Thanks, old boy." As it started boiling over, running down upon the tin tray I'd placed there, "Bloody water's boiling over, Mal." He wandered in, saying, "Dear boy, the thing you must understand about tea making is that the water be allowed to boil . . . right through!"
 Every radio station has its folklore, much of which has a basis in solid fact. 3SH remembered the technician who, quite inebriated, climbed the mast, sobered up, and was scared to return to terra firma. And of the manager who got the bright idea of utilising the space under the aerial to grow vegetables for the local hospital. Not bothering to check this move with the technical staff, he ordered in a rotary hoe, which then, as well as disturbing the earth for agriculture, cut up the copper earth mat situated just beneath the surface. Without this network the transmitted signal does not go very far at all - like just down the road. The cost of repairs was massive! And the hospital had to buy its fruit and veg the same as anyone else.
 The manager had about as much authority as the manager of a local theatre; and they were known as "lighthouse keepers", only authorised to turn on the electricity before the performance, and turn it off afterwards. Being the third station in a network of three, 3SH got what was left over from the other two.
 Purchases of records from EMI, the only supplier at the time, were made through Melbourne head office. Sometimes we only got four new records for the month, from a playlist of thirty! All stationery was also ordered via Melbourne. Towards the end of the month, things could be quite grim. I remember seeing advertising copy written on both sides of the paper, with a typewriter so faint as to need the copy to be held up to the light to be read - not possible if both sides were used!
 The station car {the manager used to refer to it as his} was a pre-war Vauxhall. {I cannot forget the absolute celebratory joy when it was replaced with a Ford panel van with the station's name and logo emblazoned. The manager, the only one authorised to drive it "until it was run in", drove it all over town and the district, until it could be prized from beneath him to do other station duties.} The Vauxhall was a tourer with seating for two in the front, and a fold-down seat in the back. The occupant of this - if there had to be three people carried - was open to rain, wind, Mallee dust storms and any other environmental hazards. All of which brought us to Ball broadcasts.
 Balls have always been an essential part of the country social scene - and probably still are to this day. People would drive from many a long horizon away to attend balls. A girl, be she a humble daughter of the soil, or a shop assistant in the town, needed at least three full-length ball gowns for each season. Many were home-made, with great attention to the dressmaking arts then taught to all of the female gender. Yet, come the day of the ball, often midweek to fit in with all the other balls, the same girls would scrounge any means of transport. It took a little getting used to seeing young ladies in full ball array, alighting from an open truck upon the back of which they may have travelled as much as fifty miles on unsealed roads. They would dance long into the night. And, as they said in all the advertising, "a jolly time was had by all."
 Radio stations made much of country balls, both in the town where the station was situated, or vast distances away. I can remember broadcasting some balls from places almost beyond the range of the radio station's signals. But, it was a week or two before the ball, the radio salesman, often the manager, would pay a call upon the town in question, gathering sponsors for the ball broadcast. In the few days preceding the ball, the station would air commercials for these business houses, along with news of the coming ball. This extra revenue would not only swell the income of the radio station, but also pay for the landline, provided by the then Postmaster General's Department; the people in charge of Australia's telephone lines.
 Using what facilities left over from the war, the PMG's Department did a splendid job getting a telephone line into the hall where the ball was to take place. They would do their best to "balance" the line to broadcast quality, so it would not appear like the thin tones of a telephone conversation. Mostly it worked very creditably.
 The radio station sent a crew of three to cover the broadcast. One was the technician, with his equipment. The other was the male announcer {very often me, as I was good then at drawing the short straw, there being no such thing as overtime for such extra-curricular broadcasts, nor petty cash for dry cleaning of the compere's only suit}. The third crew member was the lady announcer, in this case the delightful Beth Nicol.
 Beth didn't drive. I had only just acquired a driving licence, being one of those who had achieved a pretty high rating as an Air Force pilot before getting a ticket to drive on the roads. The technician and I worked to a most sensible arrangement. Before setting out for a ball broadcast, we would toss a coin. He who won drove to the ball. This meant he could, as soon as the broadcast ended, go and have a drink with the organisers. He who lost, stayed on the "lolly water", and drove home, drinkless. With this arrangement, we showed more responsibility than with many of our other activities.
 Our outside broadcast equipment was somewhat primitive. We only had two microphones for the whole show. One of these was placed on a stand in the middle of the stage. This was for the orchestra. The other was for Beth and I to do our stuff off-stage. For the audience was not to be held back from its festivities just to watch a couple of people broadcasting. They had paid for near non-stop music, and they wanted near non-stop music.
 The orchestras - let's call them bands, which is a lot more accurate - varied considerably. The only fixed instruments were the piano and the drums. Any number, in any variation, could be added. Usually it was piano, drums, one or more saxophones, one or more trumpets, one or more violins. There were variations of "doubling", where the pianist could strap on a piano accordion, the saxophone player change to clarinet. Thus, the balance of sound going down a single microphone was a lottery. Some people on normally soft instruments, played loudly and the reverse also. Seeing a microphone {for the bands weren't normally performing to a public address system} tempted the players to blow into our mike at very close range, thus drowning out the rest of the players and distorting the signal.
 I remember once when we caught a band leader cheating! The technician commenced by listening to the band playing, and then moving the microphone to a place where the sound was balanced. If he moved the microphone too far away, the band would be drowned in its own echo from the hall, and too mixed in with the sounds of the dancers. This time, I remember the technician {it was Bernie} coming up to me before the broadcast, saying he just couldn't get the balance at all, and asked me to wander amongst the band while he adjusted the mike position. It was then we discovered that two of the players weren't making a sound, though pretending to! The band leader had charged the ball organiser for an eight piece band; yet only six of them were able to play. Being none of our business, we kept his secret.
 The task of the male announcer was simple. He introduced the broadcast and got the first dance flowing. Between dances, he did the commercials for the broadcast's sponsors. At the end, as near to the scheduled time as seemed reasonable, he did the sign off, crossing back to the studio.
 These broadcasts usually took place in the latter half of the evening, Thus the radio station was able to fulfil its usual program commitments, meaning that the revenue from the ball broadcast was extra.
 Beth, the lady announcer, had the most important task of all. From the time she arrived, out came pad and pencil, and she set off identifying the ladies and writing a description of what they were wearing. For, if there was one thing the listeners wanted to hear above all else, it was who was wearing what, and what a pity it was the same as she had on last week!
 Beth's commentary would go something like this: "The charming Maisie Schlunk is here tonight. She is wearing a shocking pink shot taffeta, with scooped neckline, and offset with a blue bow....." You know how it goes. I'm hopeless at this stuff. Always went to look at the girls, not what was outside them!
 I do remember however, gagging it up with Beth at one such broadcast. She asked me to do a frock description. I thought I wasn't doing badly, until I came to the final bit: "...and the frock has frills around the bottom." "Not the bottom, you fool, the hem," Beth said. I wasn't asked to perform that task again; as the one part of the broadcast remembered above all else, and spoken of around the town the next day, was "the lady with the frills around her bottom". And, as would happen: she was very well known in town and district.
 All-in-all, though ball broadcasts went into the night, and were often concluded with a long drive home on less than perfect roads, they certainly were a break from the routine.
 One ride home was particularly monumental. The rotten old Vauxhall, in terrible state of repair, used as much oil as it did petrol, I think. Its bodywork was no better. The floorboards showed gaps, somewhat disconcerting as the roads beneath were wet and puddled. On the night in question, the three of us were homeward bound. I had lost the toss, hadn't had a drink, and so was driving. Beth was wearing a bright blouse well covering her ample bosom, and a straight, floor-length skirt. Well, she was wearing it. Unknown, the hem {not the bottom} had worked its way through the gap between the floorboards, and suddenly became tangled with the drive shaft. In a flash of colour and with a scream, Beth was suddenly skirt less. When the car was stopped, and Bernie and I got out the torch and looked beneath it, Beth skirt could only be used as rags in a motor garage. She was delivered home that night, well-bloused and showing a chorus girl's legs beneath her knickers!
 Beth was all-girl, but one of the boys at the same time. Occasionally she would invite a few of us - mostly all blokes - around to the house where she rented a large bed-sitting room. We would take any bottles of grog we had been hoarding, and sit around the bedroom fire, toasting crumpets or anything else toastable. Midway through the night, Beth would say: "Right ho, blokes, eyes on the fire." At which cue she would undress. On the "Okay now" call, we would resume, with, this time, Beth in bed, and the small soiree continuing, until, one by one, we made our way home.
 {Years later, our paths were to cross again, at 2GB in Sydney where, for a time, we did a news commentary - a sort of husband and wife discussing the news thing - written by journalists. If it had been a raging success, it would still be on today.}
 And then there was the outside dunny. As the radio station had been a house, and country houses rarely had sanitary plumbing facilities on the inside, and as it was quite possible that the house and dunny had been built in the days before the town was sewered, it was not at all unreasonable that the lavatory was a few steps to the rear of the building.
 The modern radio station has one thing common to all radio stations. It has a speaker in each and every toilet. Thus a member of the program staff can go for the necessary, sure of what is happening to the air program at any time. And this is, I think you'll agree, ismuch civilised.
 [At 3SH I once left the studio building in the night to drive down to the bus depot to collect some program material which had  just arrived. The old Vauxhall's radio was useless. On arriving back at the station, I discovered that the air program, being played from a disk, had only proceeded two minutes into a fifteen minute program. So, for the preceding seven minutes or so, our listeners had heard only: "And the very next thing to happen ..... and the very next thing to happen ...... and the very next thing to happen ......", as the disc backtracked. The technician on duty claimed that he hadn't noticed it, as all programs were boring anyway!}
 However, there was no speaker in the 3SH outside dunny; and I'm sure Melbourne head office would not have agreed to any extra expenditure for such a staff amenity, possibly thinking it an excuse for the staff to rest and enjoy in company time.
 When we were in playful mood - as so many of us were, so often - we would see the duty announcer, with a three minute record playing, streaking out to the dunny. One would then sneak up and lock him in. Loud and plaintive were the cries for release. Many a time a puffing announcer arrived back at the desk, not a split second too early.
 If one of the staff was seen to enter the dunny, magazine in hand, one would leave a pause of, say, thirty seconds, and then chuck a very large rock on the tin roof. In such ways time was whiled away.
 One little piece of geography made Swan Hill different from most of the towns along the Murray. It had no corresponding town on the New South Wales side. Indeed, the only sign of habitation to the north was a pub at the end of the bridge. On the Victorian side of the same bridge was the Police Station. Thus the Catholic Hour came into being.
 On Saturday afternoons, with the pub in full swing, an abnormal number of Victorians crossed into New South Wales. The beer was the same; but there was gambling. On a flat piece of land next door to the pub, and within full view of the Victorian Police, the SP bookmaker became a lot more public, with the prices offered on the horses shown on his board, attached to a tree. As well there was a very large two-up game, along with crown and anchor and roulette. The games started at about the time of the first race, and concluded at sundown. The event must have been well run, as I never heard a complaint. Folklore had it that, some years before, the New South Wales cops had come down from the nearest town, Moulamein, some 44 miles {they used miles then} up the track, pinched all the gamblers, hired a bus to take them to Moulamein, put them before a special court, fined each a token amount - and then left them to find their own way home.
 On Sunday mornings, the same hotel was open between ten and noon, while the Victorian pubs were shut firm. Many Swan Hill locals, and thirsty visitors, crossed the bridge, passing the Police Station, to partake at bar prices. Those, like myself, who had come from either golf or tennis were arrayed in sporting clothes. Those with ties on had come straight from Mass. Hence - the Catholic Hour.
 On my holiday at the end of a year at 3SH, I went back to Sydney and my family. I did one other thing: popped into 2GB and applied for a job. Ever since a kid, I had this dream, of broadcasting on 2GB. Each time I called, 2GB was kind enough to give me an audition and the "don't call us - we'll call you" treatment. This time, however, it was different. The 2GB manager, or one of his assistants, kindly said, "We don't have anything for you right now; but how would you be interested in another capital city station within the Macquarie Network?" I thought that Melbourne wouldn't be so bad, so I said yes, very quickly. And that's how I got the job . . . in Hobart!
 3SH had been a good and happy station. More, it had been good to me, giving me the discipline I badly needed for the next step in my career. I always swore I'd go back there - even if I have the aversion ever to return to a place that has been pleasurable. Almost made it once. I was competing in a Round-Australia car trial, but blew up in Northern Queensland and had to withdraw. Maybe one day. I hope so. 
CHAPTER 8:  If, during the aeons of time, Bass Strait hadn't happened, and Tasmania had been a part of Victoria, Australia would have lost the gem in the crown. {That a gem should be down the bottom of the crown is of no import, surely?}. Those few nautical miles of raging water has kept Tasmania sane. For Tasmanians are Tasmanians. The rest of us are "Mainlanders" - and don't you damn well forget it. Unfortunately, we are also Big Brothers - or many of us, lacking any assurance other than "big is great" - give that unfortunate impression. And Tasmanians, very rightly, hate us for it. It is not possible to become an instant Tasmanian - and rightly so. I was to have five years there, beginning to be accepted towards the latter months. Isolation has several benefits. Car theft, for instance, is low; as, once one has pinched a car, where do you take it? It is not possible to get it out of the State.
 I was there long before the greedy takeover period of Australia's recent history. Thus, things native to Tasmania were very proudly announced as same. In Hobart, there was Cascade Beer, made right there, South of the city, from the waters that flowed down from the imposing Mount Wellington. Cascade was of Hobart - but not of Tasmania. In the North there was Boag's Beer; and no Northerner would dare be seen with a Cascade in hand.
 Rivalry between North and South was greater than even between Sydney and Melbourne. The annual football match - they played Australian Football - caused so many ugly scenes in the crowd that, for a few years, it was played neither in Launceston or Hobart, but in a small town equidistant. They did not even share public holidays: the Hobart Regatta was balanced with the Launceston Show Day.
 The twin-engined Convair came in over Cambridge Airport, depositing this young radio announcer, set to learn as he earned. Rather surprisingly, there was nobody at the airport to meet me, so I got on the bus to the city. There was nobody at the bus terminal, either. Arranging to leave my luggage, I sought directions to 7HO. Walking a block or two, there was a music store in an old building. I walked in the adjacent entrance, climbed the stairs past the Australia Cafe {which I was to know and love} and on the top floor, the radio station.
 I walked in, saying to the girl at the reception desk, "G'day. I'm John Pearce." "That's nice," she replied. Pause. "I've hoped to work here." Then all hell broke loose. David Wilson, the Chief Announcer appeared from nowhere, blushing to the tune of, "Geeze, I'm sorry; we were expecting you tomorrow." Already I was on Tasmanian time.
 As this is not a work of history, and I'm writing all this from memory, having kept no diaries at the time, I may get some of the chronology wrong. But, as I recall it, I was taken to a boarding house, a wonderful made-over early Tasmanian mansion of two floors. There in a joined outhouse that may have been staff quarters one hundred years earlier, I shared a room with another of 7HO's announcers, a name that was to become very famous in our industry; Bob Rogers.
 The radio station did not give the impression of being new. Indeed, because of the war, and post-war restrictions, there was very little sparkling equipment around. The technical people had done a great job of improvisation.
 The control room contained the station's original transmitter. The main transmitters were on the top of Mount Nelson, just down river from Mount Wellington. The one at the studio was hardly ever used; being only a standby should we lose all communication with the mountain. And it was a good thing that the old one remained unused, for there was a theatre next door. On the odd occasion that the studio transmitter was called upon, its signal didn't go very far, but it did get into the soundtrack of the movie house. And there was virtually nothing that could be done about it.
 The general layout was, to say the least, quaint. There were two studios, one at either end of the building. Offices, record library and the like were in the middle. The Control Room was in the front of the building, next to the main studio. Here, it was possible to have a view of one's control operator {for this was the first time I was to work with anyone helping me present my program}. But, if one was working from the studio at the rear of the building, it all had to be done in the most complicated fashion, with a mixture of cues, clicks and intercom.
 The announcer, in either studio, played only the music records. All other parts of the program, including shows recorded on massive sixteen inch discs that played for fifteen minutes per side, [long-playing, microgroove, vinyl LPs came into being while I was at 7HO - likewise tape recording] also recorded commercials and recorded themes, were played from the Control Room. All this was easy if you could see your operator. You just pointed when you wanted something to happen.
 From the other studio, it was very different. The scenario might have been something like {with a show coming to a conclusion} you would call the operator on the intercom, saying: "When this ends, I'll do a 'listen again next week' bit, then you play the Harris commercial, I'll do the Davis commercial live, a time call from me, and then you play the opening theme for the next show, fade it after ten seconds, and I'll do the opening, fade it up again, cross to the recorded commercial, and then to the episode track of the next show." Surprisingly, it worked. Well . . . most of the time it did.
 I can't remember from the start what shift I was given. There were no specialists in those days. If you were an announcer, you were an all-rounder. Indeed, I was to see one of my mates sacked, because he insisted he become a disk jockey, doing nothing else but playing tops of the pops.
 David Wilson was about ten years older than the rest of us, and, as such, quite a father figure. He was the Chief Announcer, and we were happy to go along with his rulings.
 There was another commercial radio station 7HT; but they were not of the Macquarie, or any other, network. We had the majority of the big shows. They probably did a lot of good local programming. But, as they didn't have surveys in those days, and there was plenty of business for us both, we lived without any disharmony. Advertisers equated their advertising on what it sold, not a survey figure of how many people were supposed to have listened to the commercial. Pretty healthy. We just didn't speak to the 7HT people, although they were only a block up the road. Maybe we drank at different pubs.
 There were two ABC stations, but, as they thought us commercial people below their station, didn't have much intercourse with them, either. But they had more money for production than we; and were able to produce programs with live music, including the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, a smaller, but very competent brother of the ABC orchestras on the mainland.
 7HO was the first station I was to work on with recording facilities. And the recording was to disc. One disc lathe with a recording motor capable of turning at either seventy-eight revs per minute or thirty-three and one third. The recording medium was a steel-based disc, covered with black acetate. The record was instantly repayable, and didn't smash if dropped. However it scratched easily, and had to be handled with more care than most announcers or operators liked to exercise, particularly when they were in a hurry. The thin, hair-like acetate cut from the record during recording was known as "swarf". It was highly flammable. One of the party games was to get a little of it, put it in an ashtray and light it. It burned very rapidly, rather like a flashlight on a camera.
 We fronted Elizabeth Street, one of the main streets of Hobart. The main studio opened out onto the street. It was possible to open the double glass windows and have access to the street, either from the main studio or the control room. One of our technicians, a strange fellow, used to collect the swarf from a day's recording, and rather than take it home {it must not be left in the building overnight for reasons of fire insurance}, made it up into little bombs. Wrapping the swarf in paper with a little wick sticking out, he would light it and throw the bomb out into the street, two floors below. It always went off long before reaching street level. The only problems were with what was below. Hobart had quaint double-decked trams running along Elizabeth Street; and the top deck was open. Apart from having one of these swarf bombs explode into a flash close to one, it was terrifying to the point of becoming heart attack stuff. The management got to hear about it, and the practice was outlawed, upon pain of instant dismissal.
 Maybe it was Hobart's isolation from the Mainland {never call the larger island to the north "Australia"}, but some interesting characters seemed to gravitate. One was an announcer called Harry, a chap with a delightful voice. Unfortunately he was less than honest. After he had been dismissed, management checked his application for the job, and the reference accompanying it, one of them from 3DB in Melbourne, when it was discovered that the signature at the bottom of the letter of high praise, bore little resemblance to that of 3DB General Manager, Dave Worrell.
 Harry also made the error during a competition he was running on the station, awarding the jackpot prize to none other than his own girl friend. Management was alerted to this by a friendly taxi driver, only a few minutes after the broadcast. Harry left us and went to work elsewhere, doing something continuingly dishonest; as the next thing we realised Harry was in Risdon Jail.
 Upon his discharge a few months later, he was befriended by a milkman, for whom Harry then went to work. Only a month or two later, Harry shot through to Adelaide and places further with, not only the milkman's takings which he was on the way to bank, but also with the milkman's wife!
 Then here was Bill, a good announcer, but well in the hands of Demon Drink. At the time he was doing evening shifts, and was decidedly bleary of speech towards the end of the evening. Management checked his sobriety as he commenced for the night, and also with he panel operator, asking if Bill left the building while the shows were on. The pub was only around the corner. He had not. Later, and after he had left the station because of his lack of control in the area of alcohol, someone looked out of the window of the gents dunny, discovering a lot of empty bottles on the roof of the neighbouring building. Also there was one, unconsumed, in the cistern of the gents' lavatory, where Bill kept them cool.
 The hotel around the corner was our "watering hole". There was a little back bar, almost exclusively ours. We didn't stay for long drunken sessions, but just "one or two to lay the dust" {dust in Hobart?!}, on the way home. It was a very friendly place, and we had a significant rapport with the publican.
 I had been bitten by the photographic bug. The State Government Film Unit was just across the road, and they had approached me to do the commentaries on a couple of documentaries. Thrilling stuff: hydatids in dogs, and road safety. But Norman Laird, the photographer-in-charge had just returned from a year on Macquarie Island in Antarctica, and he wanted me to do the voice over for a documentary which found its way around the world. The unit was in no shape to pay me for rehearsals, and so the magic word Contra raised its head, and I agreed to do the rehearsals, and lend a hand with writing the script, in return for photography lessons and a reasonable use of the excellent darkroom facilities.
 Thus, one night at the beginning of the 1950s, instead of going to the pub for a drink after work, I took the trolley bus home to the flat I'd just acquired. There, by blacking out the kitchen, I was able to develop and contact print some of my photographic efforts.
 Radio and practical joking have always been allied. When someone inquired of my absence from the pub, one of our midst, right off the top of his head, said, "Haven't you heard? Old Pearce has been selected to go to Korea as a war correspondent?"
 {Had I, years before, accepted the suggestion to join the Fleet Air Arm, I might have been killed in Korea, trying to land an aircraft on the tiny deck of a carrier. But that is another story.}
 The war correspondent story should have finished right there. But, as often happens, it took off like a bushfire; and the bloke who started it thought it would be a pity to put it out right away. Before they knew what was happening, the publican had arranged a farewell-to-our-brave-war correspondent party for the following Friday. Naturally, they told everyone but me.
 Again on the Friday, I went straight home from work to the flat and to my photography. Munching a sandwich between the developer, the fixer and the print washing, the doorbell rang. The ringer was one of our drinking mob, a hire car owner, who had come to take me to my party. Without telling me why or where, I was given moments to get out of my darkroom clothing and into his hire car. By the time I arrived at the pub, there was a farewell cake, free grog, and not a little embarrassment. The guy who started the story was there, apologising and promising never to do anything like that again. I was totally confused, though, having the hire car that brought me to take me home, I stopped counting the drinks.
 The story had to have a happy ending, and we did our best to make it so. One of the props for the road safety film had been a soldiers' tin helmet. It had been painted white to represent a traffic island in the middle of an intersection. We took the helmet and lettered it "WC" {for war correspondent}. I still had my old Air Force battle jacket, wings and all. We then went to our friends at the Hobart Police and borrowed the fiercest pistol in their armoury. They happened to have a German Luger with long barrel, enough to terrify anyone. Then, on a building site, they discovered a broken window. So, I was posed, microphone in one hand, Luger in the other with my WC hat and looking out of the broken window. Real wartime stuff! To top it all I smoked a pipe in those days, it looked all very Errol Flynn {a Tasmanian, by the way!}. The photo was framed and presented to the publican, who hung it in pride of place up until the time I left. I also had a print which, sadly, has become misplaced, or I'd be showing it to you right here.
CHAPTER 9:  Though I had intended this to be totally autobiographical, some stories told of the pioneering days of 7HO should be written here. For I fear that, if I don't tell them as they were told to me, nobody will bother to write them at all. Whether you believe them is up to you. Having been in the atmosphere of the place - I do.
 The 7HO transmitter site is unique. It is on the top of a mountain. Television and FM radio transmitters are supposed to be high up, as their signal is line-of-sight, tending to disappear if hills get in the road. Radio signals in the AM band are different. As we discovered when the manager of 3SH had the earth mat rotary hoed, the signal you hear from an AM station is reflected from a layer of earth, to about three hundred kilometres in the sky - about where the atmosphere runs out. From there, it bounces back to earth, and to your radio receiver. Amazing? But, there's more. It works best if the earth under the transmitting aerial is damp, making for a better jumping-off point. I guess the technical people would make a more accurate fist explaining it. But you wouldn't understand it.
 In the early days, the damp earth bit was unknown, and many original transmitting sites for radio were built in high hills. Since then, most of them have been moved to swampy ground. 7HO had an advantage. Though it was high on Mount Nelson, overlooking Hobart City, it was located at an indentation in the ground - maybe an old baby volcano? - and, therefore, it was damp underfoot. In other words, it was the ideal setting for an AM radio transmitter.
 That having been said, let's look how it operated. Today, transmitters are so efficient, state-of-the-art, that they require no personal supervision. The transistor and solid state circuitry have made this possible. Back in the times under examination, the transmitters needed not only lots of valves, but technicians in attendance at all operating times. The least they had to do was make hourly readings of the dials, metering the transmitter's functions. It was also often the most they had to do. Most of the things work on the principle of, "If it ain't broken - don't fix it."
 Mount Nelson was an isolated place. An all-weather road climbed out from Sandy Bay, near the site of the casino at Wrest Point, up past the 7HO transmitter and on to the top of the mountain, where tourists made Kodak rich. It offers a better overall picture of Hobart than the top of the higher Mount Wellington.
 The bus ran each afternoon, passing the 7HO transmitter at about two-thirty. It went on to the lookout, returning some fifteen minutes later. This was a perfect arrangement for the technicians. Some of them had their own cars. But it was a lot easier to go up by bus, relieve the chap who's been there for the previous twenty-four hours; and farewell him as he made his way down the mountain, listening to the tourists eulogising over the view.
 The new technician would read his meters, enter the log, and settle down for the day. There was a fully equipped workshop, and some smaller work {that which could be carried} was done at the transmitter. The bulk of the technical work was done back at the studio, where it was more accessible to home base. Nevertheless, the workshop at the transmitter was ideal for "foreign orders", fixing friends' radios, or building equipment for themselves.
 Of course, they never listened to the program going to air. This would have been far below their dignity. In fairness, their ears were tuned to just three things, distortion, low levels and silence. Let any of these happen, and the technician would be on the phone to the studio in a flash.
 The building had two more rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom. Depending upon the weather, the technician would climb into his pyjamas as the sun went down. There were no nocturnal visitors. Car-borne lovers had plenty of places to go without proceeding all the way to the top of our mountain.
 The station's programs ended at eleven at night, leaving the technician with two tasks, to grunt "goodnight" to the studio as he turned off the transmitter. Set the alarm clock, call the telephone people for a wake-up call in case it didn't work, and go to bed. He need not be awake much before five-thirty, as the transmitter only needed a ten minute warming-up period. He could get out of bed, hit a switch, make a fast trip to the outside toilet, and be back in time to test the transmitter. This was done by transmitting a clear tone, and then letting the studio know all was well. The control operator at the studio would then play a record and, in his one moment of glory for the day, go into the studio and make a test announcement, before the real announcer commenced.
 Back up the mountain, with everything under control, the technician went about his morning ablutions, cooked himself a fine English breakfast, washed up, shaved and read the meters every hour. After his lunch, it was time to clean up and get ready for his relief. The bus arrived, they changed over and, because the technician had done a full twenty-four hour shift, he got the next two days off! Many of us envied this arrangement. Mind you, had there been some irregularity, he had to know which valves to change.
 Though there was a plentiful supply of electricity, hydro-electric without any thought of disruption, and telephone lines for communication and broadcast, there was no town water. The high rainfall usually had the tank full and, if the technician missed one shower in every three days, the chance of his wife leaving him was minimal. And that covered everything but . . .sanitation.
 The council had no intention of supplying a pan service, and the cost of a septic installation was out of the question, so a contractor had been brought in to dig a very deep hole. Over this was placed the typical, outback Australian dunny - a beaut one-holer if ever you saw one. By leaving a window of the transmitter shack open, the technician was able to listen to the programs while carrying out his essential bodily functions.
 Everything went perfectly. No practical jokes, as technicians having little sense of humour as announcers understand it, would never undermine the trust of their colleagues. But one thing was forgotten . . . the wind.
 Being on the top of a mountain, the transmitter had no protection from the elements; and one day the impossible happened. A particularly nasty wind, blowing all the way up, unhampered, from Antarctica, shook our installation to its foundations. The main building withstood the blast - but not the dunny! It fell over. Again, this would have not been a very great drama, except it was occupied at the time. The technician on duty had chosen those moments for his own, bodily, duties. He was in the dunny when it fell over!
 Even that would not have been tragic, except for the fall of the coin, the roll of the dice. For, when this little edifice fell, it had a choice of which of the four sides should be on the bottom and, therefore, closest to the earth. Sure enough, the dunny fell down - door downwards!
 Picture, if you haven't already, the outhouse down and out, with a 7HO technician inside it, door downwards. He did escape, though not without a fair bit of trauma. His choices were to try to crawl out through the hole in the seat. Apart from the lack of hygiene, this would have been most dangerous, as the chance of falling down the hole in the ground, on top of all that had fallen before, was not, to say the least, enticing.
 The second alternative would have been to wait until his relief - a well-chosen word - arrived on the two-thirty bus. But that was more than four hours away.
 Happily, he had changed from his pyjamas and slippers and, with his sturdy shoes, he proceeded to kick the weatherboard dunny to bits! Finally he had made an escape route, gone to the telephone and reported to the Chief Engineer back at the studio what had happened.
 Was it lonely at nights at the transmitter atop the mountain? It was certainly no place for the feint-hearted. Hearsay had it that there were "goings on" in the valley below, the valley into which no public roads went. They said that a couple of families lived in that forgotten glen; and, from time to time there were "Martins and Coys" type wars. Certainly there were clear sounds of shooting from the valley, as, one hoped, either family foraged for food, rather than looking for the youth who had deflowered the daughter of the other family.
 Assuredly there was the occasion - and I was shown the bullet hole - when a three-o-three came up out of the valley, penetrating the roof of the transmitter building. The technician on duty was said to have jumped upon his motor bike, ridden down the mountain, and told the Chief Engineer to go up and look after his own transmitter!
 Pioneering is not all that exciting when viewed in retrospect. We all remember the name of the first man to step upon the moon, but nobody recalls the second. In the fullness of time, who cares who was first to use the Bankstown sewerage system? At the time, however, a first is a first; and 7HO was, as far as history can deduce, the first radio station in Australia regularly to broadcast the chock chimes from the local General Post Office.
 By today's satellite standards, no great engineering feat. But the station had obtained permission to install a microphone in the tower of the Hobart GPO. On the hour, as required, the studio's control room operator would open a fader, and listeners would be transported to the tower above Elizabeth and Macquarie Streets, their metaphorical ears only a metre or so away from the clock chimes.
 A couple of times per year, the Chief Engineer of the day, a dour Scot, would make a maintenance trip to the tower, mainly to see that no moisture had penetrated his microphone. Access to the tower was not directly from the inside of the post office. One had to proceed to the top of the main stairs, where a door opened to the roof. A walk across the roof took one to the tower, and then, inside it, to the clock mechanism - and our microphone.
 Everything was normal - except just once. Coming back from the tower, the Chief Engineer discovered that someone {it may even have been a tricky wind gust} had closed the door leading back to the inside of the GPO. He knocked, but nobody answered, as there weren't employees in that part of the building. Our brave technician was, therefore, stranded on the roof top.
 He went to the parapet and tried calling down into the streets below. But the general traffic noises, particularly the steel-upon-steel of the trams, drowned his voice long before it reached the people level, some four floors below.
 In his pockets, he found just one piece of paper. On it he wrote a "Help" note and dropped it towards the roadway. Unhappily a tricky zephyr grabbed it and sent the note floating towards, and finally into, the River Derwent.
 What to do? It was starting to get cold. Nobody would be looking for the Chief Engineer for hours yet, as, being the boss, he made up his own work routines. Finally, he remembered that the world of technology offered him a positive answer. If he wasn't able to go down, he could go up.
 Re-entering the tower, he climbed towards the bell chimes, and his precious microphone. Looking at his watch, he knew that, ten minutes hence, the station's control operator would be opening the fader to broadcast the chimes. Hoping his watch was accurate, and looking for the first sign of movement from the clock's mechanism, he cleared his throat.
 And, just seconds before four on that fateful afternoon, as all the children of the city were listening for their carefully-chosen programs, the Scottish voice would be heard fairly shouting: "For Christ's sake - let me out!!"
 One final piece of pioneering - and I promise you no dunny stories.
 Up until the time of which I write, radio had broadcast sporting events without any thought of having to pay for doing so. Radio told the sporting organisers that the broadcasts would enhance the public awareness for the sport, and more would then pay to attend. They got away with it for years.
 Australian football was, and still is, very big in Tasmania. In this alone, Tassie is an extension of Victoria.
 Towards the end of a season, the football league started asking 7HO for a fee to enter the grounds and broadcast the football. The station refused. This was big news, and the "Mercury" the excellent local newspaper, ran with the story. The football people said it would, commencing the following weekend with the semi-finals, refuse 7HO the right to enter the North Hobart football ground.
 By one of those sublime freaks of geography, along with the station's history of fine community service, the football ground was next door to the Blind Institute; and there was a very large tree right behind - indeed, above - the usual 7HO broadcast box. The football landline was re-booked to the Blind Institute, and in a blaze of publicity the commentator did the broadcast from a fork of the tree. His operator was sitting, freezing at the tree's base.
 The following week, attention still bubbling at this no-win story, Saturday brought high winds, and the football commentator had to be fortified with half a bottle of rum before he would climb the tree.
 The story was becoming ridiculous. David was giving Goliath a hiding in spades, to mix a sporting metaphor.
 During the week, the football authorities rushed up a large hessian screen between the Blind Institute's tree and the football ground, obliterating the commentator's view of the match.
 Well, the way the story was told me, fortune was with the broadcasters, and, completely mysteriously on Friday night . . . the hessian screen burned to the ground!
 By next season the radio station was paying fees to broadcast football!
CHAPTER 10:  And so Bill, the one who did breakfast sessions by memory, and who had made a recording of time calls, one minute apart, between six and six thirty in case he didn't "just make it" for the start of the breakfast session, invited me to the Wrest Point cabaret, Saturday night, with his girl friend and a "new nurse just down from Sydney". I am delighted to report that this latter lady consented to be my wife, and still remains so, also becoming the mother of our four fine sons.
 It must have been a culture shock for the good nurse who, having just graduated as a trained nursing sister from a Sydney hospital, and who, with a friend was about to "nurse her way around the world" suddenly met up with the "unreal" world of radio and the rest of show business.
 Happily I can report from many years later, that the good lady had no interest in radio in general, nor my programs in particular and, therefore, has been able to keep me just within the bounds of sanity.
 Not that it came easily. There was that time when, within the first year of marriage, a sexy female voice rang home {I have always had a listed phone number, if you know how to find it}, asking for me. My wife replied that I was not home, but on the air, doing the 7HO Saturday night program. The sexy voice replied: "That's what you think. He's here with me. Haven't you heard of pre-recorded programs?" The whole thing was so ridiculous that she was giggling when I came home after midnight.
 And, as I ramble, speaking of midnight, Hobart really made it the "go to bed" hour at that time. Maybe it’s still the same. The last tram and trolley bus left the Hobart GPO right on the chimed stroke of midnight: ten-thirty Sundays. If you worked until then, there were only few alternatives of getting home. The radio station would pay for a taxi, which wasn't all that bad as one of the major shareholders also owned the taxis. If you didn't have any transport of your own, you could do something sneaky, and pre-record the last ten minutes - five would do if you were brave - and leave the control room operator to play it to air while you scampered for the GPO, a couple of blocks away.
 And that brought one of the funniest situations I can ever remember. I don't think I'd been on the air that night, but I was on the last trolley bus home to South Hobart where I had the flat. Just before midnight, with every seat on the trolley bus occupied, yet with none standing, a young local man in his twenties got aboard. He had obviously been taking more than a single glass of the fine product of the Cascade Breweries. Yet he was in a jolly mood, and not at all objectionable.
 He slowly walked the length of the bus, looking for a seat, yet discovering none unoccupied. However, he did find a mate, sitting there with a girlfriend. That the seated one didn't want to recognise the lonely drinking chap did not get through. Recognising his seated friend, the standing one said: "G'day, Fred." Fred pretended not to notice the greeting. So it was repeated.
 "G'day, Fred." A little louder. This time it had to be acknowledged.
 "Hi, Jack."
 "You been to the dance, or something?"
 "Yea, Jack."
 A pause.
 "I've been to the pub." Nobody would have argued that. A second pause, at which time Jack must have realised that more had to be said.
 "Hey, Fred?"
 "Yes, Jack."
 "Yer getting any, Fred?"
 In that moment of electrifying silence, everyone on the bus with breath indrawn for what had to be the answer to the meaning of life, Fred replied:
 "No, Jack."
 "Me neither," Jack replied with the philosophy that would have earned him a Ph D. from any respectable university. "No, she's a scarce old commodity!"
 And, before anything could be said to top an unstoppable line, the clock atop the GPO tower chimed midnight, the trolley bus started, and Jack was jolted back a few rows, left to ruminate on "getting any" being the scarcest commodity in Hobart!
 About a year later, three things happened. The lady graciously agreed to marry me, my immediate superior died most suddenly, and technology started flowing into radio. Let's take them in that order.
 Both from Sydney, my bride and I came home to get married. That was a lot cheaper than freighting-in the relatives to Hobart. Even the getting to Sydney was not without event. Mr fiancée was aboard the flying boat, the direct means of transport, when it hit a submerged log on take-off! The captain was able to beach it before it sank. Overnight repairs were carried out and the flight resumed the following day. I came up to Sydney about a week later, as I had no trousseau to prepare.
 We did all the traditional things, including getting married at my old school's chapel at three on a Saturday afternoon. We honeymooned at Palm Beach for a couple of weeks. During this time, a drama was enacted in Hobart.
 At three o'clock on the same Saturday afternoon, the exact time we were being made man and wife, David Wilson, 7HO's Chief Announcer, playing tennis in Hobart, went up for a smash at the net, had the most massive of heart attacks, and was dead on arrival . . on arrival back on the court. He was a great bloke, and a father-figure to the younger announcers.
 I don't know how the message got to me, as one is supposed to be hiding from well-wishers on one's honeymoon. But the news did, albeit in some garbled form. I grabbed the phone, called the Boss in Hobart to check the details. Yes, it had been as reported.
 As I was expressing my wish that condolences be passed on, the Boss said: "You can have his job, if you like." This was a shock. though one, at that time of life, is always hoping for future promotion. I don't know if I really am a leader of people, but seem to have scored some leadership roles through life.
 Anyhow, the Boss assured me that I could have the remainder of the honeymoon - not that the matter was ever otherwise considered - and I was able to tell my bride of a day or so, that she had married 7HO's Chief Announcer - Studio Manager.
 Now, that's a pretty-sounding title. Radio has always been good at passing on sweet-sounding titles. Very often they are in lieu of money. But, as this has always been an ego-driven industry, titles do not go amiss.
 Thus I was able to return to Tasmania with a new bride, a new job and, as the cliché says: "the first day of the next part of my life."
 And then came the technology.
 CHAPTER 11:  Radio came out of World War Two with about the same technology as it had five years before. However, as so often happens, wars accelerate technology.
 Before the war, radio was able to open microphones and turn them off. It would play music from record, but only from seventy-eights, meaning no single piece of music could be longer than four and a half minutes. In the case of classical works, radio needed to buy two copies of the record, so it could commence part two immediately part one ended on the other turntable. The other trick was trying to turn over the record before the listener was aware of it. This sometimes brought disasters as, in haste, records had been known to be smashed in the turning!
 Sound effects for radio plays were most often produced live in the studios. Shaking a piece of tin was a thunder storm, marbles in a drum sounded like rain. {It sounded even better if one of the actors said: "Listen to the rain."}. Applause was often recorded and sounded like it. And, of all the effects records, there was only one of a car crash. Thus, every crash heard in a radio play was the same crash. And so on.
 If a play required an echo sound, it could not be done electronically. In one radio production house, there was a loudspeaker at the top of some concrete fire stairs, with a microphone at the bottom. At Macquarie in Philip Street, Sydney, the echo chamber was the executive garage. And precautions had to be taken that nobody started a car during the play; particularly if the play was set before the invention of the motor car.
 Most broadcasts were live-to-air. Some radio stations - mostly only city ones - had disc recording facilities. Country ones didn't.
 Almost simultaneously came the long-playing record, and magnetic recording.
 Sound recording was hampered by the amount of time one could get upon a disc. Yet, when motion films added sound, they did it with discs being played in synchronisation with the action upon the screen. The discs were large - sixteen inches in diameter - and played for some fifteen minutes. As a reel of film played for ten, this was an excellent arrangement. Keeping the disc in sync with the actors' mouths on the screen was another story, and one which must be told by someone with a better knowledge of Biograph projection than I.
 There had been some experiments with sound recording. The first recordings were made on a cylinder. But most were on a flat disk of wax. The sound was translated to the disc by wobbling the grove sideways. On playing back the equipment would recognise the wobbles and translate that back into sound. There had been other methods. Instead of the needle going sideways, it had made its marks by going deeper into the disk. And this was the way it had been done on cylinders. The method was known as Hill and Dale, as the needles went up and down, instead of sideways. Hill and Dale was said to get higher fidelity of recording.
 The real problem was the record itself. It was made of shellac, broke when dropped, and did not work at all well if played slower than seventy eight revolutions per minute.
 But then came the newest buzzword, the great breakthrough - plastic. Using vinyl as the base for records, the grooves could be spaced closer together, thereby getting more of them to the record, and more time on the recording. Also, the plastic allowed the disc to spin slower. These two elements combined to bring the new word - Microgroove.
 Suddenly, instead of four minutes on one side of a record, thirty minutes were available. And that was the biggest event, right through to the invention of the Compact Disk. {Music on tape and tape cassettes were relatively popular for home use, but never made it to broadcasting in any real way.}
 Overnight, the storage of music at a radio station was revolutionised. And a new system of cataloguing was needed. Prior to this, a good record librarian would know where everything was, Now a filing system was needed. If only computer data bases had been available. But they came almost two generations later.
 Microgroove needed a different stylus to play the records. No longer would announcers or control room operators be required to change the steel needles at each playing. In their place came diamond or sapphire styli. A revolution indeed.
 But the next one - magnetic portable recording - was even bigger.
 The first of these is no longer with us - the wire recorder. In the second half of the 1930s, experimenters, mainly in Germany, were able to magnetise a piece of metal passing through a variable magnet. On playback the magnetism could be translated back into sound. One of the early systems recorded on very large reels of steel tape. But then it was realised that the system didn't need the width of a steel tape to work. Indeed a piece of wire, no thicker than a human hair, was all that was required.
 And this quickly found its way out of the laboratory. One of the most famous early experiments, still preserved, came from another breakthrough. The Benny Goodman Orchestra, wowing Americans with its weekly radio show, comprised such musicianship, even if non-classical, as to be invited to play the pace-setting and now-famous concert in Carnegie Hall, New York. The whole concert was recorded on a single wire recorder. And that recording has been preserved, and re-recorded to the state-of-the-art many times since.
 The wire recorder had many advantages over disc recording. First, though there had been portable disc recorders, it took several people to carry them and set them up. The wire recorder, though clumsy by today's standards {the first one I used, an Australian-made Pyrox, weighed more than 20 kilos}, was truly transportable. All it needed was access to a 240 volt power supply. Into the recorder one plugged a microphone, and it was ready for action.
 I was fortunate to be the right person in the right place at the right time. Radio realised that it was now about to go outside its studios to gather news and news comments. Interviews, previously only possible with people prepared to come to the studios, were now able to be sought out-of-doors.
 When 7HO bought its first wire recorder, I was the bloke using it. And many of the interviewees were going on radio for the first time.
 Hobart's electricity supply, being hydro-powered from the mountains to the north, was excellent. But some of its electrical "plumbing" was, to say the least, antiquated. So, we needed to carry a variety of power plugs to run the recorder. We ran it from two pin, three pin and even light plugs, screw in and bayonet. The next obstacle was locating the interview within reach of the power system. If it was to be outside an office, there were problems. But, we overcame this by carrying a 25 yard drum of power cable. The heavy recorder was getting heavier!
 There was one nasty occurrence when I was recording the beginning of a university procession. Spirits were high, and one undergraduate thought he'd show his power over the media by cutting a cable to the recorder as I was making the program. Had he cut the microphone cord, it would have been nothing more than damn annoying. But, with unshielded scissors, he slashed through the power cord, running out of a window to the recorder. My recording stopped suddenly, as this youth was thrown back with the shock of 240 volts of the best.. He recovered. My technician was able to twist the power lead together to finish the recording. And we got a story. It would have been a bigger story if the student had been fatally electrocuted. But you can't have everything!
 The novelty of being recorded was being spoken of in the clubs. It was status if a radio organisation came to one's office to interview one. {Strange that the same thing is happening with television fifty years later}. And there was one other novelty. People were able to hear themselves - for the first time.
 For, if you speak aloud, you do not hear yourself. All you hear are some head bones rattling, along with the reflected sound, bouncing back off the walls.
 I made an early mistake. Not having complete trust in the equipment, I used to check the last few words recorded before leaving the location, just in case it had to be done all over again. But, hearing this, the interviewee very often asked to hear his interview played back. Although we worked to a somewhat relaxed time frame, winding back the tape and playing back the interview could take up to twenty and more minutes. Also there was a good {or bad} chance that the interview subject, having heard him or herself, was not very happy with the result. They asked if they could do the interview again. In truth we learned that the second effort was more often than not worse than the first. Indeed, I made a rule that we only re-recorded if I was convinced that a mistake of fact had been made.
 The problem with wire was that it was impossible to edit - unless you had two machines - which we didn't. So, if you agreed to repeat an interview recording, you had to repeat it all. They then asked if they could do parts of it again, being disappointed when told that they couldn't. There was only one case when, having heard himself, my subject refused to allow it to be broadcast. We never asked him again; and he disappeared into the obscurity he so rightly deserved.
 I overcame much of the problem by telling my subjects that the recorder was just that, a recorder, and not a playback machine. This was a blind and blatant lie. We only had one wire recorder, both for playback and recording, and this was it! There was the time when, having been refused a preview of his recording, the subject reminded me that, the last time I'd interviewed him, I'd given him a playback in his office first and before broadcast. Closing my eyes, I replied: "The equipment has been modified since." As there were only half-a-dozen people in the Island State who knew a damn thing about wire recorders, the chance of my deception being discovered was slight.
 There was one twist to the "let me hear my voice" dramas. I recall one occasion when a quite prominent person had just been recorded, and asked for a playback. As it was only a short interview, and we were running to time, I agreed. I used to get my fun, studying the subjects, many of them listening to themselves for the first time.
 This one was smiling. When it was all over, he said: "That was very interesting. But, of course, it didn't sound a bit like me."
 Somewhat offended at this slur on our equipment, I said: "But, how about the other voice - mine - same microphone. Did that sound like me?"
 "Oh yes. But you have a trained radio voice."
 One of the problems with wire recorders was the wire itself. Though only three one-thousandths of an inch in diameter, about the same as a human hair, a lot of it fitted upon a single reel. Indeed, it gave us the excellent flexibility of recording a full hour on one spool but, when it stretched, it kinked, and sometimes broke.
 The instructions that came with the wire was, if it broke {or if you wanted to edit by cutting and re-joining the wire - a treacherous job} you could re-join by tying a square knot in the wire, and trimming off the ends either with tiny nail scissors, or burning it back with a cigarette. {Everyone smoked in those days}. But, when the wire got really old, and it kinked and broke, it tended to spring all over the room. Many were the stories of people trying to salvage program material thus spread on the floor.
 I only had one experience of this, after which I demanded we threw out a spool of wire at the first signs of irregularity. The case was the opening of a dam and hydroelectric station by none other than Mr A.A. Caldwell, a senior minister of the Federal Government. We were the only broadcasting organisation covering the opening, and everyone knew it. The function went without dramas - if you didn't count the three times the motorcade stopped on the way back to Hobart, so the Minister and a few of his mates could have a drink at a wayside pub.
 But, when we got back to the studio and were rewinding the wire, it exploded! Two of our technicians worked on it for a couple of hours, and, with literally minutes only before broadcast, we got a version of it to air. We had found the start, the ending and some of the stuff in the middle. I went on the air live and filled in the bits that were still on the control room floor.
 When it was over, the technicians and I went to the pub around the corner, had a steadier, and told each other what fun it had been!
 And then came tape.
CHAPTER 12:  Some have since said that the coming of tape recording marked the end of quality performance. But that was what they said when movies came along. Both meant that a performance could be recorded and edited before being brought to the audience. We have become so used to perfection, that I find it hard to go to an orchestral concert. One bad note will ruin the whole evening for me, for sitting at home, listening to music from a Compact Disc, played through my Hi-Fi {or thorough the 10-speaker Hi-Fi in the car} means that I never need to hear a bum note.
 Before tape recording, radio covered up its own mistakes when it could. Actors who were being paid for each episode of a show they did, made sure that, if at all possible, any mistaken word was corrected within the context of the play.
 If one actor incorrectly said, "Look at that pile of chains over there," he might well be put right by another quickly ad-libbing, "From your angle, they might look like chains, but they are chairs." Thus the error was corrected, and the play proceeded.
 The same for an announcer doing a commercial, "fluffing" {as it is delicately known}, and word-twisting to return to the meaning.
 There are two angles to this. Many an advertiser has been willing to pay more for the spontaneity of an announcer doing his commercials live each time, as opposed to the "produced" and recorded commercial. Conversely, unless the ad-libbing ability of the announcer is well known and respected for ability to sell, far better, in many cases, to have the commercial, or program segment, recorded and checked before broadcast.
 Advertising agencies that live on a percentage of the advertisers' money expended, have been accused to having too many radio commercials recorded, thereby missing out on the ability of the local announcer to sell.
 At the time tape came along, radio feature programs were sometimes recorded without the commercials. These were played in at the time of broadcast. So the stations had to have a competent control room operator. The show might start with a recorded introductory track from the feature disc, cross to a commercial track from a second disc, at which time the feature disk needed to be cued to the start of the main episode track, which was then played. At the end of the feature part, came another commercial, probably from another disc, or maybe live, and then a cross to the closing track of the feature, to be faded while the announcer called upon the listening population not to forget to be tuned at the same time tomorrow, or next week, for a continuation of the saga. And this was an easy presentation.
 Behind the scenes, the various pieces of program material needed to be assembled, ready for broadcast on the right day at the right time. Often the feature program had then to be dispatched to another radio station for later playing. Thus the person entrusted with this assembly needed to be one of great system training and follow-through ability.
 The lady in question at 7HO in Hobart was excellent. However, she was a slightly-more-than-middle-aged spinster. On one occasion she needed a particular part of a coming program, and so sent off a telegram that has now become a treasured piece of radio memorabilia. Very simply it read, "Require twelve inch inserts for the Girls of Gottenburg by Sunday latest"! I know the story to be true, I've seen the telegram, which, all these years later, the Sydney recipient of it refuses to give it up - even to posterity.
 The coming of tape, magnetic recording on a strip one-quarter of an inch wide, did away with much of this, as all the elements of the program could be physically integrated into the show before broadcast. All that was necessary at the beginning of a show was to call the time, press one button, and go into a trance for twenty-eight minutes and forty-five seconds.
 And that's what television does today: exactly the same.
 As an evening announcer, way back in Hobart, I used to fill in time while one show was playing in going down one floor to the Australia Cafe and getting my dinner. Jack Polmear, the owner-chef, not only allowed me the run of his kitchen, but showed me how to cook the most desirable omelettes - about the only culinary art I ever mastered. {I carried a portable radio to the kitchen with me, so I could be back in the studio in about twenty seconds should anything go wrong with the program}.
 The first tape recorders were massive things, quite immovable, and supplied to production houses, and city radio stations. I recall seeing the first EMI ones. Typically British, they were made to last, with construction appearing to have been sub-contracted out to the shipyards of Belfast or the Clyde.
 Smaller and transportable ones quickly found their way into all radio stations. They, like the wire recorders they replaced, needed to be connected to a 240-volt power supply. {There had been endeavours; brave new world endeavours; to power them with car batteries, driving devices converting the 6 or 12 volts to 240, and quickly emptying the car batteries. Sure they worked, but it was a major undertaking.}.
 The recorder we first saw was a rack-mounted effort. The technicians at 7HO saw to that. Although it came in a carry case, meaning it could be taken out to places where the recordings were to be made, they rapidly took it out and screwed it, permanently, into the control room rack. This meant that when we programming people needed to make outside recordings, the station management was pressured into buying another one! Maybe it was a good thing after all.
 The tape went through a number of early refinements. The first tapes were paper-based with the oxide upon it. But, paper had so many disadvantages, tearing, ripping and stretching, that it was rapidly replaced with plastic based tapes, the same ones we use today.
Generally speaking, reels were of two sizes: five inch and seven inch. {The big ones at the production houses - ones now in more general use - were of ten and a half inches diameter}. Showing the British and the Americans were ahead of the metric Continentals, sizes were in inches, and recording speeds were in inches per second.
 Originally the British recordings were made at the breakneck speed of thirty inches per second. This was, because of the quality of the oxide on the tape, the only way high fidelity could be achieved. Soon, however, that was reduced to half, fifteen inches per second. But, by the time it got to run of the mill radio stations, it had been halved again, to seven and a half inches a second. This was a very workable arrangement, as a seven inch reel, the size most had decided upon, held a half hour program with a bit left over.
 The next move was for a thinner-base tape, giving an increase of fifty per cent - more than forty five minutes on a spool.
 All of which brought us to editing. If a short commercial was being recorded, and the presenter got a word wrong in, say, a thirty or sixty second read, they did as they still mostly do - go back to the beginning and do it all again. However, if a mistake was made ten minutes into a thirteen minute program, the offending person was known to say: "Oh bugger it. Sorry Fred. Take two". He then kept going, the producer noting the error for edit. {Note,. I said he said "bugger it". No actress would use such a word. Often much stronger! But we were all friends.}.
 Editing was done in a number of ways. Using two or more recorders, the program could be re-recorded up to the error, both tapes stopped, the original wound forward passed the "bugger it", re-cued to the correct starting point, the copy tape also cued, and then both started at the same time. This was known as a "running edit". It was often adopted by engineers who believed that their precious tape should not be cut. We didn't have the time for that nonsense.
 The British suggested method of cutting and joining tape was, like the British of the time, accurate, long, time consuming and boring. You came to the point where you wanted to commence the edit. There you made a mark on the tape with a Chinagraph, a yellow crayon. You would play the tape forward to the end of the part to be removed, stop it and make a second yellow mark. Then it was out with the scissors {brass, non-magnetic}, cut and re-join. The British system was cumbersome. It consisted of editing as film is edited. Acetone fluid was put on the last of the tape - only about a pencil width. It would dissolve the oxide. Then more would be added to both ends, and the glue allowed to dry. If you were in a hurry, it was a damn nuisance.
 The Americans made it a lot easier. After the tape had been cut, the offending piece removed and chucked on the floor, the ends of the tape were aligned and a piece of white adhesive tape - not dissimilar to the tape we use in the office and at home, but somewhat stronger - was whacked on the back. No waiting to dry, no coming unstuck.
 However well the system was worked and re-worked by people doing it every day, there were times when the tape came apart as it was being played to air, and also occasions when the "Oh bugger it, Fred" bits went to air. We have never lost our human frailties.
 Tape recorder manufacturers soon discovered that they could get more on the tape by recording on only half of its width. Then you could turn the reel over and record back on the other side. Double the talking for the same amount of tape. And that suited everyone fine - everyone, that is, except the radio stations. Because, if you cut out some words, you were also cutting out what was on the other track as well. Thus, radio stations insisted their recorders recorded the full width of the tape. You also get better quality that way.
 And this led to a party trick by one of the more amazing people I ever met. He was a technician called Phil, and the nearest thing to being certifiably mad! He had an obsession with magnetic recording right from day one. I remember seeing him in his old Volkswagen, running a tape recorder from the car battery, with a microphone taped to the end of the exhaust pipe. He was determined to obtain the most authentic sound effect to supplement the poor selection of car noises then on record. The only trouble was that not all cars sounded like Volkswagens - in fact no other car sounded like a VW.
 His other trick was a beauty! He had recorded a series of sentences. He would then take one of them and, having turned the tape over, played it backwards. Now it is known that one of the best ways of learning to speak a language in a hurry, should you be about to visit another country, is to buy a language course, which you then play over, book in hand. Phil, this technician, did the same; but, this time, used his own language, the language of English being spoken backwards.
 He became quite a master of these short sentences. His party trick worked with Phil inviting one or more people to come into the control room. He would then take a spool of tape, and prove it virgin of any other recorded material by placing it upon a bulk eraser. He would then take a microphone, turn on the recorder, and then speak half a dozen words of gibberish - or so it sounded. Then he would play it back, so we could hear the gibberish, and, indeed know it to be there.
 Then came the payoff. He would take the tape reels off the recorder, reverse them and play what he had sad - in reverse. And there, to the amazement of the listing throng, was Phil's voice saying: "The Russians are advancing on the Western front."! Why he chose this sentence, I will never know. But, from a confused mass of sounds recorded, the reversal gave us his voice, clearly and precisely.
 To the best of my knowledge, he never did anything else of merit, or worthy of being chronicled here.
 The tape recorder soon found its way into the home. I recall an incident where the staff of a Commonwealth Department asked me if I would show them how to operate the tape recorder they'd just acquired. The idea was for the staff each to record a farewell message to one of their buddies who was leaving. I did this for them. And, at the party the next day, a concealed recorder played the messages to the stupefaction of the departing employee. Pretty kid's stuff by today's standards.
 And then there was the case {and there have been so many of these told that I suppose one must have been true} of the husband (or wife) who hid a microphone in a vase of flowers near the head of the lounge, and the recorder behind the same piece of furniture. The story says that a spouse was caught in loving embrace with someone other than the legal one.
 Maybe that wasn't true; but there were a lot of stories of lovers supposed to have recorded their moments of passion on tape for replay at more relaxed moments. Probably when they had finished and were getting ready for episode two. Today, retailers of video cameras will attest that some of their products are sold for this purpose; just as the Polaroid people will not deny that their sales of instant photography machines increased with the knowledge that people could take photos that didn't have to go through the Kodak Laboratories.
 But there was one radio story I know to be true - for I have heard the tape. Before the advent of television, radio at nights was full, wall to wall, with drama; and people would sit at home and listen to it. One show followed another. Back in the studio, there was boredom. For what does an announcer do while a show is playing? {Today's television booth announcers have the same trouble - though most of their stuff is now recorded}.
 One announcer, one of the great names of radio in those times, found a way to fill in time while the shows were on the air. He would get some of the "Girlie" magazines of the day, and further undress the girls! How was this possible? His equipment consisted of a series of erasing rubbers, from the hard ones used for typed copy, down to the very soft ones artists used. Add to this a collection of soft pencils. With the rubbers, he would erase any costumes the young ladies were wearing. And then, with a lot of gentle labour, he would pencil back the body lines. There was nothing pornographic about this. Indeed, I would compare it with much of the art being sold in the galleries. None of it, however, ever left the studios. Just a handful of us knew where to look for his last night's efforts.
 And then there was the other evening presenter who had young ladies come and see him while he was on the air.
 Now radio has always had a rule that nobody is granted authorisation to visit the studios except with management's permission. This not only makes management feel important, but it also protects equipment from theft and damage. There is not much to pinch from a radio station. But someone running amok with a hammer could have the station off the air for days!
 However, this rule was sometimes observed rather loosely, with friends being in studios as long as their visits did not interfere with the presentation of the programs.
 It became known that, each Sunday night on one capital city station, a lady would visit the announcer on duty. The only others in the building were a couple of journalists in another part of the floor, a control room operator and a technician, locked up in his control room.
 At eight o'clock each Sunday night, the operator would play the tape of the one hour play. The announcer had nothing to do except sit and listen - or be visited by a friend of the opposite gender. They - she and he - would then repair to another part of the building. There were plenty. There were four studios, only one of them on the air. The others came equipped with comfortable places not only to sit, but also to lie down, should that be the idea at the time.
 But studios also came equipped with microphones! As they were there always, few would look upon them as alien. But, for reasons I never discovered, one Sunday someone decided to record the happenings between the evening announcer, and the lady who came to visit him.
 It was not unusual for a microphone on a boom stand to be positioned right above the lounge in Studio D. It was. It was also plugged into a tape recorder in another part of the building. The whole sexual encounter was recorded.
 A few days later, a group of staffers invited the Sunday night announcer into a booth, and commenced playing back the tape recorded earlier. His expressions were beyond description as he realised that he was one of the players. His "mates" had thought it a great joke. But the performer of the first part didn't! "You lousy bastards!" he screamed, as he tore the tape from the recorder. "Rotten bastards!!" He left a vacuum of embarrassment.
 Nothing was ever spoken of the incident again; until; some weeks after the announcer had left the station, it was revealed that a copy of the tape had been made before playing him the original which had been destroyed.
 I wonder where it is today?
CHAPTER 13:  I don't know who started it. Certainly Eric Parrant was doing it in Sydney before we took it up in Hobart. Eric, a jolly fellow had come to the "big smoke" from Perth. He had what was then known as a "women's appeal", back in the days when women admitted to being different from men.
 His had been the natural voice of radio - well-rounded, educated, mature. And that's what a daytime audience was looking for. And he could communicate!
 Today I fear two-way radio has become very much a part of the scene. As one of the pioneers of it, I have seen it go through some pretty interesting {and equally terrible} times. And I'm sure I'll be writing much more of this before I ask you to close the back cover of this book. We have seen managements, lost in the world of talk radio, getting "personalities" {paid more than mere announcers, because they were "names" in other fields of the media and elsewhere} into a studio, telling them "just to talk" and then, when all else fails, "take a few open line calls". Without exception .... well, need I tell you? .... none of those people are still on radio. Their careers were very short.
 But it all started long before two-way radio worked in both directions. First, it wasn't allowed. The authorities from the Postmaster General's Department who ran the whole caboose, didn't much mind what we did within our own studios. But, once we started going beyond them, their red lights flashed. Mostly this happened because they saw themselves losing money. If we, for instance, wanted to do an outside broadcast, it had to come back to the studios via a government-owned-and-paid-for landline. Also, everything broadcast had to be of studio quality. Therefore, any thought of connecting the telephone to the radio station transmitter was right out of the question. And it was not until; massive pressure was exerted, showing that the whole of radio in the United States had needed to use two way radio to survive in the face of competition from the new child television, that they in any way relented. But, long before that came one-way two-way radio.
 Very simply, the radio listener became an interloper, listening in, not upon two sides of a phone conversation, but just one! By today's standards, it must have seemed incredibly juvenile, puerile and empty. And so it would have been, were it not for the communication skills of people like Eric Parrant. {And, when we got to start it in Hobart, I was honoured to be chosen to play the little game there}. Maybe the best way to spell it out would be to write it, from memory, in script form.
 PARRANT: Next on the line is Mrs Mavis Schlunk from Gladesville. Hi there, Mrs Schlunk, well today? Gee, that's great. Tell us about yourself, Mrs Schlunk - or may I call you Mavis? - got any children? Three, eh? What sort? Two boys and a girl. Great. Today the news has been talking about the Prime Minister. You like him? Well, never mind. If you are able to tell me the answers to three questions about our Prime Minister, I have a great prize for you. Ready, Mrs Schlunk? Right, here we go. What is the surname of the Prime Minister for Australia? No, No, Mavis, the surname. Sir Robert Menzies. Right! Well, that's the first question. Two to go for the prize of the day. Ready? Oh, don't worry, Mavis. You'll know them, I'm sure. Which state does Sir Robert Menzies come from? No, not Canberra. We won't count that. Canberra is where he is when Parliament is sitting. Which state? I'll give you just one clue. It's not New South Wales. No, I'm sorry, I can't give you any more clues. It wouldn't be fair to other contestants. Quickly, if you please. Victoria - you're right! Well, that's two out of the three. Get the third one right, Mavis, and you get the prize of ten paperback novels from Angus and Robertson. Question three - no clues - what was Sir Robert Menzies' profession before going into parliament. His profession. How many guesses? Fair go. No guesses. Just one answer; and I'll have to ask you for it right now. A doctor, you say? Sorry, Mavis Schlunk. He was a lawyer. Sorry you missed out on the major prize of the day. But we're going to send you a double pass to the movie of your choice. Thanks for playing the game and being such a good sport. And, give my regards to those three wonderful kids. Goodbye, Mavis.
 Why did people listen to this? A lot of reasons. It was different from anything else on the radio at the time. You listened to hear if you knew any of the contestants; for you could bet that a lot of Mavis Schlunk's mates reminded her, many with admiration, of hearing her on the radio - even if she had only been there in a sort of de facto way. And, like every other quiz show where you, at home and under no pressure, get a chance to show that you are smarter than the contestants, there was complete participation.
 In Hobart, we sold the show to a menswear store run by a gentleman named Joseph Glasser. I don't know if it's still there. If it is, and has gone on to great riches, I helped it. If it's no longer there - well, it was probably going to fail anyway!
 We ran it on Saturday mornings. And it's here that I have to tell you we cheated! I don't know if 2GB cheated when Eric Parrant ran the show, but we did; and we did it for a very necessary and face-saving reason. An additional part of the whole concept was to prove to our listeners that most people were listening to our radio station, and not to any others, and nor did they have their radios switched off, even if they were at home. So, the concept called for us to make calls at random.
 I would say something like, "Well, let's start by throwing the old Hobart telephone directory open at random, closing the old eyes, and stabbing at a number. Okay, let's ring it."
 We had to modify this for a couple of reasons, not related to each other. If, on the one hand, I said, "Okay, the first number I've chosen is 28 1234. In a moment, I'll call 28-1234, and, if the phone in answered by someone listening to ‘Joseph Glasser Calling’, and is able to answer three simple questions, we have presents for them." If I said that, I would be giving anybody who didn't want the scheme to work, the opportunity of dialling that number themself. Thus, by the time I called it, it would already be engaged. We woke to that one very early in the piece. And so it became, "Right, here is the first number of the day, right here on page 456, and I'll dial it now." Then the listeners would hear me dialling a number. Hurdle number one overcome.
 The other one was far more serious. What happened if we called,. and nobody answered? Not a good recommendation for the radio station. Or if someone we called said they didn't want to play along with us? Or if someone said to go to hell? Of if we rang six successive phone numbers and nobody answered at all? Not good. So we cheated.
Quickly, least you are thinking of calling the authorities and recommending I be thrown into the slammer - even after so many years - let me hasten to say that we never cheated to the extent of telling anybody the answers. Also, though it would have been possible to pre-record the program {because the listeners didn't get to hear the other end of the phone call}, there would have been little point in that.
 What we did do was make sure that we did have three contestants, ready to play. We would ring around before the show, and ask people if they wanted to participate. Then, when we had three sure starters, we would have a show. Now, we didn't sell our listeners short, having them believe that everyone in the Hobart telephone directory was sitting at home, this and every Saturday morning, breath held, awaiting my call on behalf of Joseph Glasser. So, we would phone a few unsuccessful ones. The listeners wouldn't know who we were calling; and,. as they didn't hear the phones being answered, they trusted us.
 On the air, then, I would finish with one contestant, do a commercial for Mr Glasser's Menswear, and then dial the next number. After a moment, I would say, "Sorry, that one's engaged. What a pity. Had they only known, they might have had a chance to win today's monster prize of three shirts." Or, maybe, "What a shame, the number called is not answering. That's what you get for being out between nine and nine-thirty on Saturday mornings. Well, let's try another." To make it as believable as possible, I'd get a couple, or even three numbers in a row not answering. I knew it was working and being believed, because friends, or mates at the club, would say, "Gee, you had a crook trot on Saturday morning, didn't you? Three calls in a row not answered."
 Looking back on it, it was pretty harmless fun. And the forerunner - had we even thought of it - of the two way radio, open line, as we have it today. As for the numbers I dialled, and nobody answered. I had told my wife not to answer any calls at home while Mr Glasser's show was on air Saturday mornings. As far as we knew, there was no smart technician back at the telephone exchange checking that the number's I said I dialled weren't necessarily the ones clicking on the exchange panels. And nobody at home counting the clicks as I dialled. I made sure they couldn't, as I talked over the dialling.
 And one little word about cheating the listeners. Years later, when I'd graduated to my childhood dream, 2GB in Sydney, I once had my car broken into, parked as it was in Mrs Macquarie's Road near the Domain, and the radio stolen.
 Getting back to the car and seeing no radio, I phoned the police. Several funny things happened. The first was a policeman saying that, as they didn't have any mobile fingerprint units available, would I please drive the car to the fingerprint section, then at the Bourke Street Police Barracks. The policeman on the phone added: "And, when you drive the car, see if you can do it - without touching anything." I didn't tell him that it wasn't the way I usually drove.
 However, when at the barracks and the fingerprint section, I met some beaut cops. I was just as interested in the workings of a fingerprint section as they were in meeting a real person who talked on the radio. So, as they were examining my little rear-engined gold Renault for tell-tale signs of thieves, they asked me about radio. One part I shall ever remember.
 The young constable {he might be the Commissioner by now!} said, "That Quiz Kids Show. You have anything to do with that?'
 I told him that, for two weeks every year when Keith Eadie, the presentation announcer took his leave, I had the pleasure of being paid a few pounds to introduce John Dease and the Quiz Kids.
 The young constable continued, "I used to think how smart those Kids were. But then I realised that nobody could be that clever. They had to be told the answers. They are told the answers, aren't they?"
 I didn't even get to answer the question.
 His sergeant, the boss of fingerprint at the time, said: "Cut it out! If the Quiz Kids were told the answers, they couldn't keep that a secret. They'd at least tell their mothers and fathers. And they couldn't be trusted not tell at least someone. And then . . . we'd hear about it!"
 For a moment, I thought he was vastly overstating the abilities of the detective force to know everything. But then I knew what he was saying was true. Once someone tells a second person anything, it is no longer a secret. And who finds out the secrets first? Probably the cops. Because it's their business.
 The next time I see Barry Jones, a one-time Quiz Kid who went on to become a Federal Minister, I'll tell him that, had he been told the answers, he might have gone to jail . . .instead of to Canberra!
CHAPTER 14:  Only in retrospect can one realise that one is passing from one era, through progress, into another. At the time, it's just one continuous process.
 Thus, in the post war reconstruction of everything, radio was making its own progress. We were able to go out of our studios, make recordings and bring them back to play on the air. We were able to edit out a single word, a cough. We were even able to play editing games. Mine was to get a group of visitors to our studios, and have them watch and listen to me record two sentences.
 "The government is not hopeless." "Yet the Prime Minister is a fool."
 Play the sentences back so all can hear. Then, within a couple of minutes, and with a bit of flourish, I would take the word "not" out of the first sentence, and put it into the second. The recording would then be heard: "The government is hopeless. Yet the Prime Minister is not a fool." My audience was rightly amazed.
 I recall a lawyer, watching the demonstration for the first time, remarking: "Well that proves it. Taped evidence will never be used in a court." He was wrong, of course. Many years later Richard Nixon, the President of the United States, knew all about tapes, their editing, and the recovery of material thought to have been erased. {Today, the same is happening with material thought to be deleted from computer records.}.
 In Hobart, it was time to lift a part of the curtain of mystery and let our audience see us - even a little bit. Our tape recorders allowed us to go into the streets, and into business houses, making delayed broadcasts.
 But it was time to catch up with what the big boys had been doing - make programs in front of an audience. Commercial radio, to this point, had lagged behind the ABC in the production of radio drama and light entertainment. Sydney and Melbourne had vast production facilities which made everything from one hour plays to light soap operas. They were most widely listened to. And some of the better classics of literature had been adapted for radio, as well as original plays and series written specifically for radio.
 The ABC had a charter that encouraged more local production, state by state. Thus, there were actors and actresses in Tasmania, getting some work. A wonderful story is told of one of their plays. It was a drama. going to air live, and produced in the Hobart studios of the ABC. At rehearsal in the afternoon of the broadcast, the producer was not happy with one of the sound effects. The script called for a single pistol shot. Every time the effects operator tried the shot - using a realistic-looking starting pistol, it was too loud. The producer insisted the effects man went further and further away from the centre microphone. Eventually they got the effect by the studio door being opened and the shot fired out into the passage. Came the night of the broadcast, and, coming up to the cue, the effects operator seized the pistol and opened the door, pointing the gun into the passage. On cue from the producer, he fired it. Unfortunately he didn't look where it was pointed. Indeed, he didn't even look out of the studio door at all. Just pointed the gun into the passage and fired! Sounded great. Unfortunately he had it pointed at the elevator door, which opened at the precise moment, allowing a single male person to alight. As he was about to, all he saw was a gun pointing out of a door, straight at him, followed by a shot! He got back into the elevator - and nobody was ever able to say what happened to him.
 How could the story then have been reported? Seems one other ABC staffer was in the passage and saw it all.
 Back up Elizabeth Street, at 7HO, two doors above the music shop, our manager saw the opportunity to expand. The other half of our floor had been a piano storage area, and was no longer required. So we leased it. The front area was made into a couple of offices - one of them mine, and one for the copywriter, who always said he would rather be with the creative people than the sales staff.
 The rest of the new addition was to be our auditorium. Now, radio auditoria {if you like the Latin plural} had been built much to the pattern of small movie theatres. They seated up to four hundred souls and were designed to get the best audience reaction to the shows being played out on the stage. There were one or more microphones suspended from the ceiling over the audience to get best "presence"; otherwise the audience would sound too far away. The walls were so designed to eliminate echo. At the end where there would have been a projection box, had it been a movie theatre, was the Sponsor's Booth. The client, his advertising agency and others could view the shows as they were made, hearing the finished result from high quality speakers in their booth. {That they never sounded quite as good on the air, was of little relevance}. There was also a "hospitality area", where a little booze could be served if the sponsor looked like he wasn't enjoying the show.
 In Sydney and Melbourne, audiences would fight for tickets to see the shows being made. Some people wrote months ahead, making sure they saw a radio show while they were in Sydney for their holidays.
 And great use was made of the auditorium at Macquarie. Most nights there were two shows being produced, with at least one each lunch hour. In the mornings and afternoons, the stage would be used for rehearsals, or the production of programs for which an audience was not required. The lights were never turned out.
 Hobart was nothing like this. Each afternoon, Monday to Friday, Bernard Carr, a whiz with kids, used it for the children's program. Now, you have to be a special sort of person to work with children. I'm sure I would never had been one of them. Bernard was. The show was "Peters' Pals" - and the Peters was the ice cream. The show consisted of lots and lots of participation. Little ankle-biters would traipse in past my office, straight from school. They would be ready to entertain and take part in the quizzes and other competitions. And they would make a lot of noise.
 Our auditorium had a flat wooden floor. At one end - the end nearest my office {which was a design mistake - or I thought so} - was a small stage about twenty-five centimetres above floor level. On the stage was a piano. It had no separate control booth. The mixing of the microphones had to be done by an operator on the side of the stage. However, as a hangover from the days of theatre, it had a curtain. Bernard did such a top job with the kids that I, as program manager, needed to make no inroads into his production.
 But then came the only foray into something else - at least in the time I was at 7HO.
 Electrolux, the vacuum cleaner people, had no shops. Their splendid product was sold door to door by the "Friendly Electrolux Men". The job of the advertising was to sell the friendliness of the door to door vacuum floggers. Our task was not to extol much of the virtues of the product, but rather to have a responsive audience for the salesmen at the door. So, we were selling friendship, rather than vacuum cleaners, to housewives.
 How it all came about in the first instance escapes this memory. The first awareness I had of it all was when we decided to use the auditorium to have, for one hour each Thursday afternoon, a group of about one hundred {the auditorium's capacity} Hobart housewives as our guests, guests of the "Electrolux Hour".
 As often happens on these occasions, someone gets the bare bones of the idea. Then the sales people embellish it, promising often more than can be delivered. The last people to hear about it are the production folk.
 Let me pause here while you have a cup of tea or coffee; and we'll return to the Electrolux saga. I need to get a few things about sales people off my chest.
 There once was a salesman who came in to tell me he had sold a half hour once a week to a chap who had one of the grottiest used car yards in town. {Whereas the Avis story of "we try harder" sold for them, when they had nothing else above their competitors, this car yard didn't even bother!}. The only thing I, as creative genius, could think of was get the salesman to feature in one of the commercials each week, the worst car for sale. We would advertise it, "ready to be test driven from the top of a hill adjacent to the car yard, only to the bottom of the hill". The negative approach worked. Each week people flocked to test drive the bomb - and stayed to look at the rest.
 Then there was the time when a salesman at last convinced one of the big stores to use radio for the first time. Even in the late 1940s they thought it a fly-by-night gimmick. How could we get them instant results? We used the same technique as for the used cars. Told the store to look out in its storerooms for something old that should have been thrown out two generations ago. They came up with a line of gentlemen's straw hats. Not just straw hats, but straw boaters, much as some private school kids had to wear. They were worthless to the store, so we convinced them to sell them, as a week-end special at two shillings {20 cent] each. People queued on the Saturday morning for them. And the advertiser remained with radio from then on.
 Then there was the butcher. The salesman came to tell us creative people that he had a suburban butcher who was prepared to sponsor a half hour on Saturday mornings. As this was a bit of a desert area at the time, we were delighted. There was just one catch. The butcher only liked one sort of music, tenors. Saturday mornings had been programmed as pop music, and a half hour of tenors screaming in the middle of it defied all rules. Yet the butcher had good money, and I never knew the radio station to refuse it. So we decided to "send it all up". We called the show, "Meat the Tenors." When it came to the three commercials, I convinced the salesman that people wouldn't just buy on a promise of quality or price. There had to be something else. It being Saturday morning, and people ready to shop for the weekend, I suggested the butcher made up two parcels of meat. One would be the "one pound [$2] parcel" and the other, for larger families, the "two pound [$4] parcel". We didn't tell them what the parcels consisted of, only assuring our listeners that, with the parcel, they would not need any more meat for the week-end. Dammit, it worked!
 So let's get back to the "Electrolux Hour".
 We needed music. The Peters Pals people used Don Denholm, who led the band at Wrest Point Cabaret, and could use the extra money. We asked Don to extend his talents to Electrolux.
 To keep the housewife audience happy, we'd have some community singing by the studio audience. Not having a slide projector, the words were either written on large sheets of paper, or song sheets handed out. Then there were quizzes, with the compere scooting around the audience. Lots of participation. And it became popular almost immediately. I'm sure there were prizes for the audience, but can't remember what for.
 Lyle Martin was the compere. And I guess I must have been the producer. We were able to call on other staffers for assistance. For those were before the days when people asked "how much more money?"
 But, how were we going to finish the show? For inspiration, we went to the sponsors' product, the Electrolux vacuum cleaner. What say we made pretence of finishing the show at about five minutes to the hour. Then, as the applause was dying, two char ladies, two auditorium cleaners, would appear and play out a little sketch, as they cleaned the place? Sounded a good idea, but not a big ending. And so we did what all good visualisers do - we stole. Well, maybe not stole . . . adapted!
 One of the top shows from the BBC in Britain which the ABC played Sunday nights in Australia, running against our Quiz Kids, was Much Binding in the Marsh. It ended with a four verse song, each verse with a topical theme. Why shouldn't we do something extremely similar? We went to Don the musical director and his brilliance showed. Taking the original, musical phrase by musical phrase, he would reverse them. So a few ascending notes would become descending. {Hard to describe it to you without singing}. It would have the same number of bars to a verse as the Much Binding one.
 All we now needed were the words, both of the short sketch with the cleaning ladies, and the words for the four verses, new and original each week. A massive task? You'd better believe it! I said I'd write the sketch. I've always been able to chuck a piece of paper into a typewriter and concoct a little bit of radio script. And, if it came to a pinch - which it did very early in the piece - I'd write the musical parodies as well.
 Now, only one thing remained - who would play the cleaning ladies? We didn't have a lot to choose from. If we could get someone to do the last sing-along with the audience, compere Lyle Martin could be one of them. And that left you-know-who as the other. And, just to make it sillier, someone suggested we dress for the part. Grotty wigs were discovered in the throw-out box at the local repertory society, and two very plain cotton dresses were bought, and seams let out to accommodate Lyle and myself.  The theme of the closing was the cleaning ladies bemoaning the fact that they could have done the job of restoring the auditorium to pristine condition in half the time if they had an Electrolux.
 After all these years, I remember still the last few lines of the last verse of the first parody. Each verse would commence with "We've had mopping up the floors......"
 The first show ended with the verse written by copywriter Peter Thompson. {Wonder where he is today? A somewhat extroverted gent. Went on a driving holiday to the mainland, complete with a sign he had made saying THOMPSON'S CREEK. He drove long until he found an unmarked creek, and there, erected his sign. Years later, it appeared on the official maps. Someone must have thought it had been forgotten by earlier map makers!}.
 But, to the last verse, and Peter's brilliance. The two cleaning ladies sang:
 If we could pull a lever, to halt this daily grind - we would, with joie de viva, but keep this thought in mind, unless you have Electrolux, it makes you all behind - we've had mopping up the floors.
 Deafening applause. Pull the curtains, and pull down the memories of that page of radio.
CHAPTER 15:  I loved Hobart, Tasmania; and went very close to staying there for the rest of my life.
 Picture the scene. I had married there, and out first two sons are Tasmanians, although number two was only a few months old when we left. Radio was going through a very creative stage, and I was at the cutting edge of it. How well we were doing was measured only by the amount of goods and services we were selling for our advertisers.
 There were no surveys, measures of the number of people who listened to you, at what time, and into which demographic groupings they fell. There were, therefore, no long faces, or talk of "we're down on the 25 to 39s". In addition, the radio station was just about "sold out", with, in a lot of cases, advertisers queued up for a commercial at top listening time.
 We were living a happy life, and I seemed able to get in a couple of rounds of golf each week. Never very good at the game, I discovered a delightful, though challenging, nine-hole course at Claremont, right on a peninsular leading out into the Derwent, and on a piece of land abutting and owned by Cadbury's chocolate factory.
 Local pleasures may have been few, but delightful. And the money seemed to go around. I gave my landlady about twenty-five per cent of my take home pay as rent. Taxation was a lot less in those days. Food was delightful and plentiful. And the Cascade Brewery supplied its excellent product to local hotels which, in many cases, sold the brew straight from the keg on the bar. The weather didn't require refrigeration. Very English, you might say.
 I had joined the local Air Force Club, a lot less formal than the Naval and Military Club {officers only} which was living still in the time of Kitchener.
 My bride and I were able to walk down to the docks where the scallop boats came in, and watched the delicious shellfish being opened. We would take a quart milk can with us, which would be filled for eight shillings [80 cents]. That gave us enough for three meals: battered, curried or mornay.
 There were some drawbacks. Apples, for which the isle is rightly famed, were pre-sold to the English markets, and often we were only able to get last year's, out of Melbourne cold stores.
 Once - and I still have the photograph of this - my bride {she may not even have been more than my fiancée} and I took a Sunday afternoon stroll down to the Derwent. There, right on the shore was a fairy penguin. We picked it up and took it home. After we'd photographed each with it, came the problem of what to do with the little beauty. So, we did the only sensible thing: took it back and returned it to the river.
 We also went fishing. Not having a car, we took the trolley bus to Cornelian Bay, hired a rowing boat, went into the bay, where my lady caught all the fish, while I spent the time baiting and unbaiting her line. She, therefore, claimed to be a much better fisher-person {as you have to say these days}. On one occasion we caught a small shark - a little less than a metre - and brought it home. I don't know why we didn't eat it; possibly because we had too many more desirable fish in our catch. So, we buried it in the garden of the flats where we lived. Unfortunately I didn't bury it deeply enough, and the landlady's cat found it; and in so doing, dug up a fair bit more of her precious garden. This indiscretion was only eclipsed when our first born, just toddling, walked in proudly one evening with a flower in his hand. It was our landlady's proudest possession, one that only bloomed each four years, or something. We were expecting the rent to double - but she was a nice lady, was Mrs Reid.
 Her son also had a flat in the building of four. On one occasion he and I caught a burglar! We'd been having a rash of milk money thefts. So the two of us rigged a camera with flashlight to be triggered off when the milk money thief stood on a mat where he could reach the cash we had to put out nightly with our billy cans. The next morning we noted that the flash had gone off. I rushed down to the government film laboratories and developed the roll. And, at nine o'clock, when the detective office opened for the day, I delivered a fine enlarged picture of the thief, the money in hand.
 He was visited by the cops, who found lots of bags of small change in his belongings. Later they phoned me, asking how much the Pearces had lost over the weeks. I consulted my wife, and we came up with a figure. The cops said if I called at five that evening, I could have my money back. But it wasn't quite that easy. The good detectives took me to the hotel across the road from the CIB, put the money on the bar, and I was only allowed home for dinner, when at least half of it had been expended upon "finders' fees"! Yet, it seemed fair. Half was a lot better than none. And the cops were good fellows to even think of returning part of my money. I had made no charge for the photograph.
 We went to the greyhound races once. We knew nothing about gambling, yet my wife picked three winners. I, working on tips from our sporting department, picked none. I never took her back there.
 But time, and with it my career, was marching on. Though money was of no great concern, I should have realised that I was being paid more than anybody in a similar position ever had, and that the station could not afford any more. Likewise, I had more to give to the industry.
 So the Boss, a great gentleman who went on to run the city's commercial television station when it got a licence quite a few years later, called me to him, asking where I was going for the rest of my radio life. I was still less than thirty, and he realised better than I that a fork in the road had been reached.
 Though insisting I wanted to stay where I was, he elicited a promise that if I ever left Hobart, I would go to a station of the Macquarie Network and not its opposition. I agreed, not thinking any more positively.
 "Where would you go?" he asked. "Sydney or Melbourne?"
 I told him that, as Sydney was my home town, and I knew little of Melbourne, it would be the former. Though I added, "But I may not go anywhere. I like it here."
 David Wilson, the unfortunate chap who had died playing tennis, and whose demise had led to my promotion, had started "Carols by Candlelight" in Hobart. It was a foray into ecumenicalism, with the churches getting together in St David's Park to sing carols on the eve of Christmas. His Excellency the Governor had been prevailed upon to attend and give his Christmas message. Naturally, 7HO broadcast the event. I think David had produced two of these festivals when he died. I inherited the pleasant task.
 The head of the citizens committee for Carols was the Lord Mayor of Hobart, The Honourable Archibald Park. Archie Park had been a bloke with a horse and cart, trucking goods to the wharves, when along came World War One. He served as a stoker in the Navy and returned to the only business he knew, transport. However he went from powerful power to strength supreme, and, by the time we met, he was the largest transport operator in Tasmania, then the Lord Mayor; and later went into State politics. His background made it possible for him to be a great, fair dinkum, bloke. I was thrown together with him when we had a drama approaching the first Carols I organised.
 Dock strikes were not unknown in Tasmania. The wharfies had tremendous power, as almost everything had to be shipped in by sea. Archie Park was closer to the wharfies than any, having been the bloke who took stuff to the dockside with his horse and cart. The strike locked up the whole waterfront, and the candles I needed for the Carols a few days later were in the hold of a ship, tied right there at dockside.
 "Find out which hold they're in," the Lord Mayor told me, "and I'll see what can be done about it." He added, "By the way, do we have any petty cash?" I had to tell him that we had no such float, as all payments came out of sales of candles and programs on the night. Even our rain insurance was to be paid after the event.
 "No matter," the Lord Mayor said. "I'll fix it anyway. Just let me know where the candles are."
 I phoned him within the hour. And, before the day ended, I had the candles. It would have been inappropriate to ask how this was accomplished. But, if the Lord Mayor had taken one of his trucks, taken off his coat, acquired a barrel of beer from Cascade, and had a dockside meeting with the striking wharf labourers' picket line, I would not have been surprised!
 Ecumenicalism took one extra step. Carols had been a Protestant occasion in Hobart. Wondering why the Roman Catholics had been excluded, and nobody being able to tell me, I made an appointment with the Catholic Bishop. He was a beaut chap, gave me afternoon tea and said his congregation would be delighted to join in, and not passively, either. Could his choirs join our massed choirs? They could. How did we accompany the carols? With the excellent band of the Salvation Army. He was delighted. But he was able to add one superb extra. The cathedral had won itself an electronic organ, a rarity of those days. Could it somehow be added to the program? I didn't add, "Is the Pope a Catholic?", as he would be one to know the answer. They combined with us, and the Carols were bigger and better than ever. I hope they have the celebration still.
 There was one other occasion when we "had a win". Rain came along on the morning of the festival. One sharp shower that delivered us eleven points of rain. Then the skies cleared and the sun dried everything for us. We had insured for ten points of rain or more on the day in question. I double checked the rain gauge with Vic Bahr, the legendary meteorologist, then the State Chief of weather. We got our certificate, the insurance, and the largest crowd ever that night.
 But the career of one, John Pearce, was becoming a monster; and I, one of life's great procrastinators, was doing nothing about its future.
 In exasperation, the Boss called me to his sanctum one afternoon. "You know you were thinking that, if ever you left us, you'd go to Sydney?" I nodded.
 "Well, without your knowledge, I had a bit of your work recorded off air, and sent a tape to 2GB. They want you. Now, will you do me the honour, if you're not too damn lazy, to write to Bert Button at 2GB and apply for the job I just got you?"
 The die was cast, and I'd not done much about it. I begged an extension of time, as number two son was about to be born. But, there was one other thing: the first Royal Tour of Australia was looming, and I wanted to be a part of the broadcasting team covering it.. I knew there would have been no hope of me joining the Sydney people chosen.
 I wonder if Her Majesty knew I put back my career for six months on her behalf?
CHAPTER 16:  As I write these words, Australia is contemplating becoming a republic by the end of the century - or at least putting the proposition to the people at a referendum. Also, there is talk of Britain, now a locked-in member of the European parliament, ridding itself of a monarchy that has continued over two millennia.
 As the end of 1953 approached, Australia was a very different place. The young Princess had not long been married, and, with her husband, had set out to visit the outposts of Empire, one of which was where we lived, about as far from The Old Country as it is possible to be without cheating on Mercator's maps.
 As history shows, the party only reached South Africa when her father, the King, died, and she was summoned back to London for the sorrow and pageantry of a Royal Funeral and a Coronation.
 At the time Elizabeth the Second {though only the first of Australia, as we weren't even thought of by Europeans when Good Queen Bess roamed Britain} was crowned Queen, Empress and all those wonderful old titles, one of her loyal servants, Edmond Hilary, along with a British party led by a man called Scott, conquered the tallest mountain on earth. Many said this was an omen, ushering in the second Elizabethan era. Sadly this was not to be.
 But we, on the other side of the world, readied ourselves for the first visit ever from a ruling monarch.
 Way down in Hobart, we of radio had combined into a broadcasting team comprising the ABC and commercial people. We were tutored by Tal {later Sir Talbert} Duckmanton, who, when on loan to the BBC, had had some experience of royal occasions.
 {I must pause to recall a night, late in the war, when two young pilots sat together in an officers mess back in Australia. They had both had pre war careers in radio, one longer than the other. I asked the other brother officer pilot what he was going to do when he got out. Was he going back into the ABC? He told me that, not only did he hope to, but also to be the boss of it one day. I have met so many people who have been able to achieve their ambitions!}.
 The Royals were to be in Southern Tasmania for about three days. Their entrance was to be by sea, the Royal Yacht making progress up the beautiful Derwent, which, next to Sydney Harbour, must be one of the best approaches to any city in the world. From there a royal procession would wind its way through the streets, finishing up at Government House. Commentators' jobs were allocated, and I got the last one, in the tower of Government House, describing the final stage of the arrival. I also got a job the next day, on a dais outside Parliament House, as the Queen and the Duke arrived for a ceremonial opening of parliament.
We listened on radio to the royal arrival in Sydney. Again it was by sea, and I had the delight of hearing the chap who preceded me into radio that first time, Leon Becker, do one of the great commentaries. He was in Farm Cove as the royals came ashore in the royal barge.
 Leon's words still are with me today: "Every boat in the Harbour is tooting. And, if I had a tooter, I'd toot, too!"
 In my earphones I heard the royal reception through Hobart's streets. There was the cheering of not only organised groups of children, but of the very ordinary citizens on a very extraordinary occasion.
 Although my few broadcasting moments were not scheduled until a little before noon, all commentators had to be in place by six in the morning. But, I was used to military life where each movement has a ridiculous amount of spread built into it. We were also warned that, once in position, there would be no opportunity to leave the broadcasting point. My instructions were even more explicit. Once in the tower of Government House, I would be locked out of the house proper, and not permitted back in until unlocked by security people. More specifically, we were told that, should we have any thoughts of relieving ourselves of body fluids, we should come equipped with empty bottles. I did. And I noted that my technician, an ABC type, did also.
 Three commentators to go before it was my turn. And then two. I looked down to my typed notes. I had written an introduction and a closing, and typed them on cards. Paper tends to blow around when you need it static for reading.
 As well, I had written a lot of fill-in material. Some of it was about the location of Hobart's Government House, and of the history of the building itself. Then - but knowing I would never have to use it - I had scoured the library and transcribed material about former governors, and of anything of the slightest interest about the location.
 Then I heard the second last commentator, describing the scene as the procession climbed toward Government House. His commentary rose to a crescendo, and I heard the producer, in my other headphone, say, "Cross to John Pearce". He did.
 I was then speaking to the largest audience of my life, for the broadcast was being heard, not only within Tasmania, but nationally, with some of it going internationally. I was very glad I had the opening written. I read it.
 All the time I glanced up towards to gates of Government House. The previous commentator had said that the procession was approaching those gates. Yet, where was it? Where was the Queen? Why could I see nothing? The producer was telling me nothing - for he knew nothing, assuming the Royal Progress would, at any moment, be within my view for an actuality description. Looking up again - and nothing but the gates and a guard upon them.
 Radio is not like television. With a situation like this, television can ask a camera to pan around a scene, without any voice-over. Radio has to keep saying something. Unless there is a band playing, or someone singing, someone has to be talking. I started on my notes of the history of Government House.
 Had the Queen been abducted by alien forces? Taken ill? Even become lost? Silly. But these are the panic-led thoughts at a time like that. My notes had run out, with the exception of a well-written conclusion to the broadcast. I couldn't use that, as the procession hadn't even come into my view.
 How was I to know that Her Majesty had called for a halt to the procession while she alighted from the Rolls Royce to speak personally to a group of Girl Guides who had been waiting all day to see her?
 By this time I was describing the Derwent River from my place of vantage, and reaching into my knowledge of Air Force meteorology to describe the fair weather cumulus clouds, and the forecast of fine weather for the rest of the Royal stay.
 But then my technician gave me a nudge, and the procession came into view. As there were no people cheering within Government House grounds, there was no reason to drive as slowly, and in a few seconds it stopped directly below my point of vantage. From four metres above, I looked straight down upon my Queen, her husband and the rest of the royal party. Seconds later they were out of my sight. Time then to do the written and rehearsed closing.
 Playing back the tape when I got back to the studio, I realised that I had ad-libbed for more than five minutes. And, if that isn't some sort of record, I don't want to do it again.
 Not long afterwards we were let out, back into the House, and down some back stairs to the taxi that had been booked for us.
CHAPTER 17:  The four mighty engines roared, and the waters of the River Derwent started racing beside the window of the flying boat. The pre-war Empire flying boats that took travellers from Australia to Britain in 12 days, had become the famed Sunderlands; and then, after the war, a transition back to civilian life as the Sandringham, the Hythe, the Solent. {But their necessary weight meant slowness and a lack of carrying capacity; and they were destined to be supplanted by massive land-based aircraft, becoming aviation's last dinosaur}. The water-line lowered along the window line as the boat got up on the step, and then, finally, lingeringly and somewhat reluctantly, shook off the last drops of the element water, and took to the air.
 We, a family of man, wife, toddler and baby, were adventuring once more; but this time towards our native Sydney. It was a wonderful flight if you had a seat on the port side. Weather permitting, the aircraft was never above five thousand feet, often much lower. Keeping Tasmania on the left, then Bass Strait, Gabo Island on the nose, and then up the Victorian and New South Wales coasts, turning in and making a circuit of Sydney Harbour before setting down on the waters of Rose Bay.
 Though the future breathed excitement, some of the flashes of broadcasting in those last few years would not go away. There was the time when, at an hour's notice, I had to fill in, doing a sporting outside broadcast. I arrived at the City Hall, thinking it was professional wrestling, where it didn't matter if you didn't know the rules, only to find that it was the national finals of Table Tennis.
 I remembered the night at the Air Force Cub when the steward came in and asked me if I'd recognise a visitor at the door "who reckons he's the Governor"! He was.
 Most of all, I guess, I remembered those many broadcast endings, when I'd give myself a "well done". For I think I had discovered self-criticism, both of the ones that could have been "a whole lot better" and those that gave me a kick, because I tried something - and it came off.
 But the flight had the brain whirling, looking to the future. For here was the dream of a little kid who came home, throwing his school bag in the corner, spurning homework until forced to do it, and switching on, not only the radio, but 2GB. The kid who said to himself so many times: "One day I'll talk on that station" was about to. But - and I hate using the almost meaningless word star - one who had been big {dammit, very big!} in Southern Tasmania was about to become the smallest in the biggest radio market in Australia - and one of the biggest in the English-speaking world.
 A generation later - a war later - a marriage and two kids later - I was to work with {to occupy the same studios} as some of the stars of my childhood. And what a line-up of talent, in those first months of 1954. Little wonder my arrival would hardly be heralded. James Dibble was also joining 2GB that month. He had come to us from a little commercial experience, and a lot with the ABC. After a year and some more, he took a very sound career decision, returned to the ABC to become its leading, and most meaningful and believable, newsreader both on radio and television.
 But the lineup with which I would share Australia's leading radio station was breathtaking. I am looking at a full page advertisement 2GB placed in the Sydney Morning Herald, outlining the night programs. They featured, of course, Jack Davey, Terry Dear, Dick Fair, Gladys Moncrieff, Harry Dearth, Ada and Elsie, Hal Lashwood, George Foster, Charles Cousins, Leon Becker {my old mate}, John Dease, Eric Baume, George Wallace, and Richard Gaze. Sporting featured Clif Cary and Des Hoystead. The rest of us who did the daytime shows included John Hudson on Breakfast, Eric Parrant, Gary Blackledge, Harry Hambridge, Keith Eadie, Beth Nicol {whom I had known at 3SH}, and Bill Weir. Whichever way you looked at it, it was one hell of a team.
 A young man just emerging from the ranks of office boy, assisting with sporting, was to go on to be one of Australia's industrial leaders, Ted Harris of Ampol, Australian Airlines and you name it. He will not remember, but we once shared a broadcast. We did the GPS Regatta one year - me up the bank at the half way point, Ted at the finish!
  With my all round experience, and no demonstration of an instant desire to be a great network star before the end of the week, I was shoved into afternoons. Also, I was to be what radio now calls "the floater", the guy who fills in when sickness or holidays overtake someone else. I seem to remember doing a couple of weeks of breakfast for John Hudson's holidays.
 John did a remarkable job on breakfast. First, you have to realise that a breakfast announcer cannot be quite normal. Why would anybody, for any money, decide to get out of bed at three-thirty each morning, five days of every week? John followed the wacky Clark McKay who had gone on to South Africa to become that land's top star.
 They tell a lot of stories of Clark, or as he called himself on the air "Clacky Mackackie" - before Roy Rene "Mo" got Mackackie Mansions as a sketch in the Colgate Show. Clark used the burn the candle at both ends and, often reports suggest, in the middle as well. Seeing him come to work in his dinner suit was not unknown. As the seven-thirty news was on each day, he paid his trip to the toilet - for he was a creature of habit in this regard as well. There were only two other people in the building. {The news came from the Herald a couple of blocks away}. So Clark would take off all his clothes and run naked the length of the third floor to the Gents. He would return in time to put his gear back on and continue the breakfast show to its conclusion at nine. One day, the authenticated report goes, he arrived back at Studio B only to find his clothing - every stitch of it - missing. Straight faced, his panel operator and the man in the Control Room denied any knowledge. By eight thirty, Clark was in some degree of panic. At any moment, people would be arriving to work the day at the radio station. At the last moment, they told him that his clothes were neatly folded, and behind an aspidistra in the ground floor foyer, right outside the elevator. Clark shot into Studio A and grabbed the cover from the grand piano. Wrapping himself in it, much like a Roman in his toga, he finished the breakfast show, went down in the elevator and claimed his gear, much to the delight of a brace of mixed 2GB staffers on their way to work!
 John Hudson wasn't nearly as crazy - though some of his stunts were. His most memorable was on April Fools Day. I awoke at home to hear John reporting that a flock of sheep, some three thousand head of them, were being driven down the Pacific Highway towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Seems that a drover had lot his way and insisted that he was off in the general direction of Homebush Abattoirs. The session continued, with Hudson reporting the passage of the sheep over the Harbour Bridge, into George Street, Hunter Street, and then, turning into Phillip Street, passing the 2GB studios. It was only then that the penny finally dropped for me. John said he's open the studio window so we could hear the fracas. Up came the sound of sheep. And then, and only then, I realised the date, remembering that there was no window in Studio B. But, I wasn't the only one fooled. The City Council Cleansing Department called in a few crews for an early morning shift on overtime to clean up the city of sheep droppings before the morning's traffic scattered it everywhere!
 When portable recorders, wire then tape, became available, a man called Peter Barry was the first to start a daily interview show. It was called "Radio Roundsman", and it occupied fifteen minutes {usually three interviews} at 12.15, following the noon news. I can't ever remember hearing him. By the time I got to Sydney, Bill Weir was doing the show on 2GB. He would get in at nine in the morning, to see if his assistant had lined up any interviews for him. Then he would either go out and get them, using his own car or a cab, or have the people come into 2GB for their three or four minutes of glory.
 I was never a great fan of Bill's approach. I'd done the same sort of thing in Hobart, worked a lot harder at it, and been a lot more adventurous. When he took his leave, I was given the job, as well as my afternoon shift, for three weeks. During that time, I became "noticed", which did me no harm at all when talks radio, as we were starting to know it, became the light on the top of radio's mast with television approaching.
 The craziest piece of non-planning, led to 2GB missing out on the biggest news story of the decade. As well as doing Radio Roundsman, Bill was on call, should the news department have need for any outside work. For, in those days, radio news people were writers and readers, inside people, who didn't go news gathering. And, of course, getting news grabs by phone did not come for many years.
 So, came the weekend when Bill Weir was starting his holidays, and I was to cover from him, commencing Monday at nine. Who was to cover the news all weekend? You guessed it. Nobody. And that weekend, the Petrov Story broke! The Russian defector was smuggled out of Australia - or an attempt was made to do so - by the KGB. We had nobody rostered or available to go to Sydney Airport with a tape recorder. But Gary O'Callaghan, a great ambulance-chaser before he became the star of Sydney breakfast radio at 2UE, was there. And his material went world-wide.
 Back at our place, there was a lot of soul searching Monday morning. Never again was the news department left uncovered.
 I loved doing the interview stuff, far more than sitting in a studio, announcing music, or throwing to a feature show and then sitting for half an hour waiting for it to finish. But, there was to be another door opening.
 Jack Davey shows, and other features produced by the Macquarie Broadcasting Service - a separate company, though sharing facilities - often needed a straight announcer for its shows. Narrations for soap operas were done by actors. But introductions to feature programs produced in front of an audience were done by 2GB people. Also, there were often chances to do commercials in national shows. This was a way to get one's voice spread Australia-wide, and also to make a little bit of money.
 I stress "little", for one of the shows I scored, I had to stay back after I finished upstairs at 2GB, go out for a quick snack for dinner, change into a dinner suit, go on stage at the start of a program and, after the fanfare, would say something like "It's the Persil Show 'Give It a Go' with . . . Jack Davey". I would then wave to audience for applause, and leave the stage. Jack took the rest of the show, and the commercials were recorded. For this I was paid all of ten pounds [$20]. However, 2GB, my employer, would take half of it! But, as I was working for less than thirty pounds a week, an extra five was not to be sneezed at!
 I got a little bit of this work. For four or five years I was the presentation announcer for "The Pied Piper" with Keith Smith. Each Wednesday night {or was it Tuesday?} we'd make a show in the Macquarie Auditorium. Keith would get his kids in; and the audience was stacked with their parents, who would then stay on to watch Harry Harper produce the "General Motors Hour".
 After "Pied Piper" Keith and I would go along to the famous Assembly Hotel on the Phillip-Hunter corner. It was a very mixed pub. The barristers from along the street often dropped in for a quick one after work. Wharfies from down at Circular Quay sometimes got that far uptown. The 2GB Macquarie people were always there. Indeed at one stage there was even a telephone under the bar! It had been run, quite illegally, over the roofs of three intervening buildings. And, when it rang, it was for one of us.
 Keith Smith and I were often joined by a very nice gentleman, Austin Mackle {funny how one remembers some names and not others}. He was Mister Scotts Emulsion, the show's sponsor. He would not only tell Keith what a good show he'd just made (as he had) but also sometimes even said nice words about the way I did his commercials. But, most of the time, we told jokes. Keith Smith is one of the best joke-tellers I have ever met. He was, at the time, writing with George Foster some very funny sketches for the Bunkhouse and Davey shows. I saved the best gags I'd heard all week, and those nights in the bar were a highlight. And it was delight to watch our sponsor taking notes!
 Occasionally. Harry Hambridge would drop in for a quick beer. This called for great organisation. Harry, dinner suited, was needed to introduce the beginning and end of each act of the "General Motors House" drama. Still, this left him with a lot of intervening time to waste. Rather than sit on stage with the actors, or in the booth with the production people, he would wander, script in hand, up to the Assembly for "one". To the best of my knowledge, the producer never knew about it.
 I never knew if Jack Davey had many friends. I was too far down the totem pole to be one of them. But he had a forest of admirers, none greater than yours truly. The speed and timing of his wit was legendary.
 American performers were commencing their blitz of Australia, playing to massive audiences in the old tin shed, the Sydney Stadium. Artie Shaw came out, as did Sammy Davis and others. And it was to mutual benefit to have them make a guest appearance with Jack Davey. Jack was able to sing along with them, gag with them.
 I shall always remember the show with Bob Hope. For the first time I realised how much Mr Hope depended upon his team of writers. He may have been able to ad lib with Bing Crosby on the sets of those Paramount movies, and on radio in the United States, but when he came to the Macquarie Auditorium, it was a different matter.
 A sketch had been written for Bob and Jack Davey. It was very funny. However, three parts of the way through it, Mr Hope decided to ad lib away from the written work. This just suited Davey fine. He adlibbed back, and to the delight of the auditorium audience, our boy left the great world star of comedy for dead! I have to tell you that the show was edited viciously before it went to air, making sure that the comedy duel finished up in a dead heat! Not that there was anything wrong with the delightful Mr Hope, whom I had the chance to meet fleetingly. But, in taking on Jack Davey in his own environment was a sad error in judgement.
CHAPTER 18:  You only speak {and write} of people as you found them, knew them.
 I was awed by Jack Davey. He was the greatest I'd ever heard on radio. Coming over from New Zealand as a singer {crooner, they used to call them, taking a word from the Bing Crosby era}, he quickly established himself as a lightning wit, never-to-be-stuck-for-a-retort person.
 He had a brilliant feeling for the unseen radio audience; and was able to combine it with the three hundred or so people who had written for tickets for his shows. Sure, his studio audience was pre-conditioned, ready to laugh, cry or applaud the lolly boy. But Jack had earned every bit of their approbation.
 In wartime, his shows in front of military audiences were just great. From time to time it was thought to be politic to tour Jack shows. This meant taking them into not only other cities but, should the occasion warrant it, before massive outback audiences as well.
 I'm not sure if he ever had any real friends. I wasn't close enough ever to make a decision. For sure, he was followed by a lot of people whose livelihoods depended upon him. Some of these may have been "hangers on", others "minders". Others still were very necessary for the continuity of the Jack Davey Shows.
 It soon became apparent that what Jack wanted - Jack got. Naturally I was never privy to any of his contract arrangements. {Very early in the piece I realised relaxation was not knowing how much money other people earned. That way you could not be envious of them}.
 I have a feeling, from what spilled over from Jack's associates, that he was pretty terrible when it came to money anyway. It is widely written and known that he was a gambler, and not a good one at that. Indeed, it was rumoured that not only did he die without any money, but, had those people carrying Jack's IOUs presented them, the estate would have been very much in the red.
 But Jack's employers knew how to keep him happy. To say that they gave him everything he asked for would probably be an over-statement. But, he had such bargaining power - there was none other, with the possible exception of Bob Dyer, a very different sort of gentleman - and, come contract renewal time, Jack had to be kept very, very much on side.
Thus, a lot of the things Jack "owned" were most likely the property of Macquarie, or his sponsors. The tax man may not have been as searching as his today's computers allow him to be, but an example was the service station at Surfers Paradise. It was "Jack Davey's Service Station" in name alone. His name was swapped for the very comfortable apartment atop the station, in the best piece of real estate in town. No money changed hands. For all I know, the apartment may have come with the fridges full as well.
 As with all such people, nasty rumours abounded. It was said that he came supplied with three secretaries - only one of them for typing!
 But one thing nobody ever queried was Jack's ability to work. He worked as hard as any man, which gave him the right, in his belief, to play just as hard. He drove his body to its relatively early grave.
 When I joined 2GB-Macquarie in 1954, Jack had four prime time shows a week, every week. On Monday nights it was "Give it a Go" for Persil washing powder. It was the big straight quiz show. "Ask Me Another", a different quiz format, was Tuesday night at eight for Enos. Wednesday at eight and it was "The Dulux Show" {following the brilliant Bonnington's Bunkhouse Show" with its host of stars}. And Friday it was "Number Please" for Ampol.
 That meant that Jack had to have four shows arranged and produced each week. But it didn't work that way. There was a gap in production of about five weeks over Christmas. Also it was a lot easier to make two or three shows back-to-back with all the cast present, than one at a time. {Television found this very necessary, having to have sets and lighting in place. Those nightly game shows you watch are usually made in batches of two or three weeks over a weekend somewhere in Australia}.
 Jack Davey was such a wound-up character that, once you got him going, he kept going. He didn't want to stop anyway. And his schedules were so arranged to get the most from him, and he the most of the facilities, contestants and audience.
 After a tough week of making show after show, it was not unusual for him to get straight into his car - maybe one of the "C", "D" or "E"-type Jaguars and drive, only stopping for petrol, to Surfers Paradise where he would play for a week or so.
 Along the track, he got mixed up in several commercial ventures. It is a sad fact that none of them were successful. Indeed, outside radio and show business generally, Jack would have been unemployable. But, I suppose you could say that of a lot of specialist successes.
 There was Jack Davey Auctions. He had an auctioneer's licence, and used to do a lot of the selling. People went to his sales. But I have been told that most of them were there for the entertainment rather than the purchasing. There was also Jack Davey Motor Auctions, which suffered a similar fate.
 The first time I met him was when he brought one of his shows to Hobart. I was the local bloke with the job of introducing him to the record crowd at the City Hall - bigger than the Town Hall would accommodate - and do one of the commercials on the show. I remember having a discussion with the powers that be, and selected for the appearance, my white, rather than black, tuxedo jacket. Davey's retort was to ask me to tell the audience which tennis club I represented. This was part of the warm-up to the show, before recording, and a time when Jack took a few hundred very ordinary people and moulded them into a frenzied mob awaiting to make his show better than any he'd ever done before..
 The day before the show, I was detailed to accompany him to the races. I knew then about as much as I now do about horses and betting upon them - not a damn thing. However, I had gone to 7HO Sports Editor Brian Hodgman for the hottest tips. I also went to the bank and took out the equivalent of about one week's salary, lest I appear out of the party spirit.
 At Elwick Racecourse, I handed Jack the tips and said that, I would have a modest investment on each. "So will I," Davey replied. "I don't know anything about these horses, but it's good to be seen having a bet, leaving a bit of "mainland money" with the “makers of books".
 We approached the bookmaker with whom I'd been advised to do business. Unknown, he was prepared to offer a little better than the real odds to be seen to have Jack Davey betting with him.
 I selected the first race tip and said to Jack and the bookie, "I'll just have a modest wager, I'll venture two pounds."
 "A small one for me, too," Davey said; "I'll have a hundred on the same horse!"
 It lost, as did most of the tips. I left much poorer, Jack probably in the same condition as his usual trips to the turf.
 When he went back to Sydney a couple of days later, I couldn't wait to have framed a picture of the show being recorded, with Jack and self {me in the tennis club blazer!}. Three weeks later, heavily publicised locally, the show went to air nationally. I guess that was the first time I ever took part in a national broadcast, and the top rating show in Australia.
 Loving cars, Jack loved to drive them as well as own them. The network was keen to have his name before the public in every way possible. So, when the Round-Australia Rallies started, Jack was right in there. The Rallies got as much publicity as Jack did. One of those occasions when everyone wins.
 Like myself when I started into motor sport some years later, Jack didn't have enough practice time to really mix it with the professionals who drove for a living. But, for these Rallies, he teamed up with top people. At each stopping place, radio stations would be ready to interview Jack and get his comments back to the network.
 In his production unit there was a very lovely girl. Indeed it seemed that one of the necessities to work with and for Jack was to be lovely, if you were of the female gender. She was his private secretary, and had learned to sign his name with every flourish. I've seen her signatures and his side by side and was unable to tell the difference. This was a considerable advantage for Jack, as it meant he didn't have to sign fan mail or, as we handed out a lot in those days, photographs.
 Before one of the Round-Australia Car Rallies, rumour had it that the good lady sat up all one night signing photo after photo: "Hi, Ho - Jack Davey". For "Hi - Ho everybody" was Jack's sign-on and sign-off. The same rumour said that somehow the photos got squashed with the sandwiches and were chucked out of the rally car en route. Somehow they were found in a culvert half way up the New South Wales coast.
 One of Jack's most devoted fans was organist Wilbur Kentwell. Coming from the suburban and city theatres that boasted Wurlitzer Organs in the thirties, Wilbur found his way into radio.
 Now I know it's a silly boast to have the "first" of anything. Often it is quite meaningless. But Macquarie Broadcasting imported the first Hammond Electronic Organ into Australia. And Wilbur Kentwell got to join the payroll to play it.
 American radio had been using the Hammond, not only as play-on and play-off for shows, but also as background. Indeed, as such, they had turned back the clock, and were using the Hammond Organ, much as the old silent movies used a piano, or even a small orchestra, to give "feeling" to the silent movies. A radio play could be enhanced, not only with pre-recorded music {often not especially recorded for drama either, but just commercial recordings}, but with an organist, "feeling" the show as it proceeded.
 Wilbur did a bit of this also. But his forte was the Davey Shows. Though some of them boasted an orchestra, Wilbur Kentwell's brand of music became as much a part of the show as any other ingredient.
 He went on to make a lot of recordings of popular music, as well as accompanying Jack and other artists onto disc. When television came, long after Jack had died, Wilbur went to Brisbane and became staff organist with one of the television stations there.
 We became friends, and shared a love for the popular classics of the time. We has a similar feeling for Gershwin, Kern and their contemporaries. Long after I thought we'd lost contact, an LP arrived from him, with a little note saying "Thought you'd like this. At last I found the three manual organ I've always been looking for." It was the last recording he ever made. He was dead within six months. It need not be said that I treasure the vinyl; and when I play any of the tracks, it's only from a tape copy.
 One lunch hour, Jack was recording two shows, back to back. Wilbur wasn't needed for the first of them, but was required to be in place at the Hammond on stage for the second. To hold the audience's attention, the breaks between shows was made as short as possible. Thus, when the quiz part of the show had finished and a recorded closing commercial was being played into the show, Wilbur, thinking everything was over, walked across in front of the first row of the audience and up onto the stage, thus distracting the audience's attention from Jack, ready on stage to do the closing of the first show.
 Quick as a flash, Jack added to his closing credits: "And on behalf of Producer Eric Bush and the late Wilbur Kentwell, this is Jack Davey saying good night and thanks for listening!"
 The audience got the import of the piece about "the late Wilbur Kentwell", but the radio listeners were ever prepared to go along with anything that Davey said. So much so that, from all over Australia, came cards of condolence for the passing of Wilbur Kentwell!
 Jack's competitions with Bob Dyer are well documented. He once lost a fishing challenge with Bob and had to push him in a pram down George Street, Sydney in the middle of the lunch hour. Needless to say, it stopped the traffic! Dyer, who worked so hard at everything, as compared with Davey's natural genius, was a far better fisherman than Davey. Indeed, he won several world competitions and was the holder of records for Marlin fishing, as was his lovely, ex-showgirl wife Dolly.
 Television came along - and Dyer won at that one too. But there were other reasons. Jack Davey was not a well man, refusing to believe that his body would be allowed to give up when his brain was doing so well. That he had flogged both brain and body with only one of them rebelling was no surprise to medical science.
 Jack Davey, at the top of radio ratings, believed that all he had to do to be a television star was to allow three cameras to come and record his radio shows as they happened. He reasoned that, if he could not only captivate a nationwide radio audience, but also the three hundred and fifty in the Macquarie Auditorium, television needed only to open a window to that. It didn't work that way, yet Davey refused to "go back to school" and learn the new medium.
 Bob Dyer, on the other hand, went to Channel 7 and took his very successful radio show "Pick A Box" with him. He allowed the television people to tell him how it could be transformed into the new medium, realising that TV is eighty per cent visual, and a gesture, a piece of visible "business" is far more important than all the clever, rapier-fast dialogue. Bob really worked at it, and he took every piece of advice offered. Following the recording of one of his early shows, he turned from all the people telling him how good it had been and went to one of the cameraman. "I noticed you threw up your hands in horror at something I did. Where did I go wrong?" He was told, and never did it again. Davey would have been looking to have the cameraman sacked!
 Davey also thought that television could be "packaged" as his radio shows were. Record a dozen of them in a couple of days and then have a fortnight off. This didn't work, either. But the real reason was that Jack was sick. He was dying.
 And die he finally did.
 I was out of Sydney at the time. But it is still recorded that his funeral was the biggest, and stopped more of the traffic, than any before or since.
 A legend? Of course.
 Yet, he is remembered, more than anything else, for one single fleet retort at the end of a quiz question.
 He asked a middle-aged lady contestant: "What is a sporran?"
 "I know," she replied; "it's that hairy thing that hangs down in front of a Scotsman's .........."
 "Pay her the money!!"
CHAPTER 19:  Eric Baume was so many things to so many different people that he was almost a fable character. So many of the things from his supposed past had been proved to be built from simple facts to current folklore, that one had the feeling that even he sometimes lost the dividing line between fact and fiction.  Some of the dates of things he was supposed to have done, didn't completely equate with his age, or with recorded history. Nevertheless, he was a man of great accomplishments. In life there are some who are a lot better at selling their abilities than selling themselves. Eric Baume was not one of these. He was one to sell himself, and let the talent take care of itself.
 The fault seems to have been that he was born at the wrong time. Somewhere deep down, Eric saw himself as military personage, and a leading one at that. But he was too young for World War one, and not in the race of getting into World War two as an ordinary mortal. In between wars, he did have some military service with the defence forces, civilian and voluntary, in his native New Zealand.
 He wrote, and wrote very well. He was a chronicler of history, and was also able to set fiction to a military background. As a very young man he was editing a very small newspaper in a very small New Zealand town. From there he did as so many Kiwis were doing then, came to Australia, determined to make his mark this side of the Tasman. Jack Davey had done it. Years later people like television man Brian Henderson did also.
 Eric blustered into journalism, and had just enough of the mechanical background to be able to edit newspapers. Thus, he found himself in Britain at the outbreak of World War two. And, in London he stayed. There are a lot of unkind stories told of those years. But there were a lot of good ones also. Assuredly some Australian airmen on leave in London were befriended by Eric, and entertained lavishly on the expense account of his Australian employer. He certainly had his bureau in one of the better suites of one of London's superior hotels. The top floor of a hotel wasn't in great demand when the city was being bombed. But his fatalism told him that, if he was to cop a bomb, he might be enjoying himself when it fell!
He was able to get his hands on a lot of good war stories, and send them by cable to Australia. His detractors will say that there was more than a little "I was there" in some of the military exploits. There were others who said that Eric would get hold of any of the papers London was able to publish in the midst of the blitz, and cable them back to Sydney with a hint that they were exclusive to him. Certainly he had a lot of top military and security contacts, and not many stories got past him.
 The war over, and his Australian employers were able to get Eric {and their lavish expense account} back to Australia.
 His blustering new commentary style was just what radio was looking for at the time. Unlike today when radio and the other arms of the media is so hampered with laws and restriction as minority groups have white-anted our law makers, a commentator, like a good newspaper columnist, was able to say what he wanted to say, within the loose old laws of defamation. As well, the attitude of owners was "publish and be damned", as any publicity from a law suit was well compensated with increased listeners and readership.
 Eric came to radio with a nightly commentary called "This I Believe." It was a great title, giving him a ready-made ending to each night's show. By today's rush-rush standards of radio, letting Eric do a ten minute commentary, usually on the one subject, would require an outstanding writer and presenter. Eric Baume was both of these.
 His daily routine was to come to the office at about ten in the morning. The trip across the Harbour in the ferry relaxes everyone but Eric. He would have used the nine minute trip from Kirribilli - where his flat was situated immediately opposite the gates of the Governor-General's and Prime Minister's Sydney residences - to get very steamed up upon the subject of the day. Into his office, and slam the door. His secretary - who had to be tops in shorthand, at least to the Hansard speed - was waiting and ready. Eric would dictate his ten minute "This I Believe" for the night. As he did, people with offices on either side of his would hear every word through the walls, as Eric would begin to thunder. Finishing it, he would relax and start going through his mail.
 By this time, his secretary had his commentary typed up. Eric would scan it and, newspaper-like, sub edit it. It was then retyped. {How easy all this would have been with today's computer word processing programs!}. The script then went to management. It was unlikely that Eric would often overstep the station's policy lines. Though it did happen. And then Eric would confront the manager of the day, prepared to defend his every word, to the point of calling the manager a "weak-kneed little wimp" should there be any suggestion of watering-down any of the copy.
 But this was not the final word. The script then went to the lawyers who looked at it from the defamation point of view. This was pretty necessary, as Eric was fond of addressing himself to an issue in chapter, verse and mentioning the name of everybody who could be slightly involved. The lawyers had the last word - and Eric knew it. It was useless to fight them. By the time the script had gone on its way to the lawyers, it was the hour for Eric to go to lunch. This he did long - and well. One of his favourite spots was the splendid Gaslight Room at the Hotel Carlton. The Jet Bar in the same hotel's basement was one of his pet after-five spots, until the night when he suggested in a very loud voice that, "I won't be coming back to this bar until you get rid of the bloody prostitutes!"
 Following lunch, Eric and his script would arrive simultaneously. His clever secretary would take it and re-type it, making any corrections suggested {indeed insisted upon} by the lawyers. It was ready for recording. This was done at four-thirty in the afternoon. And that's where I, a new boy at 2GB, came into contact with him. For I used "B" studio up until that time. When I finished, we crossed to Keith Walsh doing the kids' show "Teen Time" in another studio, with all the little ankle-biters carrying on for prizes and the like.
 Eric Baume was always ready at the door, waiting for me to finish. Now, there are clean workers and dirty workers. Though it doesn't spill over to my office routine, I have always kept a radio studio neat, getting rid of things when finished with. Others of my colleagues are able to make a pristine studio to resemble a Middle East brothel. Because I was a neat worker, needing to do little more than pick up my last piece of paper and depart, Eric was glad to race in, completely hyped-up for his nightly feature, and get at his listeners.
 We had time for little more than a friendly greeting. One afternoon, in a somewhat jocular mood, I inquired: "Who's in the pooh tonight, Eric?" He seized me and said: "Sit there, my boy, and you shall hear!" I took the chair opposite him, and his recording started: "Good evening. I want to address myself to the New South Wales Minister for Transport, Mr Billy Sheahan. Mister Minister, what the hell do you think you're trying on the people of this state? Thought we wouldn't find out about it, eh? Well, I have, and by the time you get to your office tomorrow morning, you will be bombarded with complaints. And I shouldn't be surprised if the Premier will end up asking you to resign. Resign? It's too good for you, Mr Minister Billy Sheahan. You should be sacked!"
 And so the commentary continued, right through to the crescendo of "This I Believe!” and the final bars from the "Rienzi" Overture. {Eric saw himself in this Wagnerian guise. If he could have found anything heavier than Wagner, he would have used it!}. The last of the music faded in the studio. He looked up at me and asked: "Well, young Pearce, what did you think of that?" "Amazing, Eric. What a nasty little piece of work that Billy Sheahan must be." "Oh, don't knock him," said a now-relaxing Eric Baume. "He's just a professional politician, trying to do his job."
 Was this hypocrisy? Not with F.E. Baume, Esquire. It was no more or less than an actor performing a role. The difference was that he wrote the play as well as performing it.
 At about this time I remember asking him something, the reply to which I have been able to carry through my radio career. "Don't you worry about the people who complain about you?" "My boy," he said, looking at me very seriously, having decided to pass on to one of the few pieces of his supreme strategy; "it matters nought how many love you, or how many hate you - as long as, at all times the lovers and haters equal one hundred!" I have never forgotten that. The lovers and haters are your lifeblood. Once the ignorers start appearing - you are finished!
 So then it was when I was invited to speak at a luncheon in Mudgee, one of the radio stations which took both Eric's programs and mine. It was only a forty minute flight over the Blue Mountains; but the only aircraft that would get me there in time for the speech arrived at real country hours, something like eight in the morning. My hosts for the day picked me up and drove me to see the town's beauty spots. During the walk around the town, I was approached by a lady who was to be my hostess at the luncheon. She smiled nervously upon introduction, and then asked, "I have one question for you. Will you be speaking to us today the same way as Mr Baume spoke to us two months ago?" I had not heard of Eric's earlier venture, but was able to assure her that my luncheon speech would be me, and not a mirror image nor a shadow of Mr Baume's. A smile returned to her face. "Oh, thank God!" And she was gone.
 It seemed that Eric, two months previously, had also arrived on the early flight, become bored, and cajoled them into opening the RSL, or some other local club, early, and plying him with drink, while he attempted, quite unsuccessfully to have battle with the poker machines. By the time luncheon came along, he was feeling little pain, thought quite a lot of anger with the machines. Thus, when he came to speak, he did not tell the good burghers of Mudgee what they wanted to hear. He even accused a group of them of hiding behind the guise of "essential services" as farmers during wartime, and not joining up and wearing a uniform. That most of them would not have been of an age to qualify them for military service was beyond him. I made very sure that my luncheon address was light hearted, and anecdotal of the early days of country radio, as I remembered it.
 Eric was as addicted to poker machines as I have ever seen any man. He was not able to walk past one. I know he was paid a great amount of money both from his radio commitments, and, when it started, television, but he lived in a rented flat. When he died, his assets were very few more than a wall of good books, quite a few of which he had himself written.
 We were at the airport once, farewelling one of our executives, off for a trip to the United States. Such junkets were far fewer those days, and departures were some sort of a social event. I had gone to Sydney Airport in a taxi. Not good enough for Eric, who had made the trip in a hire car, which was waiting to take him back to town. He offered me a lift, which I happily accepted. Better his expense account than mine. On the way back to town, he said: "Instead of going to the Carlton - {for he had offered me a lunch there as well as a ride back to town} - let's go to the Journos." I should have known better.
 The Journalists Club has always been a den of some iniquity. Because of the nature of newspapers, the club was of the twenty-four variety. And many of its members had never heard of a club that closed to force its members to go home to their starving families.
 I was hardly in any position to refuse the offer, so we dismissed the hire car at the Journalists Club and went up in the elevator - but not to the dining room. "Better have a beer first, eh?" said Eric, but hardly as a question.
 Into the bar and he made straight for the poker machines, shouting over his shoulder, "You get a couple of beers." I did. By the time I arrived with the two frothing glasses, he had spent all the spare change he had in his pocket.
 "Cheers," as he lifted the glass to his lips, and beyond his grey military-style moustache {mine was black in those days}; "now, how about we have a couple of quid in the machines?"
 I tried to tell him that my addicted vices were many, but did not include gambling on poker machines. {I guess, when you analyse it, I have always been too mean to lose!}. However, no excuse would be accepted.
 "Okay, but no more than two pounds for me."
 "Perfectly all right. Go and get some change."
 It was not long before our four pounds were gone.
 "Right," Eric's eyes were sparkling, "two quid each more?"
 "No," I had to tell him; "that's my quota."
 He was obviously disappointed. But, there was no way he was going to stop pulling the handle, just because his partner chickened-out. "In that case," he said, "you can get the beer."
 It was a long afternoon. I think at one stage we ordered some sandwiches from the bar, so the inner man was satisfied, even if nothing like the three courses of culinary brilliance would have had at the Carlton's Gaslight Room.
 Eric ran out of money. But the Journalists Club was used to its members becoming temporarily financially embarrassed. They cashed members' cheques. Indeed, if members had forgotten to bring their cheque books, the club had club cheques. Very accommodating!
 Eric wrote a cheque, and I sat, nibbling and sipping, watching the great man, completely in the control of the machine. The money expended, he went to the bar, retrieved his cheque and altered it for double the amount. Back to the machines, to lose that bit also. After the third trip, the attendant behind the bar said, "Mr Baume, this cheque has been altered so many times, I'm sure the bank wouldn't honour it." Eric snatched it back and wrote a new, clean one. I seem to remember some work back at the radio station, and having them call me a cab.
 Around the corner from 2GB, in Macquarie Street, right opposite Parliament House, and backing on to our building was the New Zealand Club. It was in the basement, and provided an excellent quick, cheap "businessman's lunch". When the workload necessitated a quicker-than-usual lunch, I would go there, often seeing Baume with his friends, playing the poker machines.
 Now, it was often said that, when Eric Baume's nightly commentary blasted poker machines as :"an innovation of the devil", you knew that they had given him a thrashing the previous night. So much so that he had a much-publicised bet that he could keep away from poker machines for one month. The amount of the bet was one hundred pounds [$200], then three times a worker's weekly wage.
So, as I got up from lunch a day or two later at the New Zealand Club, Eric followed me into the bar.
 "Going to put a quid through the machines?" he asked me.
 "You know I don't play them."
 "Go on, my boy. Do you good."
 "I don't get anything out of them," I told him. But he was insistent.
 "Go ahead. Just get a quid - in the sixpenny machine if you like - and just play it until you win something."
 I don't know why, but I cashed a note and started feeding coins into the smallest poker machines then made. After a few pulls, which I was not enjoying, Eric said "You're pulling it all wrong. Here, let me show you." And he leaned over my shoulder.
 "Careful," I reminded him, "remember your hundred quid bet. If you play the machines, you lose."
 "Ah, but it's your money - not mine."
 I went away, leaving him to play out the rest of my money, confident that he wasn't really playing poker machines.
 Radio was, with the coming of television, in a state of flux; and, for a year I left it to try a few things that didn't work very well. One morning, I called at Kirribilli, where my mother and father had a home unit. I'd have a cup of coffee with them and watch the ferry leave the previous stop.
 The morning in question, I got on the ferry and ran into Eric Baume, also on the way to town. As ever, he got straight to the point. "Why aren't you still working for us?" I told him that I had tried a few things, none of which were exciting me. "Where can you be contacted?" I gave him a phone number.
 Within the hour I had a phone call from the manager of 2GB, saying: "Mr Baume says you want to come back and work with us. I'd be very glad to talk to you. When can you come and have a bite?"
 We made it that day, and I started back at the old stamping ground in a very few days.
 But that was not the only time Eric made decisions for me. He was, amongst many other things, a Justice of the Peace. Why wasn't I, he asked? I mentioned that my father was one, but I had never initiated any machinery to becoming one. "Well, you should be!"
 Two or three weeks later, I received a phone call at home one evening from my local member of state parliament. He said, "Mr Pearce, I've just received a letter from Mr Eric Baume, stating that you should be - and he recommends that you become - a Justice of the Peace. Is that your wish?" Well, why not? And so, over the years, I've witnessed a few hundred signatures, and, because of Eric volunteering me, may have done a little for society.
 Not that all our encounters were the friendliest. Years later, when I was Executive Producer of all the 2GB talks programs, Eric's shows fell under my umbrella.
 Prior to this, Eric had been given some executive status. This was not a good idea at all, as it gave him authority over all news and talks. He used to have daily conferences. They were hardly worth reporting.
 The news editor and I, commentator Brian White and a few others to make up the quota, would gather in Eric's office and coffee would be served. "There's not much to be discussed," he would tell us; and we'd make with some small talk until the coffee was cool enough to drink.
 But this was dangerous. After the meeting, Eric would think of matters that should have been discussed. So, he would have them inserted into the minutes. Soon after lunch each day, we'd get our minutes. They were generally so different from what actually took place, that we wonder if we had been warped elsewhere. We had to ring around and have things altered. For Eric, with not enough to do, used to send copies of these "minutes" to everyone from the Chairman down! We were defending our rears all the time. Exciting, but time consuming.
 On one occasion at one of these meetings, Eric thought he'd dictate the minutes "on the run". He would call them to his secretary to be shorthanded. Very belligerent this day, he got onto a matter that had not even been discussed. But this was of no importance. He commenced: "It was unanimously agreed......" and went on with some matters we'd never heard of. I couldn't resist the next move. When he'd finished the item, I quietly said to his secretary, "Please add 'Mr Pearce dissenting'". Eric looked at me as if I was something he'd rather not have picked up on his shoe. But he said nothing. However, when the typed minutes appeared, my requested line was there. But it was followed by, "Mr Baume reminded Mr Pearce that he had no right to dissent"!
 Once, however, Eric and I came toe-to-toe over some matter. Generally an accommodating person, I believed on this occasion that I was one hundred per cent right, and he one hundred wrong. And by that time I had the authority to have things done my way.
 "This is not good enough," Eric exploded. "I'll take you to the managing director." And he stamped out. A little later, I had a call from the MD's secretary, saying he would see us both at five that afternoon.
 I was there at one minute before the hour and was ushered in. The MD and I made with small talk, as it would have been wrong to discuss the matter of the impending meeting. All the time, our eyes were drifting to the wall clock. For it was ten, and then thirteen minutes after the hour.
 Finally the door opened. It was Eric, standing erect in the doorway. "Boss," he said to the managing director, "boss, it takes a great man to admit that he's wrong. And, in this instance, I'm wrong."
 He was gone. An empty doorway.
 The managing director looked up at me. "I don't know what started this," he said, "and I don't ever want to know. But one thing's certain. You lost. A great man beat you."
 Television came, and Eric was a natural for it. Channel 7 tried him as a straight news commentator. I never knew why it didn't work. I know that television is a visual medium, and a talking head straight to a camera would not sustain itself for long, unless accompanied by some graphics.
 The first efforts were, to say the least, brave. The idea was for the camera to open on Eric's glasses on the desk. Superimposed on them was a slide saying: "This I Believe. Eric Baume". As the music faded, the camera was to pull back and Eric would pick up the glasses, put them on and then do his commentary straight to the camera.
 Both Eric and television were new and, for the first commentary, Eric was told to sit there, pick up the glasses when cued, and then, on a second cue, start reading the commentary from the cue sheet, as teleprompters had yet to be invented. Sound was from microphone on a boom above Eric's head. As the crew was inexperienced, Eric was told to do no more than had been rehearsed - sit there and read. But this did not suit the great man who had himself in an attacking mood.
 The theme music started, the glasses with super came up, and Eric was cued. "Good evening," he said; "but it won't necessarily be a good evening for the Minister for the Army. Let me tell you this, sir...."
 And he then stood up to make his point. Unfortunately, nobody was ready for him to stand. Yet the camera panned up just in time to catch him copping the microphone right in the middle of his forehead! After that, he was significantly more disciplined.
 Television discovered a wonderful old format of women with positive opinions and a single male as moderator. The questions, more in the guise of problems, supposedly came from viewers. They called the show "Beauty and the Beast"; and Eric was chosen as the first, and clearly the best, beast. The show was to run for years. When Eric was no more, others were tried. Stewart Wagstaff did some. Rex Mossop did some. I even did one week, but was not what they were looking for. They were looking for a reincarnation of Baume. And reincarnation wasn't to happen.
 {As for the viewers' problems. Few of them were interesting enough, and the producers mostly wrote them. At the time I was producing a similar program on radio with Terry Dear and Dita Cobb. I got sick of writing the listeners' heartfelt problems, and, meeting the Beauty and the Beast producer at a party, agreed to swap fifty of mine for fifty of his. And this is the first time anyone knows of this. Cheating? Nothing of the sort. We were in show biz}.
 In the end, Eric Baume died. Suddenly and in his sleep. Woke up dead, as they say.
 I was to learn a couple of lessons, the final time Eric was destined to teach me anything - and those lessons came from his grave.
 The radio network wanted to do something to mark his passing, and I was called in to produce a thirty minute radio obituary, to be broadcast through all the stations that took his show, live at nine-thirty that night. I cleared the desk and got to work. But, all we could find of him was sixteen minutes on tape. Radio is a transient medium. There is little time - and even less money - for thoughts of posterity. Therefore, Eric's "This I Believe" was recorded on the same tape each day. Tomorrow's went over the top of today's. That was ten minutes. Looking elsewhere I was able to scratch up a few minutes of his appearances in other programs. So I had to make up the rest of the show with plenty of long musical references to his Wagnerian theme, and comments by colleagues who could be dragged in at a moment's notice. The man had been a corner-post of radio for many years, yet it was barely possible to get a thirty minute program about his death!
 In similar vein, Eric was writing an autobiography. He would dictate it in large lumps to his secretary who would, when not typing and re-typing his scripts and answering his mail, abusive and otherwise, get it onto paper. A publisher had been arranged. The work was almost completed and, at Eric's sudden parting from this mortal soil, the publisher realised that the work had to get onto the streets via the bookshops, in the shortest possible time.
 In three weeks, it was for sale. Sadly, I have to tell you that its sales were somewhere between bad and terrible. It all reinforced the person who once told me never to take more than two weeks holiday at a time in this business, or you'll be forgotten.
 There are many more Eric Baume stories to be told. But my life and career were the richer for having rubbed against this extraordinary gentleman.
CHAPTER 20:  The worst thing about history is not being able to learn from it. I don't know who said that first, but I have lived through an era of it.
 When the moving picture was thrown onto the flickering screen in darkened theatres, "live" theatre people said it would never last, never make even one serious impression upon theatre goers.
 The gramophone came along, and some said it would never replace music, and that no musicians would take it seriously. Indeed, at first top singers, instrumentalists and orchestras refused to make recordings, not only because they weren't of concert quality, but because such a performance would denigrate the art. It wasn't many years before the best of them were clamouring to record.
 When radio - then called "wireless" - was projected through the atmosphere into the homes of ordinary people, a horror campaign was started. It would be the end of theatre {including the movies}.
 All these prognostications were, as history forcibly records, very wrong. Each medium has its place in the communications scheme of things. And as the technological wheels roll along, we will have to change our lifestyles to match innovations. Today many more of us are working from our homes, using time once allocated to travel, to go on working. We don't have to dress every day to show ourselves off to others. Anti-social? Not at all. A different social mix. I work from an office at the end of my garden. I keep hours suitable to the way I feel. Mostly I work dressed in a track suit in winter, shorts and a shirt in summer. And I am located six metres from a swimming pool. Cut off? No - more in touch than ever - as I have a couple of computers, hooked to the world via modems, a fax machine, and a telephone in the car. Only when I broadcast do I go to town and the 2GB studios.
In a very few years - maybe by the time you are reading this - you will be able to get some of your entertainment interactively - by being able to talk back to your television sets. Certainly, you have been able to talk back to your radio sets for more than twenty years. And I'm delighted that I have been in that little phase of radio since year one of it.
 But, with the coming of television, we were about to witness the greatest change since radio began. Consider the social scene in which television was cast. We were living in a comfortable society where each family read one, or maybe two, newspapers per day. We received news and information from breakfast radio. Most women stayed at home and listened to radio soap operas during the day. Our kids came home and listened to an hour of children's radio. At night the family had a meal together - and spoke one unto another - and then, as the kids went to do their homework {some of them listening to pop music radio or playing records as they did so} leaving the family to listen to radio quiz shows or drama. Once a week we might share that lifting experience, a night at the local suburban movie theatre, where you would get two features, a cartoon or two and a newsreel, showing you what had been happening locally, and worldwide, a couple of weeks ago.
 But television was prepared to bring us pictures, right into our homes, and without us paying any money at the box office, nor dressing to go out for entertainment, nor having to pay for transport, nor needing to buy a box of chocolates for one's best girl, or a packet of Jaffas for ourselves. First then, it appealed to our greed.
 Next it informed. We were able to get pictures of the news we had heard on radio a day before, or read in the afternoon newspapers. For all news was recorded on film that had to be processed, having its sound track added afterwards. But you could see the news.
 There was no need to go out. There was no need to have those dreary family meals around the table. Indeed, I remember in the first year of television, a retailer, swept along by riches beyond dreams, advertised, "Television brings the family together!" Indeed, it did. The fact that the family, cramped in a darkened room never had to speak to each other was immaterial!
 But, worst of all from our point of view. People didn't have to listen to radio at nights. And night radio was its strength. So came the next wrong prophesy: Radio is finished. It wasn't, as we know, but a lot of people did their best to kill it off; while others didn't do too much for its reincarnation.
 The radio feature stations just could not believe that listeners would desert them, that they would rather watch a film at least seven years old {for that was the original arrangement with the film distributors, who believed that television would kill film} than sit in a room and listen to a play on the radio.
 But the fickle public, showing that it only had loyalty to the next form of free entertainment, and not the last, turned off night radio. It was only a few months before the tradition of the "Caltex Theatre - bringing you the best plays on radio" was replaced by "The Caltex Theatre - bringing you an old Western movie in black and white." Big advertisers felt they couldn't be out of this new medium. And, of course, they were right.
 What could radio do to combat this? First, it should be said that not all radio was as hurt as feature stations like the one I worked for. The music stations that catered for younger audience, from ankle-biters to teeny boppers, had gone from eight records called "The Hit Parade" to the phenomenon of "Top Forty". They had imported all the Americanisms. The announcers who played the records were announcers no more. They were specialised Disk {now spelled with a 'k' and not a 'c', showing sell-out to Uncle Sam's quaint use of the language} Jockeys. And they were in demand.
 Jack Davey had died. Bob Dyer had taken "Pick A Box" to television, as had John Dease with the "Quiz Kids". Bobby Limb was a rising star in TV, more so than he had been in radio. Feature stations tried mixed formats; and they left an omelette of confused listeners. Someone had gone to the United States as a sort of pilgrimage, asking radio all the mistakes it had made when television had come there some ten years earlier. I have read his learned report, and can tell you that Australian radio made all the same mistakes, and to the same time table!
 Disk Jockeys had a following, and that meant they could demand the money that had been paid to the other stars before TV came along. Also a music show is a lot cheaper to produce than a feature show with a stage full of actors and an orchestra. Get a disk jockey, lock him in a studio with forty records and push his food in under the door, and you had a working format - as long as the "jock" had a name.
 Tony Withers, Bob Rogers, John Laws, Ward Austin, Brian Henderson all spun disks, with varying success, and some for a lot of money. Not only money, either. as a new word had come upon the scene - payola.
 If radio had developed into a monster juke box {with news splashed in headline form on the hour}, it was to the benefit of record companies to have their records played. The record industry was being dragged into the century at the time. EMI had had it all its own way for a long time. Once it bought a record for Australian distribution, it said when it could be played on radio. The record companies had immense power. At any time they could tell radio to stop playing its records . . . as of now!
 Disk jocks, and radio stations they worked for, were smuggling imported records into the country. I know one international airline pilot who would go shopping in San Francisco, Los Angeles or London on each trip, bringing back a stack of records "for his own use", only to have them played on Australian radio almost before the engines on his aircraft had cooled! It was okay to play "imported" records, until one of the Australian companies had bought them for local release. This applied particularly to Broadway shows where, not the record companies, but the theatre entrepreneurs had the power to stop the playing of the music of a show they might not be producing here for a couple of years. They didn't want the music to become stale. I remember getting a copy of the LP of "Pyjama Game" the week it was banned from playing in Australia. It didn't hit the stage here for about three years.
 But, to payola; and it soon became evident that the disk jockeys were living a lifestyle above their salaries. Representatives of record companies would hand-deliver their latest releases to the jocks personally. And, fancy that! There was an extra envelope in the packet. A few pieces of money were supplemented with paid holidays for jock and partner. One I know was even able to upgrade his car from something quite small to one in the lavish class.
 Management, still struggling to find a way to bring back viewers, making them listeners to night time radio plays, were slow to catch up on the payola scene. It didn't seem to matter all that much to them if their DJs only played the music from one label - or predominantly from one label - as long as they were bringing in the ratings.
 However, when the axe fell - it fell. The station managers had forgathered and come up with a policy. We all received a copy of the memo stating that any case of payola would be punished with instant dismissal and a blacklisting throughout the industry! It may not have ended payola completely, but the message got through.
 However, it was at this time that radio bothered to find out what it could do that television couldn't do at all, or couldn't do nearly as well. And what could be done cheaply, as the exodus of advertisers to television, paying far more for their advertising than they ever did for radio, left them with only a small amount to spend with other media, and often none for radio.
 We came up with two things quite quickly. Radio could report news instantly. Television news had not encompassed tape recording. Indeed, at the start, television couldn't tape record its programs. So any feature made had either to be on film, made on film cameras, or kinescoped {a foggy and somewhat unreliable film recording made from the studio's television cameras}. So radio beefed up its news reporting. We bought more cars, and fitted them with two way radio, not only to get to the scene of news stories, but to report back to the newsrooms. This worked very well, and we took pleasure in advertising we had "scooped" all other stations by as much as two-and-a-half minutes on a big story!
 But the other thing radio did better than television - and still does - is “talks” programs. There are few things more boring than watching someone being interviewed in a television studio. They can try to get variety by the use of four cameras, shooting different angles, and not holding a shot for more than fifteen seconds, but it is still "talking heads". Television has overcome this with what I call "freakiness". To be a success in TV, you have to be a bit of a visual freak. And if you can't do it with visual expressions or actions, they dress you in funny clothes!
 Radio talks shows have none of those inhibitions. Radio is still the world of the illusion. You can listen to radio performers, or to someone being interviewed, and make them look anything you desire them to look.
 So talks and interviews, as well as being cheap to produce on radio, are things radio does best - and far better than television - until it goes interactive. But that is another story.
CHAPTER 21:  When it happened, it happened {or seemed to} so quickly. One day we were a struggling radio station and network, trying to pretend that yesterday would come back. The next we were Australia's leading radio talks people.
 We had stars. Some of them were home-grown, others we pinched {it's called "headhunting" these days} from other stations. Some we just went out and developed ourselves.
 The line-up was terrifyingly powerful. We started the morning at nine with an hour from Andrea, of whom more in the next chapter. At ten we had Eric Baume. We had dumped "This I Believe", or moved it to an area where it would be replaced as the evening format was changed. At eleven in the morning we had an hour with Gordon Chater and Gwen Plumb. And they deserve their own mention. That took us to noon when we gave the listeners thirty minutes of news, followed by another hour of talk. Starring in this area originally was Carolyn Berntsen, who left us after a while to return to her native United States, to become a name in the Washington media, in press with the "Post", and radio and television with shows of her own. We were able to offer her show to Anne Deveson, who has also gone on to great things. And, if all that wasn't enough, we had a half hour show with the late great author Charmian Clift.
 At three o'clock, we seemed to fall into a soggy heap, as we gave way to television.
 And what did all this have to do with me? Just about everything. The Macquarie Network was a memory. Macquarie was still a selling agent for the network, but that was about all. 2GB was producing the shows and making them available to the network. Not all of the stations took all of the shows, but plenty of them took lots. At one stage we had 24 stations in New South Wales hooked up to a landline, many of them taking not only our news and sport, but a lot of the feature programs as well.
 Somebody had to be in charge, not of the networking of the shows, or the financial deals with the stars, but with the production and content of the programs. And so, overnight, I became the recipient of the title Executive Producer, Talks.
 {Looking back on this jumpy career, I count being an executive three times, and a performer four. You know what they say about "......and master of none"?}.
 The program layout called for me to be the straight man with Andrea on her show. Eric Baume's new hour, "I'm on Your Side" was self-producing. Gordon Chater and Gwennie Plumb's show was a shambles. It didn't start out that way, but, if there were ever two people designed to turn organised chaos into confusion, it was they. Carolyn, and later Anne, didn't require much input from me.
 But it was damn hard work. I started getting in to the office at seven thirty in the mornings, and making it a twelve hour day - every day. We made it all so easy for the stars, that it became almost impossibly hard for me. In almost every case, what they asked for, they got in the way of production facilities.
 Andrea's and Baume's shows were recorded the afternoon before broadcast. It was a matter of, in Eric's case, getting the segments to fit network cues. In Andrea's show, we never were able to tell her what she may not say on radio. I don't like the phrase "she couldn't be trusted". But she was never able to see that what she said about people in a private conversation, she couldn't say to a nationwide radio audience. Early on I tried to get her to understand the laws of defamation, but very soon gave up, because, as well as other things, I don't think she was trying very hard to get the gist of it all.
 Then some of my stars figured that, if they could record a show the day before, maybe we could get their recordings to a schedule of five shows recorded in four days. We did it for them.
 Most all of the programs were recorded in the studios, straight to tape, in the hope that we could end with a finished product, one that needed no editing. Maybe we achieved that in about half of the shows. Most of the remainder may have needed a little cut or two. Gwen was a little fond of fluffing a line, adding {looking through the glass at me in the control room}, "Oh, bugger it. Darling, make sure you cut that out, won't you?" I had already started writing in the margin on my clipboard, noting the time of the incident, and remembering to add five seconds to the time of the show. Rarely did we have to stop the tape.
 Our talking stars had a lot of guests, none of whom had seemed very comfortable. First, they were confronted with known performers; and secondly, they were in the environment of a radio studio. So I moved our operations to another studio on another floor away from the main 2GB setup. We had a single studio, self-contained with its own production booth, situated a couple of floors below the main broadcasting part of the building. Walking to it, one passed through various sales areas and non-radio looking offices and passages. It had been built when Artransa were making their soap operas, and was no longer in daily use. So I grabbed it.
 There was no desk, across which it was necessary to sit in confrontation {or so it seemed} with the interviewer. We popped in half a dozen comfortable lounge chairs. Instead of sitting people staring into intimidating microphones, we hung little mikes around their necks. Television copied us in this one. Everyone was more relaxed.
 And now - as they say - the bad news.
 Into our programs came some of the most famous people in the world. There were politicians, leaders of government, people from the very top of entertainment, sport and you-name-it. To help the publicity department's budget, I had the station buy a Polaroid instant camera. Its pictures were black and white in those times. As we set up the show - people relaxing - I'd pose up a shot with our star and the interviewee. Then I'd take two instant shots. By the time the program had been recorded, the instant pictures were, one, in the hands of the publicity department, and, two, in the visitors' book. As the great one was about to leave, I'd have them autograph the page with their picture. They often added a personal comment.
 The bad - or rather sad - news was that, when we moved out of the building three of four years later, the book disappeared, along with an irreplaceable collection of radio memorabilia. Maybe the next generation will find it in their father's or mother's effects. More likely, however, it went out with the garbage or the builders' rubbish.
 As the Executive Producer in charge of talks, I had to see that my stars not only loved us, but each other. While the same person was signing all their pay checks, there was a rivalry between them for ratings. Mostly this was very healthy. But not always.
 Getting hold of visiting celebrities was not hard in the general. Getting hold of them for one of the programs and not any other was deucedly difficult. Obviously there was no point in having the visiting British Prime Minister appear with Andrea at nine, to be followed by the same personality with Gordon and Gwen at eleven; and then Anne at twelve-thirty.
 Sometimes I felt like that bloke in the Bible who, confronted with a similar situation, the ownership of a baby, offered to cut it in half.
 A theatrical star was coming here from Britain. He was a friend of Gordon Chater, and had agreed to appear with Gordon and Gwen when he hit Sydney. Andrea, who also knew him, found out about this deal, and rang him in London, demanding that he appear on her show first. Then she came to me saying that the star had said to tell me that, if he didn't appear on Andrea's show exclusively, he would not appear on any of the network's shows at all. Deep down, I knew there was no hope of this being true; yet there was no way I would ring London to ask if one of my own stars was telling the truth.
 In those days, my middle name was Compromise.
 These were exceptional days of exceptional broadcasting. But, with the coming of a new piece of technology - the Open Line - they were to disappear. In hindsight, we did it wrongly.
 Everyone was keen that we get into talkback. It had been such a success in the United States that we had been plugging for it for a year or more. The Australian government's regulatory body held back the industry, claiming there needed to be more safeguards, program and technical, than were needed in the United States.
 At 2GB, we knew that other stations were gearing up for talkback; and it would be their chance to topple us from the pinnacle of talks radio.
 When the authorisation came, we decided that our stars would become instant talkback operators. It was a terrible decision, like saying to a top jockey that he should, would, and must be good on a motor bike.
 We tried our people, particularly Baume and Andrea, and they were lamentably terrible. They were uncomfortable and out of their element. I guess one of the things those positive people had never learned to do was listen to people speaking on their own level. Whatever it was, I was unable to help them through the transition.
 And that's where I came in again. We used to give our people five weeks' holiday at Christmas. In their places, we would try out talking people, in the hope of unearthing the next big one. I was never able to. We tried Hazel Phillips, only to find that she was better in every other medium. We did a few weeks with Douglas Derby, the mercurial member for Manly, who did it with his wife under the title of "Darby and Jean". Not bad - a bit of fun - but not a show that would sustain for the rest of the year. Some people were too serious - others had no sense of humour or reality.
 But, with another Christmas break coming up, I made my list of fill-in people and took it to the Boss for his acquiescence.
 He glanced at the list of names and, putting aside the paper, said: "You know that two-way radio stuff, that talkback, you've been bashing my ear about. This Christmas, instead of the fill-in people, why don't we try it. By that time the okay to use the gear will be through."
 "Great, that will save a lot of mucking about," I replied. "We have Terry Dear, a top performer, on staff. At the moment he's only reading some news. Why don't we use him?"
 "No," the Boss said; "you know more about it than anyone else, and you won't be producing all those shows. Why don't you do it? Give you a chance to get the bugs out of it for the others"
 I jumped at the idea. Not only because any performer likes to get back performing in their own right, but also for the opportunity of trying the brand new medium. I'd done it when we went from studio to outside interviews. I'd produced Monitor, a documentary program, way ahead of its time. I'd been in charge of the top talk talent the nation ever got together on one radio station. Now to be one of the first to do talkback.
 I flew at the suggestion - and will write a lot more about it in later pages. So, over that Christmas break, instead of three stars doing one hour each Monday to Friday, they had me doing talkback for three hours. Reaction was, as you can imagine, very mixed. It's always the same when you replace something new with something to which people have become accustomed. But history will show that it worked. It worked right from day two {everyone gets day one wrong!}. And I happened to be the bloke to do it.
 By the time the stars started coming back from their holidays, big decisions had been made, and made by people far more important in the Company than I. I would continue on with talkback at nine, Andrea's old time slot, finishing at eleven. Andrea would do her hour between eleven and noon. And, because of my commitments, I wouldn't be able to be her straight man, as I had been for four and a half years, ever since she had come over from 2UE, working with Tom Jacobs. My masters selected Keith Eadie to partner her. But Andrea's unhappiness was long and strong. Our personal friendship - constant, but never much more than a working one - was instantly shattered. Nothing would convince her that I had not waited until she went overseas on holidays to white-ant her and take her program slot away. I was told, via a third person, never to speak to her again. It was a sad ending to a program which had been at the very top of the nation's broadcasting.
 And there, I guess, is the point where I should tell you about my association with the Duchess of Macquarie.
CHAPTER 22:  Dorothy Gordon Jenner had come to prominence before I was born. I often remembered this as, when I had reached the point of exasperation with the good lady during our four and a half years of professional partnership, I would remind myself that the lady was only a few years younger than my mother. The family name was Gordon. Jenner was the name of one of her husbands, the final one, as I recall, a gentleman with the marvellous middle name of Onisiferous. Educated at one of Sydney's top schools, S.C.E.G.G.S, the Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School at Darlinghurst, she found her way into show business at an early age.
 It is necessary to explain some of the vagueness that must come with my telling of the story - or the bit I know about it - of Andrea. She was most expansive and detailed in the narrative of lot of her life story. However, she was more than a little touchy when it came to her actual age. It would not have been hard to search the records for it. But there was no point. Yet it became a transfixing element with her.
 Once when she and I were arriving in New Guinea to do some of her programs, she entrusted me - indeed, thrust open me - her papers at the airport at Port Moresby. Idly I noted that the date of birth on her passport, and that shown on an official and sworn entry document, differed by some six years! Which was true? Who cared? She - only she. In her picturesque words, she had "carried a spear for Williamsons". Indeed, she was a chorus lady with some of J.C. Williamsons' stage productions in Australia. And I guess that would have been in the 1920s.
 She made the break and went to Hollywood. Now, if she went of her own volition, or was induced or taken there, I know not. There is an official biography of the late lady. But, as I know not a little of its compilation {indeed I was one of at least four asked to write it, Russell Braddon being another}, the book is probably a good read, but few will be able to dissect the fiction from the fact.
 She certainly played in some of Hollywood's films, I would guess in very minor roles, as I was never shown anything written about her officially amongst her considerable memorabilia. Nevertheless, there is the wonderful story of the "affair" with none other than the greatest of all screen lovers, Rudolph Valentino. Such a story would not have been hard to concoct, from half a world away, and with the aforesaid Senor Valentino dead all these many years - had it not been for one thing. On her mantelpiece in her apartment in Potts Point, prominently displayed was a photograph of the Great Lover, personally inscribed: "To my darling Dorothy" - and a few more intimate details I have conveniently forgotten - "Ever Yours, Rudolph."
 I never borrowed the print to have a handwriting expert compare it with the known writings of Valentino. Indeed, there was no need to, and I found myself believing that what was suggested to have happened, probably did. Photographs of her at the time showed her to be a very beautiful woman indeed.
 Back in Australia in the thirties, she certainly did the social scene, which took her into journalism. Now, this was long before the liberation of women, as we see it in today's workforce. Women in journalism had a very clear career path. They either concentrated on writing upon matters of home economics or the social scene. Female-type journalists did not report "hard" news. Andrea had an entree into the social scene in Sydney through family connections as well as her amazing ability to infiltrate - in the nicest way - the "right" levels when she needed to.
 Noms-de-plume was the way social writers signed their work. Underlying, there was a suggestion that this social gossip and scandal could not have been assembled if those reported upon knew who was doing it. This was nonsense, of course; the society ladies went out of their way to have their activities appear in print. For these were the days when the upper-crusted ladies of the village would get a designer dress from David Jones sixth floor on a Friday, be photographed in them at the races on Saturday, and return them as unsuitable to DJs on Monday. Thus the writings of Dorothy Gordon became those of Andrea.
 She was able to travel, and that led to her undoing - or the turning of a career, depending upon how you looked at it. Hong Kong was a fine place to be - the Hub of the East. Taking cocktails in the lounge at Repulse Bay, or in the place where the world passes by once a day, the Hong Kong Peninsular. Unfortunately, the Japanese decided they wanted Hong Kong as part of their Southwards expansion, and a number of Europeans and Australians were caught there. Andrea was one of them.
 History writes that, on the day of the invasion, many were killed, some women raped. Andrea was hidden beneath the stairs of a hotel by a young Chinese employee called Wong. {I know this sounds like a made-up story; but when we went back there all those years later, she publicised the incident, and he came forward to be rewarded}. It was reported at the time. When Wong had left us, Andrea told me that she had thanked him for saving her by giving him a considerable amount of money. But, when she told me how much, I said: "Honey, that's only about twenty Australian pounds!" She was never very good - or good at all - with money; and it had seemed a lot, "with all those noughts at the end".
 She, along with many other occidental civilians were captured by the occupying Japanese forces, and jailed, many to a cell, in Stanley Prison for the duration of the war in the Pacific. {On the same trip to Hong Kong, I was able for us to get permission to revisit the jail, and have her record her impressions from the very corner of the room in which she was incarcerated for those years. It was then one of the rooms making up married quarters for warders' families. They gave us a cup of tea and very British scones}.
 Back in Australia, Andrea returned to journalism and rose to the heights, again of "social" reporting.
 But then came radio. Someone at 2UE - it may well have been Tom Jacobs, with whom she performed for four years - twigged that this lady, who could walk into a conversation and monopolise it, should be given the opportunity to try to do it to a very much larger audience. She was not a broadcaster in her own right. But, given a foil, a straight person in the studio to whom to play, it just might work. It was sensational! And Andrea was radio - and to stay that way for almost the rest of her life.
 I know not - and care less - for the deals that took place to get her to change stations. Maybe 2UE was even finding her more than a little difficult to manage. If so I, probably better than any, understand it. Or, maybe it was the offer of folding money, or the ego-promise of "going network".
 Whatever happened, I was called in, and the Boss confided with glee that we had secured her services, and she would be coming to join us in a few days. John Laws was on our staff at the time, and Andrea later told people that 2GB had cheated her, having promised her that she could work with him. This was never on. John was too important to 2GB at the time to have him watered-down doing a two-voice with anyone. The two strong egos would have clashed to the point of unworkableness. Apart from that, no such promise had been made.
 What we needed was someone with a lot of training, experience and success in the realm of radio talks, and one who could hold back his personality, all the time lionising the star's. The conversation had stopped, and the Boss was looking straight at me!
 We were at the start of building our talks team, and I had been given the job of looking after the content that went to air. Management {probably the Boss, for whom I have had as much esteem as anyone for whom I have ever worked} figured it out that, if I had to be on the spot to produce Andrea's show, I might as well be the fall-guy, the straight man, the other person in the studio, not only to hold the stopwatch, but do the all-essential lines of, "Gee, what happened then", "Andrea, tell me about . . . ", "What did you think of the show you saw at the Royal last night?"
 I don't know if she'd ever heard of me. I certainly was no member of Sydney's social scene. At the time, all my money was going into school fees for four boys at the city's best school. As a listener, she was more likely to tune in to the ABC than commercial stations. This was because her circle of friends did; and one would be out of touch if one could not converse on what was said, even in the smallest-rating shows. As long as they were up market.
 The more successful radio people either had a sign-on or a sign-off. Jack Davey commenced with "Hi-Ho Everybody", and concluded with "Thanks for listening!" Bob Dyer never stopped using his "Howdy, customers."
 Andrea, having been told along the way that she must succeed with the ordinary "mums and dads" of the audience - although her show was pitched to the top of the market {or she always thought it was, but the mums and dads listened anyway to this strange lady on the wireless} settled on, "Hello, Mums and Dads". The phrase stuck, right from the first day. Not only did she commence any and every program with it, but when she had interviews as a part of the show, she would tell her interviewees: "Say hello to the mums and dads." Once in a while, she would have as guest someone from overseas who had never heard of her or her unusual interviewing style, she would demand of them to greet her audience with, "Hello mums and dads", they would reply, "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen" {stuffy Poms often fell for this one}, Andrea would insist: "either you say mums and dads, or we cannot continue!" Thus we would have noted folk, prime ministers and potentates, calling her audience "mums and dads", an expression they never would have used in a fit! Nobody ever got away with not doing it - even the Beatles. But, more of them later.
 Looking for a few bars of music as her signature tune, I discovered a track on a production disc, those made for mood music for radio, and not for sale to the general public. I haven't the faintest idea of its name. The moment I dropped the pickup on the track, I knew it to be right. It was jaunty, and a little rasping. Sort of happy, but drawing finger nails across a blackboard! Maybe that's how I saw the future of the program. Maybe that's how I saw the lady destined to become The Duchess of Macquarie.
 Not that she was unknown before coming to us; yet it must be fair to say that, with 2GB and Macquarie, Andrea's show went to the top. And, as ratings increased, so did her demands. Her mail was growing and so she borrowed some of the time of my secretary. {In those days secretaries had time on their hands. Secretaries were female people who came as part of one's status! However, the one I had at the time was a gem}. She did such a good job for Andrea, and the workload on the great lady's mail was so increasing that it became evident that we should give her a secretary of her own. That would have been simple. But Andrea then demanded, right up to the top, that she keep the secretary, mine, that I had loaned her for a few hours a week. Oh well, it didn't take me long to train another!
 The usual format was to record each afternoon at about two-thirty. The show was broken into halves generally. The first few segments were her interview with the celebrity of the day; the rest a conversation between Andrea and myself, where she gave comments on the world, the nation, and the location as she saw it, along with stories of what she'd been up to. And, by juggling interviews and comment segments, we were able to get five shows recorded and in the can by Thursday night.
 But it wasn't as simple as that. Having long given up trying to explain what was defamatory and what wasn't, it was better to let Andrea flow on. As we talked, I would be making little notes from stopwatch to clipboard of what would need to be edited from the show before it went to air on the morrow. Sometimes, there wasn't a lot of it. Other times, when Andrea had been more playful, or, at least, playing up to her guests in the studio with her, there would be a lot of editing. The guests were wonderfully impressed at what Andrea "got away with", not knowing that most of it would finish on the floor of the tape room before the show was ready for air. She used to introduce me to her friends, or visiting guests, as "the monster who cuts the best parts out of my show". But it must have worked for we never copped a single writ. {There was the suggestion of one from Gough Whitlam, but it was never proceeded with}.
 On one occasion Sir Robert Helpmann, meeting me for the first time just before a broadcast asked me: "Are you Dorothy's little man?" I mumbled that I supposed I was. But what the program needed - it got.
 Sometimes, however, it was necessary to record interviews out of the studio. Unlike our young brothers in television who have to carry a tonne of gear for the simplest news interview, all I had to do was chuck myself in a cab with a portable tape recorder and a stopwatch. After the interview, I high-tailed it back to the studio, where I'd play the interview, editing as I went, onto the "big tape" used for the show to air.
 This worked well. However, sometimes Andrea got the idea that we should do interviews off the premises when I knew the guest would come in. We had the odd argument about that, but not importantly.
 But, being not young, and playing harder than she should for her years, she sometimes was not well enough to come into the studio to do her program. No real problems again. A taxi ride through Kings Cross {"the dirty half mile", she called it} to Potts Point where she had her elaborate apartment. I would sit next to her bed, and she, propped up with elaborate pillows, would record her show, commencing "Oh, mums and dads, I've got a man in my bedroom!".
 Once I was less than impressed, however, when, having spent double the usual studio time recording her show at her apartment, I got back to the studio, and edited it for the next morning, just leaving me time to go back to the Chevron Hilton to see the first show, first night, of a visiting star. On the way out to grab the car and go home in the hope of seeing at least one of my sons before they all were bedded down for the night, there was Andrea, seemingly fully recovered, with a couple of her escorts, sweeping into the same cabaret room to watch the second show. Our eyes met, but she had no apology, nor explanation for her sudden recovery!
 The Premier of New South Wales at the time was Sir Robert Askin. Under his Government, Imperial Honours still flourished. Twice a year a batch of them were announced. Sir Robert almost always included people from the arts; and radio was not forgotten. He had awarded Eric Baume an OBE. James Dibble was to get an MBE {and later, under the Australian honours, membership of the Order of Australia}, Gary O'Callaghan of 2UE had an Imperial Honour as well. And there were others from radio administration.
 Came the time, and it was announced that Mrs Dorothy Gordon Jenner (Andrea) had been awarded an OBE. The Premier had followed his plan of making awards to people who had reached the top of their profession and, as he told me applying to radio and the theatre, had given lots of entertainment and enjoyment.
 The usual procedure was for notification from Government House that an Investiture would take place. At the time appointed, the recipients would appear, each with a maximum of one guest, for His Excellency the Governor to pin on the medal, and say the appropriate words. A glass of warm champagne and a curling sandwich on the lawns, with the military band playing in the distance, and then home with the new "gong" and its citation.
 That suited everyone fine - but not Andrea! Her honour had to come personally from none other than the Queen! She knew the machinery existed for expatriate Australians in Britain to have themselves tacked onto the queue for the Investitures at Buckingham Palace. Andrea wasn't expatriate in any way, shape or form. But, she intended to be! She wanted to use her influences - and all the pull of the Macquarie Network - to have her in London in time for an investiture. We made it possible.
 I wasn't able to go overseas with her on that occasion, as I was flat out with other productions. As it happened the London investiture occurred at a gap between surveys in Sydney, so she could be given holidays without upsetting too much the pressure.
 The Big Boss agreed, stating that, with the survey gap, she would be expected back in three weeks to continue her programs. She insisted that was not enough, getting very high-handed, saying: "I'll be back in three months!" Told that this was not possible, and would also be letting the side down, she still said that she had a lot of things to do overseas, and couldn't be back in three weeks. We insisted - but started making standby arrangements. Let the record show that Andrea became ill overseas, and was not back within three weeks as stipulated. And a lot of people at our place were not at all happy about it.
 I have never believed in mixing business with home life. Thus, I have been able to be a reasonable husband and father {or hope so} without bringing either the embarrassment of "star of show business", or a strange gaggle of broadcasting friends home. My wife had only met Andrea on the odd occasion at the first night at a theatre.
 Came Christmas one year and I was at a total loss for what to buy for the Grand Dame who had at least one of everything. The previous year she had given me a bound copy of the best articles from "Playboy", perhaps believing that I got the magazine not to look at the pictures.
 Andrea had met up with, and had as a guest on the show many times, the remarkable Reverend Ted Noffs of Kings Cross Wayside Chapel. She lived only a block from the chapel, and used visit it for the odd drop of praying. Anyway, she told me she did. Though brought up an Anglican, Ted's very much down to earth work with the people of the Cross showed Andrea the sort of Christianity at grass roots level she believed in.
 Well, came Christmas, and the dilemma of what to give Madam. Around the corner from where we live in Sydney is the delightful Shirley Ransford {who, with her husband Bob, have always been our "second best friends"}; and she, in her little cottage industry, was doing the very best dried flower arrangements in Australia. Her work was in such demand that she was able to tell David Jones and Grace Brothers they would have to wait. So, I asked Shirley to do something very special for Andrea for Christmas. It was excellent, and was warmly accepted.
 A few months later my wife and I scored an invitation to the wedding of Hollywood star Jane Powell, who selected the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross, Sydney, Australia to be wed for the third time. The streets were full of well-wishers and film fans, and we were checked upon entry, our invitations held up to the light, before being admitted to the tiny chapel.
 The first thing we noticed was, right in the centre of the altar - the dried flower arrangement! Looked lovely, too.
 All of which brings us to the saga of Darcy Dugan. One of Australia's worst criminals, a man who had spent more time behind bars than outside them, was to be released. His story was much in demand. The Packer organisation had bought the rights for newspapers and magazines, and for the Nine Network. Andrea, through connections within the Packer people {it might even have been with Sir Frank himself} obtained the right to interview Dugan for her show. It was a radio exclusive. {I have never liked the word "scoop"}. But it all had to be done with an air of secrecy.
 I'm trying to remember where we recorded the piece. It was with Carolyn or Anne that we did the interview with the most expensive call girl in Australia. And we did that in my car. No, I think we "did" Darcy Dugan for Andrea sitting on a seat in the Botanical Gardens. It was a very bland setting for the little man every cop in Sydney had told me not to trust when I asked, in all confidence, about him.
 As a piece of radio, it was not great. Andrea and Darcy never did get onto each other's wave length. But the fact that we had it at all carried the show. And there the story should have ended. But Andrea was suddenly seized with a crusade. Dugan, like any other crook, was a confidence trickster first and foremost. He convinced her that he had seen the light, and was on the way to rehabilitation for the rest of his life.
 She believed him and went to the Reverend Ted Noffs, asking for his assistance in Darcy Dugan's new life. Thus we had the strange case of Mr Dugan suddenly having Ted Noffs fronting for him while Andrea was working as his publicity agent!
 The record shows that, rather than using the facilities of the Wayside Chapel to help the crooks and drug addicts to a new and pure life, Dugan was able to have a ready-made screen of decency surrounding him as he planned his next crime.
 However, there needed to be a point of contact. The day when we recorded the Andrea program in the Botanical Gardens, she said: "Darcy, my friend, if ever you want anything, just get in touch with me." It was the equivalent of giving a kid the only key to the chocolate factory! However, she did not give Darcy Dugan her unlisted telephone number. Unknown to me, she slipped him a piece of paper with my home number on it!
 A day or two later we had some friends in for dinner. Half way through the meal the phone rang and one of my sons, sitting nearest the door, went to get the call. He came back saying: "For you, dad, bloke on the phone reckons he's Darcy Dugan." I can't remember what the call was about, but it sure gave us something to talk about for the rest of the meal!
 A few months later, Dugan was arrested for a break-in at Grace Brothers at Bondi Junction, in which he used violence on a security guard. He went back to jail - virtually for the rest of his life.
 Then there was the time when Andrea, through her contacts, arranged us tickets for the Oscars, the Academy Awards in Los Angeles. We flew over, planning to stay an extra day or so to pick up program material from the film capital of the world. And, for good measure, we stayed at the Beverly Hilton, one of the ritziest pubs in LA.
 The Oscars were really something! See the show on film as much as you like, but there's nothing quite like being there, seeing - almost in the flesh - the biggest names in screendom. The nearest we got to the flesh that year was Julie Christie, who wore a mini-dress when everyone else's hem hit the stage of the Santa Monica Auditorium. The night certainly gave Andrea plenty to talk about.
 Though she had been back several times since her own Hollywood days, there was nostalgia everywhere as we drove, she showing me where places now occupied by monster buildings, used to be the back lot of some film company or other. We visited Fox and met with a few people, recording interview material, and having lunch in the commissary. Richard Zanuck saw us in an office which might have been a Hollywood set for a Hollywood front office executive. I looked for, but did not get the opportunity to see if the books, which occupied two whole walls, were real.
 Well, it was then time to return to Australia. And it would have been smooth - as everything had on that trip, maybe lulling me to drop my guard a little.
 We had a system as we parted each night when we were on tour. We would speak for a moment about the next day's itinerary; and then I'd hand Andrea a piece of paper containing two sets of numbers. One was my room number, and the other the time we'd agreed to meet the next day. A system it was that had worked on three continents. But not this time!
 The following day was a Sunday, and we were to leave in the early afternoon. I awoke early, had my breakfast from the Beverley Hilton's excellent room service, showered, shaved; and it was still very early, a full hour before I'd told Andrea I'd be available.
 So I went down in the elevator, across the lobby and asked the doorman where I might go for a stroll at that sparkling time of the day. He directed me, and off I went.
 I was not to know that Andrea was to wake also, and, ignoring the time on the piece of paper, ring me in my room. Upon the third ring, and not finding me, she - I fear - panicked. She then called the desk and asked for the General Manager of the hotel. He was not available; but she insisted upon him. Asked why, she cried that her assistant had probably left, and gone back to Australia, stranding her. This was enough for the hotel to hit the panic button.
 I was but a couple of blocks away, feeling that Los Angeles homes were not all that different from some of those in Sydney. So I strolled back to the hotel. Then I discovered half {or so it seemed} the Beverley Hills Police Department were looking for me.
 Leaving out most of the inquisitive dialogue, with the cops and me and Andrea trying to straighten the matter out, Madam's only reply, as she swept off, was "Oh, well, that's all right, then"!
 Life was never dull with Andrea, as you gather; but I guess I should end the episodes with the one featuring The Beatles. Their visit to Australia was as big as, but very different from, the Royal Tour. Their first port of call was Sydney, and the fans were certainly waiting for them. Realising what the riots were going to do to business, some hotels had rejected their booking. We had all expected them to go to the Sheraton, just up the road from Andrea's place. And, indeed, that is where they did stay.
 The teeny-bopping fans did just about everything to get to the four boys from Liverpool, England. They were caught smuggling themselves in through the service entrances. They even booked rooms at the hotel on the opposite side of Macleay Street, hoping to get a view through the windows!
 The Beatles did a couple of all-in news conferences with the media. However, as the top radio show, we were able to get them to ourselves for ten or fifteen minutes in a room at their hotel.
 I guess it might be fair to say that The Beatles were riding on their own particular wave of popularity at the time; and they didn't want to be brought back to terra firma, much less in Australia. Also, striking Andrea with her insistence on their saying "Hello, mums and dads", had them off base with us from the start. Sure, we got a program segment out of it, but not before I had to do a very nasty edit. And I think I'd better hide behind a bit of anonymity for history's sake. Suffice it to say that one of The Beatles called her, "A silly old - - - -"; to which she replied that he was a "young - - - -". Naturally, that part of the tape didn't appear in the show. I think I kept it to play to a few mates. It's probably still on an unmarked reel in that box in the cupboard over there.
 I guess there's not a lot more to tell, as I have pre-empted the conclusion in a previous chapter.
 Andrea and I continued for a time working for the same radio station. I had been ordered not to approach her - which I did not do, for the sake of company and personal peace.
 On the odd social occasion when we would be thrown together in the same room, there might be a nod - or there might not. I recall one night at the theatre, interval drinks in hand, when Andrea walked over, right past me, and said to my wife: "How is you child?" Our fourth and latest was discussed as if I had not been there.
 How does one end this chapter, not only of this book, but of my life? Andrea's contract with our organisation ran out and was not renewed. She had made a couple of television appearances, but there was no new career for her there. She went to another commercial radio station for a time, and then to the ABC {or maybe in the other order}. But her great days of radio were over. Dammit, what else could one expect? She was an old lady - well into her eighties!
 The book {which I, along with others had been asked to write for her}, appeared; and I guess a certain bitterness showed. I have never read it. My then secretary grabbed it first, glossed it and then made me promise never to open its pages. Indeed she, my secretary, didn't give it back. I hear that I'm described as one "who used only to pick up the odd interview at the airport" {when I was the boss of all talks}, and as "a Mister Pearce".
 It's sad - damn sad - because the four and a half years had, together, been the making not necessarily of our careers, but of damn fine radio.
CHAPTER 23:
"I just said that. You weren't listening."
 "Oh, shut up and get on with it!"
 "Get on with what?"
 "Gee, this is a terrible radio program. No wonder nobody listens."
 But people did listen. Lots and lots of them did. There had never been anything like it on radio before - and there probably won't ever be anything like it again. Gordon Chater, incredible actor, and Gwen Plumb {"don't forget the B, darling - with a short name like Plumb, you need all the letters you can get"}, incredible actress!
 Together - that's the important bit - together! Had we asked either of them to come into a radio studio and do five one hour radio talks shows a week, we would have been creating yet another mediocre chat show. They would have had their mates in for cosy interviews; and probably would have gone out of their depths in areas of their non-expertise.
 Yet, put them together and you had nothing but fun - sounding horribly disorganised. And so it was. But they worked at it - not at being disorganised, but the reverse. The trouble was that, the harder they tried to make it sound organised, the greater the shambles it became!
 In the 1993 Queens Birthday Honours, Gwendoline Jean Plumb was welcomed into the Order of Australia. Some twenty years earlier she had received the Medal of the Order of the British Empire, the BEM. Both had been for a lifetime given to the theatre, and to philanthropic works.
 Gordon Chater had come to Australia at the end of World War two. He had been in the British Navy {or was that Stuart Wagstaff? Both, maybe}. He was an out of work actor, come to the antipodes in the hope of finding his fortune - and getting away from a Britain ravished by five and more years of war.
 Gordon's first job in Australia was as a spruiker selling cookware at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. Ask him this day about it, and he can repeat the pitch they had written for him. "Roll up, ladies and gentlemen, and hear - and see - the marvels of this wonderful all-aluminium waterless cookware ....." And so it went on for two or three minutes.
 Most of us first heard of him not as a spruiker, however, but as a brilliant, and even more so, a developing, comedian with the emerging Phillip Street Theatre in Sydney. Bill Orr and others produced such people as June Salter and Gordon, precipitating them into recognition. Later he was to star in a couple of television greats, "The Mavis Bramston Show" and "My name's McGooley, what's yours?"
 Like everyone with acting ability, Gordon developed considerable radio acting talents, and got lots of varying parts. They used to cast him as "anything English" from aristocracy to back alley accents. He was good. But it was variety where he starred.
 To use the word versatile to describe Gwennie's talents was to state the obvious. In radio and the theatre, you had to be able to play a variety of parts to be still smiling when the grocer came to collect his bill.
 I guess anyone can learn to act. I never had a necessity, so never bothered to start to learn. But both Gwen and Gordon had one thing you can't learn: the facility for comedy. You can learn to deliver a funny line; but only to few us is given the talent to time a line. Timing is something pretty abstract. It goes with intonation of voice, with pausing, with inflection. Work at it hard as you will, but you've either got it or you ain't! They did - in spades.
 Yet, there was something else. They, wittingly or unwittingly, bounced off each other. And, all these years later, I am unable to put it into words. But let me try a little analysis anyway.
 Gordon and Gwen were long-time personal friends. And that's always a help. In their lives - and there's no need to dig too deeply or we'll get to a "what did he mean by that?" situation - they had many similarities. They enjoyed the same things. There were not many areas I can remember where there were any differences, or even any gaps.
 Well, we were in the midst of putting together the team that was to rock Australian talks radio. I know that Gwen had wanted to be a part of it. {Maybe Gordon had even thought of it also}. But I suppose there was a sameness about a lady, however clever and gifted, in a line-up, where we already had Andrea - very different, but very established. Gwen on her own would not have been instantly commanding. {Mind you, in later years, we would have loved her alone, or with a football team. But time is time}.
 So Gwen suggested she and Gordon do a tryout - just sitting and chatting about the happenings of the day. Before the first tryout, the first pilot tape, had ended, we knew we had the perfect show for the third hour of our morning line-up, following Andrea and Eric Baume.
 There was no way we could format the show. They were non-format people. But, put them together across a microphone, and the whole thing burst into hilarious life. The whole brief for the show was "sit there and talk to each other about what you think people would want to hear". Lesser than professionals would take this as a wonderful way to do little and get paid a lot for it; but not Gwen and Gordon. Workers all their lives in theatre and radio, they set down to research what was happening in the world. They, quite separately, cut the newspapers to bits, and came to the studio, prepared to talk about any of the stories that had been happening in, and to, the world.
 There were times when they didn't have all the necessary details anyway - but who cared? They did, because they were troupers. But they weren't often listening to each other. And that made for a show and a half.
 I shall never forget that first show. They say that all the top people of show business are nervous as cats before a performance, even more so before an opening. Certainly it was that way with our two mates. Gordon, for instance, spent the whole of the first recording winding his tie up and down with the first fingers of both hands - much like a blind going up and down.
 But they would glance up at me every minute or so, looking for a timing sign: a single upraised finger for one minute to go, two fingers crossed for half a minute, and the well-known wind up sign to get out of the segment when comfortably able.
 Six minutes gone, and we wound it up. In later episodes, we'd stop the tape for long enough for them to get their notes ready for the next piece. At the end of that first program segment, I popped my head around the studio door.
 "That was awful, wasn't it, darling? Gwennie replied.
 "Just a whole heap of rubbish!" Gordon exclaimed.
 "Wipe it and we'll start again."
 I had to tell them that, rather than wipe it, we would continue it from where we left off. They shrugged, both relieved and admitting what they had both silently thought; that I was probably certifiably mad!
 All of which brought us to a more relaxed approach to the second six minutes. Gordon started a serious subject for discussion, while Gwen sought out a newspaper clipping she wanted to speak about when he'd finished. The fact that she wasn't listening to a word he was saying was borne out when Gordon said: "I just said all that."
 "Did you?"
 "Weren't you listening?"
 "Didn't seem to be much point in it."
 "Well, that's lovely!"
 All of which brought us to the naming of the program. For never was there a radio show, or any other show for that matter, that only acquired its name half way through the first episode.
 I had thought of calling it simply "Gwen and Gordon" or "Gordon and Gwen". Yet that wasn't very imaginative. So, in discussion with them a day or two before we started the series, either of them happened to say, "You know, this won't be in any way scripted. It'll just be off the cuff." And so we commenced the first episode calling it "Off the Cuff, with Gordon Chater and Gwen Plumb".
 About half way into program one, they commenced talking about a James Bond film that had just hit town, and which they'd both seen, "Pussy Galore".
 "Isn't that a lovely name?" Gwen said. "I'd love to be known as Pussy."
 "Pussy Plumb," Gordon replied. "It's certainly got a ring to it. Hello, Puss."
 "Haven't you wanted to be called anything but Gordon?"
 "Yes, as you mention it. I'd like to be known as Charlie."
 "Pussy and Charlie - that sounds good."
 And it sounded good to me, too. I called the publicity people and told them not to go home. We had to change everything, including on-air promotional pieces that had been written and recorded. We had to change media handouts. And the last thing I did before I went home that night was to record a closing to show number one, "You have been listening to Off the Cuff, with Pussy and Charlie."
 The names Chater and Plumb were never used again in connection with the show.
 Picture our recording sessions. Gordon and Gwen in the studio. In the control booth, just the production operator and myself. This was one occasion when I'd liked to have one or more people with me to gauge their reactions as we recorded. Everything about the show was different. There was nothing with which to compare their antics. For, either we were onto a smash hit, or we were serving up the greatest heap of rubbish Australian radio had ever thrust at the population.
 But, I found myself laughing out loud in the booth, and the usually poo faced operator likewise. I reckoned that it amounted to one hundred per cent approval.
 Still, I knew also that there would be a bit of adverse reaction from some listeners. There are some people seemingly with a telephone at their elbow, ready to phone radio stations and complain. {If only they would be as keen to ring and praise us when we did something they liked!}.
 And, when a few people - and how many is a few? - start complaining, management asks questions. Happily at this time, we were working with a management that admitted its job was to manage, while mine was to make radio programs.
 Sooner than we expected, Pussy and Charlie had won a massive and devoted audience.
 Very often the program got out of control. I remember once {and have the tape still to prove it} they fell about each other in uncontrollable laughter. For more than three quarters of a minute, they could do nothing but laugh. They begged me to cut it, to expunge it from the show. Rather than that, I featured it.
 As I have written a few times, and will probably do again before we come to the back cover together, radio is such a transient business. You make a program {or even do one live}, and then lose any interest in it. As we discovered when Eric Baume died, we had kept so little of his stuff. With Pussy and Charlie, I determined that this wouldn't happen.
 I broke open a new reel of tape, one to be kept personally by me. When Gwennie or Gordon did an extraordinarily funny bit, I dubbed it to that reel before going home for the night. I'm not sure why I was keeping the stuff, except maybe conscience had got to me saying that it was a sin to destroy history.
 I hadn't told either of them about it. They would have thought it a waste of time. Indeed, I sometime had the feeling that they thought the whole program was a waste of time.
 However, one night at a cocktail party, I got to talking to, amongst others, a chap from Festival Records, and the conversation got around to Pussy and Charlie. I told him that I was keeping "the best of ...", and our eyes met. I was a producer - he a marketing man.
 "Like to let our people hear some of the stuff you have?"
 "It's only rough-cut."
 "No matter."
 And we did. Festival felt it was worth a fling, and when could I give them enough for an LP? As the material I had been keeping was, in some cases, only a little more than a minute in duration, it turned out that we finished up with sixteen tracks on either side.
 There was one longer piece: a sketch Gwennie had written, coming over Sydney Harbour on the ferry that morning. Gordon had moved to her side of the table, and they read the parts from her handwritten script, sight unseen. It was total hilarity, as they read each other's parts by mistake. I always thought it the highlight of the LP.
 Then Festival rang and said we needed to do some photography for the cover of the disc. We went along to the photo studios; and here I was in for another shock. We were now visual, and Gwen, as Pussy Plumb, brought with her a fur stole which she wore backwards, and a costume pussy cap with cats' ears.
 Gordon saw his visual interpretation of Charlie quite differently. He wore a tea cosy and some joke teeth!
 We promoted heck out of the disc, including a personal appearance one Saturday morning in the basement record department of Farmers Store in Central Sydney. A few people came to see them. Very few, unhappily, bothered to buy the record for them to autograph. Instead they offered just about anything else to be autographed!
 All-in-all, I can't remember any of us making any money at all out of the project. And business was good then!
 Well, "Off the Cuff" was, unfortunately, getting in the road of Gordon"s increasing commitments with one or the other of his Channel Seven projects. We even tried recording them from the television station during breaks in the tele show. But that was too much for all. Something had to go.
 There’s a saying that you should quit when you're winning. One thing's absolutely certain - "Off the Cuff, with Pussy and Charlie" went out at its peak.
CHAPTER 24:  Sydney radio, particularly our part of it, was going very well indeed. Australia was also.
 At 2GB we had had our problems as we switched a lifetime of programming philosophy to coincide with people's acceptance of free black and white movies - television.
 As the leading talks station, we were in contact with political boss men, as well as the manufacturing, agricultural, mining and investment leaders. There would be times when we'd have one or more {or even a few} of them in for drinks in the Board Room at five, sometimes extending into the night. As an executive of the station, albeit a little one, I was asked in to do my share of host-entertaining.
 It was on one of those occasions that I got into conversation with the Premier of New South Wales, Sir Robert Askin. There are always people ready to bad-mouth superiors after they fall from favour. It's even easier when they have died. Much harder for them to take you to court for defaming their good names. And Bob Askin, as a politician who had grabbed state leadership after a long run under Labor, was no exception. Like everyone else in this book, I can only speak of people as I found them, rather than repeating what one has been told of them.
 I have made it a policy never to become mates with politicians. Likewise, I have never joined a political party. In all conscience, one could hardly comment upon an institution of which one is a member. But I found Bob Askin to be a good bloke. He worked damn hard, and tended to play just as hard.
 On a couple of these occasions when he had been in the 2GB Board Room for a noggin after work, he had offered {and I'd willingly accepted} a lift home in his ministerial chauffeur-driven car. His route went within a few blocks of my place. I remember on those occasions the Premier looking out of the car window and asking, "How many sheep do you run to the acre out this way?' and "Now aren't we glad we gave you rural electricity?" I live within sight of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
 This night seemed no different from any other, except when one stole a look at the clock on the walnut-panelled wall, one realised that one would far rather be at home, than standing with a warming drink in one hand, and a semi-permanent smile on one's face.
 Sir Robert bailed me up in a corner, and said one of the more remarkable pieces I'd ever heard. I remember it, word for word, to this day. "You know I wouldn't insult you with an MBE, don't you? And there's a precedent, too. I gave one to Baume and one to Andrea." I was about to comment {if I could have thought of anything to say to these amazing questions} when someone dragged the Premier away. We didn't speak another word that night.
 Still in some state of shock when I got home, I said to my wife: "Nothing may come from this, but tonight at GB, I think Bob Askin offered me an OBE."
 This time I don't think either of us could think of anything to say. However, the following Saturday morning, the home phone rang, and it was the Premier. After a sentence or two of small talk, his voice grew serious - and he offered me an OBE. There was not the slightest suggestion that he remembered the Board Room conversation of Thursday. Now, as I have stated earlier in these writings, it was Sir Robert's policy to reward people who had achieved eminence in their callings, and he was most generous to folk from the arts.
 Although Thursday night's conversation had come as some sort of shock, by Saturday morning, I was prepared not to believe that the dialogue had happened at all, or that the extra Scotch had caused someone to say something they didn't quite mean. But, when it was repeated, I was not prepared for it. I thanked him, and said that I would be honoured to accept. Then followed the usual pledge of secrecy. I promised that none other than my wife would know. {It would be hard not to confide in my ageing mother and father, neither with that many years to go on earth, they being in the last bit of their eighties}.
 A few weeks later came the double-sealed letter from Government House, formalising the offer, and asking that a reply should be sent by telegram, in a code the letter described. And again, the urging to secrecy until the deadline of four in the afternoon of the day before the announcement to the media.  It happened that I was lunching with three mates the day before the announcement, and broke the curfew by one hour. At three, or just after, I ordered a bottle of champagne and, when the glasses were poured, told them.
 The investiture was some weeks later. One group to benefit must be the tailors, for every recipient shouts themself a new suit!
 You arrive at Government House, with a maximum of one guest per recipient. Now one hundred and fifty years old, Sydney's Government House is a delight. Its lawns sweep down to the most beautiful harbour in the world. I have never been upstairs, for that's where the living quarters are. The ground floor consists of a beautiful entrance hall, complete with portraits of former governors. Out of the hall to the right, two massive reception rooms, a lounge and a ballroom, which can be as one or divided. On this occasion it was both.
 I was separated from my wife, and taken into the backmost of the two rooms, looking forward towards the folding door. My wife, and other guests, were in the front room, facing the dais.
 In our room, we were seated in order of precedence of the award we were to receive, the more important ones to the front. I was ushered in with the other OBEs, and seated alphabetically. Nervously we greeted those on either side, in front and the rear.
 I was delighted that Bob and Dolly Dyer were also honoured on the same day, and I had a quick word with them before the chief aide, a most imposing gentleman in full military formal dress and wearing a monocle strode to the front and addressed us.
 Fortunately, his next line broke the tension, though it wasn't supposed to.
 "If you can't hear me in the back, will you please put up your hands."
 He then went along to explain the protocol. His Excellency the Governor, Sir Roden Cutler, VC would be officiating at the investiture. Following the instructions, the folding doors would open, and the two rooms would be one.
 As our names were called, we would move to an aisle and stand next to an aide in uniform. On his cue, a nudge, we would proceed forward, through and past our guests, to the second aide, standing next to the Governor. During this time, which we were told was twenty-two steps, the citation would be read out. As the citation ended, the recipient was to move one step more towards the Governor and bow. He would then pin on the medal - he didn't actually, as we had all put little hooks onto our coats to receive the medal - His Excellency would say words of congratulation and shake hands. We would then step back, bow again, and turn left, out of the ballroom onto the colonnade, and then back down and into the building, re-entering and assuming our original seating positions.
 After the last medal had been presented, the Governor would invite all to join him on the lawns for a congratulatory glass and a bite. He left, and we had a chance, at long last, to meet up with, and be congratulated by, wives, husbands or invited friends. The military band then played music from down in the garden, and house staff circulated with trays of drinks and sandwiches.
 It was here that one realised that the two hundred drinks had been pre-poured and the sandwiches pre-cut. The former were not sparkling cold, and the latter starting to curl at the edges. But, on such an occasion, who cares?
 I was lucky enough to be photographed with the Governor, and have that print very proudly framed at home. Also the Sydney Morning Herald did one of Bob and Dolly Dyer and self, and that made the next day's paper.
 In the highly unlikely case of ever receiving another gong, that will be the first and last time I ever went to Government House as a performer. But the day will also be remembered for one crazy conversation.
 The Dyers came up to my wife and me, and, after the usual platitudes, Bob said: "Say, John, what did he say to you?" "Dashed if I remember, Bob. I was scared as hell. More scared than when I flew my first solo. I think he just said 'congratulations Mr Pearce'."
 "Scared! So was I," Bob said. "But, how about this? I went up and bowed, and, just as I was standing to look Sir Roden in the eye, the Governor said, 'What will you have, Mr Dyer, the medal or the box it came in'?"
 And that was the only time I ever knew the great Bob Dyer be caught without a reply.
CHAPTER 25:
"Good morning [or afternoon, or evening]."
 "Is that you, Mr Pearce?"
 "You speak with the great man".
 "How are you?"
 "Fine, great. And you?"
 Ah, that radio should have denigrated to such platitudes! Yet, I could retire if someone had paid me ten cents for every open line call I've taken on radio over the last twenty-five years. I would be so rich, there would be no need for me to be sitting at the computer and bashing out these words. Yet, I write this, because nobody has ever bothered to do similar, I guess.
 Television had driven listeners away from the traditional electronic entertainment of sitting down and listening to drama, quiz or similar, in chunks of sixty or thirty minutes, on the radio. Radio had fought back by elevating disc jockeys to a point above their station. For, when you think of it, any moron can sit in a studio and play forty tracks one after the other. And anyone with a real love for their own sort of music could go and buy it from record shops. Radio had dropped its pants in the face of other electronic competition.
 It had tried all-news stations. That had worked in markets like New York or Los Angeles; but we had shown ourselves not to have that many news freaks to support it. We mixed news and talk, and that had held the wolf from the door for about five years. Clearly, however, another ingredient was needed.
 I happened to be in the United States, on some junket or other. {In those days, airlines were opening new routes, as the jet took over from the propeller; and airlines were able to introduce new trips by flying media people along the routes, in the hope that they'd come back and publicise the trips}. I had done a few, to the US, the Philippines, Hong Kong a number of times, Noumea, New Zealand and places I've forgotten}. On this trip to the US, I was in San Francisco, and had returned to my hotel room, having been dined at an excellent restaurant in Chinatown. {And San Francisco’s Chinatown is the best I've been to outside Asia}.
 Back to the hotel room, the walls closing in more each night away from home, I readied for bed and turned on the radio - and got the shock of my life, and the next half of my working life. For this is the first time I'd heard two-way radio, open line radio, access radio - call it what you will. The performer was a gentleman named Ira Blue - blue by name and nature, as it turned out. He did a stint late evening, from ten through until two the next morning.. And, to say the least, it was intimate stuff.
 On the night in question, he was well into sexual relationships. His first words, as I tuned him were: "Say, why don't you give me a call and tell me the craziest place you ever had one."
 I didn't believe it. Have one . . . what? Allowing for the differences between the way the Americans and ourselves have rewritten the English language and its vernacular, there could, surely, not be two meanings to "Tell us where you had one"? And there wasn't.
 People were actually ringing up this guy and telling him the unusual places where they had sexually co-habited. One even called from out of town to admit that he and his wife, farmers, had once "had one" in a tub of bran!
 Let's be honest. I was shocked! Radio in Australia was blue stocking by comparison. In those days the word "bloody" was a no-no on the Australian airwaves. And here we had people saying where they had had sex. Good heavens, the next step would be to describe how they had it!
 Yet, I realised one other thing. I bet myself I wasn't the only other dirty old man {younger then} sitting listening. For, it was riveting stuff - radio voyeurism. I couldn't want to get back to Australia and tell them about it.
 Sure, I knew we weren't ready for open sexual discussions on Australian radio. But the hours I listened in San Francisco taught me that people are willing to disclose some close and intimate details, as long as they are anonymous. And I did know that Australia was ready for it in moderated form - right now!
 The anonymous angle turned out to be right. In later years, some of my colleagues have taken to letting their callers be known by their first names. I have never supported this. Once you let your callers be people instead of just voices, you have, surely, destroyed the illusion. Also, open line radio doesn't work at all well on country radio stations. The market is too small. Too many people know one another. And, when you have people saying, "I heard you on the radio last night", you get either those bores who rush to perform, or stop those with real opinions from expressing them because they would be recognised.
 So, when we started, we had three basic rules: turn off your radio because you are on seven seconds delay, don't mention your name, or the name of any product, and don't defame anyone or product. Much has been added to it since, but those basic rules have served me well this quarter of a century.
 Poor old Australia was lagging behind in electronic innovation, and continued to. We were, for instance, one of the last countries of the modern world to accept television; and when we did the planning was so bad that we had a Channel 0 and a Channel 5A! Although the United States had had open line radio for years, Australia authorities were still fiddling thinking about it.
 We would not accept the technical standards of other countries, and we had committees advising other larger committees on what regulations should be formulated. Thus, we were ready to go We had programs in our minds {"and don't tell the opposition"} for years before the green light came from Canberra.
 But it didn't stop one operator. The seven second delay today, works digitally. The program is compressed like computers compress, and then expanded. Using this technique, it is possible to squeeze the program, and then let it out seven seconds later. Thus, if anything untoward happens, the operator presses a button marked either "Kill", "Dump" or "Panic" {ours had always been the latter} and what has been said in the studio and on the phones for the last seven seconds does not go to air. Prior to the digital innovation, we used tape recorders. The program was recorded and then the tape passed over a number of extra rollers until seven seconds had elapsed, when it went to the playback head and out to the transmitter.
 Down in Melbourne one Saturday night, a night time host was doing a party-style program, playing pop music for people's parties. He also gave calls to people at parties. On the night in question - now also in history - he decided to use the installed {yet not approved} telephone facility . . .without the seven seconds delay!
 "Hey, call me up and tell us all what sort of a party you are having, and tell us who's there," he said. And people did.
 "Hi, Fred, This is Mavis of St Kilda. We're having a party here, and Jim and Maureen and Bill and his girl friend Dawn are here, and we're drinking a lot of Fosters, and loving your music."
 For the first time,. people were living the intimacy of listening, as a third party, interloping on a telephone conversation. For, next to the toothbrush, nothing was more sacred and personal than a telephone call.
 The party time show swung along that Saturday night, until . . .
 "Hello, Fred," said a sultry female voice, "I'm Victoria."
 "G'day, Victoria, how's it with you? Having a great party?"
"Not really, Fred. I'm lonely. Victoria on 28-1234, give me a call if you're generous. I'm waiting for you. 28-1234."
 Fred froze! The fun had gone out of it all. For the first time ever, he'd allowed a call girl to give herself a commercial on Australian radio. And, without paying the station for it, either.
 There are times when you hope, momentarily, that nobody's listening. But, as you find out every time you make a mistake, there are no times when nobody is listening. And this, of course, was one of them.
 The radio station had broken every rule except Australian Rules, and was in for a rocket, as was the Saturday night announcer who had used a facility not yet approved. Also, in those days, radio either did not admit that call girls even existed, or frowned seriously upon their existence.
 The rest of the industry then waited until the broadcasting authorities got through their endless meetings, finally coming up with a set of technical and program standards. Most were a copy of what overseas people had been using. We had lost a couple of years.
 There will always be an argument as to who was the first person to use open line. John Laws says he was, and he might well be right. For I seem to recall that 2UE for whom he then worked, arranged for an open line call to the New South Wales Premier at one minute past midnight on the first day it all became legal.
 2SM were ready for it. They had even built a suite of open line studios, and made most radical changes to their programming. From nine in the morning to nine at night, they had four of their presenters doing three hours each, Monday to Friday. Thus people like Mike Walsh, Ron Casey, Garvin Rutherford and others were in line to claim being first. 2SM even dropped their news on the hour, until the presenters pointed out that the news break is traditionally the time when they rush out to "the littlest room in the building". The news went back.
 For mine, the first person to use open line for much else than gimmick value was the late, great broadcaster Ormsby Wilkins, then on 2UE, before going to Melbourne to be the star of that city's radio on 3AW. Ormsby did an early afternoon program, where he mixed open line with news gathering - and did it splendidly, setting the style for the industry.
 At 2GB, we had to dismantle a talks structure to accommodate open line. Andrea was tried, as was Eric Baume, without any success. In the lunch hour we had a most interesting show just ready for open line. Terry Dear was the compere, and each day we had a different expert in the studio to take open line calls for an hour.
 On Mondays the subject was religion. I went to the Anglican and Catholic bishops and asked them to nominate someone who'd be a good broadcaster, and able to think on their feet. They did, and we had Father Tom Fitzgerald and the Reverend Howard Guinness. We needed a third to cover the religious spectrum. We alternated between some of the clergy from the Methodists, Presbyterian, Salvation Army and that remarkable gentleman Rabbi Rudy Brash. That was an excellent program, with the possible exception that the Catholic and Anglican chaps tended to gang up on the floating third member of the panel. Maybe I was the inventor of ecumenism!
 Tuesdays we had a lady doctor who turned out to be a top broadcaster. Then on other days, we had a vet, a gardener and others who don't readily spring to mind. Overall, we were pretty proud of that show.
 Yet, other talks stations, and those, like 2SM, which had been mainly music, were racing ahead of 2GB, and we realised we needed an approach in the main morning time slot.. And that's how I came to take it - after that Christmas try-on that seemed to work.
 It was to develop into a few years of great morning competition. Bob Rogers was on 2UE, taking over from Gary O'Callaghan who did breakfast there. And John Laws was then doing mornings on 2UW. I did the 2GB stint. In the afternoons we pioneered a news-as-it-happens style, the brainchild of that top broadcaster, Brian White, then assistant news editor of 2GB and Macquarie News. Whitey did his show, calling up by phone, top people world-wide, as well as nationally and locally, to bring us the news from the people who either made it, or observed it first hand. One of his regular correspondents was the "Herald's” man in New York, Derryn Hinch.
 There was only one problem. None of us knew how to do open line radio. Sure, we had heard tapes of the best operators in the United States, and some even tried to copy them. But the Australian listening market was so different, that our managements agreed that this was one time when we couldn't do a mirror copy of an American program, and get automatic ratings.
 I was no more out of the wilderness than any of my competitors. I guess I had had as much general interviewing experience as anyone in Australia. Indeed, I had even written a book, "How to Win Friends and Interview People" {to my knowledge the only book ever written on the subject for Australian broadcasters - and one which I have been threatening to update and never got around to it}, and I was applying the interviewing techniques to open line.
 The basic tenet I was using, and one that works so well in proper interviewing is for the interviewer to work so hard at holding back his own personality, that the full strength of the interviewee comes out. The greatest compliment is when an interviewer hears one of his interviews being discussed, and where listeners have remembered it in great detail - without knowing who the interviewer was! I was trying this on open line - and it was not working. But what was the alternative?
 Like so many great inventions or discoveries, accident comes to the rescue. One morning I was doing the open line show on 2GB, when a nagging female voice got beyond my tolerances. Maybe I had had a heavy night the evening before, or something else had got to my "cool", but I found myself declaring to the listener, "Why don't you shut up, you damn bore?"
 Now people not only didn't talk like that on radio, but they didn't talk to women like that, on or off radio. The caller was, pretty rightly I guess, totally insulted and slammed the phone down, leaving me with the "what have I done?" thought. However the show continued, until a few calls later a gent, sounding much like ex-Indian Army, called saying: :"How dare you speak to a lady like that, you cur!" It left me with little else to reply except: "And the same goes to you, you old goat!"
 Well, when I came off the air a couple of hours later, the boss' secretary was waiting for me. "He wants to see you - like now - like immediately." I wasn't a bit surprised, and wondered if there was still a job for me in aviation.
 Into the boss' office and "Shut the door!" This is only one step short of "Don't bother to take off your coat."
 I started to explain, but was silenced with a managerial frown and: "for the last couple of hours when I am paid to run this damn radio station, I have been on the two phones here, continually fielding complaint after complaint about you."
 Again I tried to interrupt. But no. Rank hath its privileges, one of them being the right to speak first.
 "Sit down, and we'll talk this out," he said, his eyes a-sparkle. "Mate, we're on to something here."
 And thus was devised, quite deliberately, a new image for "The Man they love to hate - and hate to love."
CHAPTER 26:  How do you think you'd feel, walking onto a tennis court five days a week, knowing that, whatever else happened, you could not lose? Comforting? Frightening? Have either if you like, but don't get complacent, or you will lose.
 Over the years, politicians have told me of their envy. If only they could go into a debate having as much control as we have when we do an open line show. Fancy being able to eliminate not only the last seven seconds said, but eliminate your opponent as well. Certainly it isn't a level playing field. But they are so dull.
 I've mentioned how we have a button to get rid of anything that has been said which could bring your employer's wallet undone. It happens infrequently, but more often than you at home hear. Under the old system when we used tape for delay, it was necessary to bridge the seven seconds eliminated with a musical sting of the same length. Some stations even had seven second identification jingles made to cover the change back to delay. With today's digital equipment, you just hit the Panic button and go on talking. The offending material does not go to air and, in less than a minute, you're ready to take the next call.
 And the clever technical people have built us another tool. It's called a ducker. Now when you think about it, it is essential that the open line operator be in control of the program at all times. So what do you do with callers who won't shut up? Two things: either cut them off cold, or fade them down and speak over them. They may think they're getting the better of you, but they have disappeared from the air waves completely. The ducker does this for you. The louder you, in the studio, talk, the softer the caller gets, giving you the chance to cut them off without listeners being aware of it.
 If you hear a caller making a point and then start fading under the announcer's voice for a few seconds, they have probably been cut off altogether. The bloke in the studio may then go on for as much as thirty seconds, stating his point of view, like he was still talking to the caller, by that time extinct.
 Fool proof? You can make anything fool proof - but not damn fool proof!
 My old roommate from Hobart, Bob Rogers has been caught a couple of times. Once when talking on open line to advertising guru John Singleton, Bob asked an opinion. In reply, John used a very naughty {yes that} word. Rogers just sat there, transfixed. By the time he reached for the Panic button, the seven seconds had elapsed. The word had gone to air.
 Another bit of Bob's "rotten luck" really didn't have to do with open line equipment. We were both working for 2UE at the time, he doing afternoons and me early evenings. At the end of the hourly news he went into his first record. It was an Abba song. However Bob wanted to remonstrate with his panel operator for making an earlier mistake. Unfortunately, he had not turned off his studio microphone. And, in a pause between bars eight and nine of Abba, Bob said very strong words, not only through the talkback to the control room, but also on the air.
 I came in late in the afternoon to get ready for my show, and met Bob coming down the 2UE back stairs to the car park. I looked at my watch, querying the fact that Bob should have been on the air still. Sheepishly, he said: "I said the word again!"
 Before we get back to the game the announcer cannot lose, there is one near miss worth reporting. It was back on 2GB when I was on holidays and one of my programs was being done by the Reverend Roger Bush. In those days, I had to take my holidays when the boys were home from school, and thus radio had a more than usual complement of schoolkids at home on holidays. One of them rang the Rev Rog. I've heard the tape of the call. {Oh, one day when I"m dead and they prise upon the safe deposit box at the bank, they'll find the best "blooper" tape in Australia}. This little kid asked Roger if he may recite a poem. He was allowed to. A mistake. The poem was of a lovely little birdie on a windowsill. The last line was about along came someone or other and smacked the window down on the bird's so and-so head! Roger was petrified. "Oh, dear. Oh, dear dear," he said: "you horrible little boy...." And then he remembered to hit the Panic button, eliminating the so-and-so word. He made it with less than one and a half seconds to go. Lucky for a gentleman of the cloth.
 Permit me one more, and then I'll get back to the subject. Sports broadcasting has always had its dangers, as sporting folk, under great tension and pressure, have been known to let a few expletives go. And today's microphones are so sensitive!
 Kerry Packer, thinking bigger than anyone in Australia, decided to take over the telecasting of cricket, hitherto the domain of the ABC - and what an unimaginative, dreary job they did of it. We know the story. He didn't get his way, and so decided to take over, world-wide, the whole game of cricket. He has done that, allowing test matches, with players in staid white gear to be played in between his much watched and enjoyed one day games.
 The only way he could organise the takeover, was to start his own - World Series - cricket. He did this, playing on football grounds, sometimes even taking a portable wicket with him. All he wanted was a game he could televise. We got the call to broadcast on radio the Sydney matches. And Barry Friedman and I shared it, sometimes using Channel 9's experts when permitted. The other thing we shared with the television people was the effects microphone. Today they have cameras and microphones within the middle stump. Back then they had to cut a shallow ditch to the wicket for a tiny mike located behind the middle stump. Thus we came to the famous broadcast by one Mr Dennis Lillee.
 A late-order batsman, he was facing the wrath of a South African fast bowler, Garth La Rue. I was commentating at the time, and alongside me Barrie Knight, former England all-rounder who had emigrated to the Land of Oz.
 La Rue came down flat chat and let a sizzler go at Lillee. It rose from a good length and hit Dennis in the one part of his body he would have least chosen to have been struck.
 "Oh, that would have been painful, " Barrie Knight remarked. "Hit him right in the .. er .. where the upper thigh meets the lower abdomen."
 By this time Lillee was recovering. He looked straight down the wicket at the fast bowler and fairly shouted: "You . . . [followed by one of the half dozen classic epithets unmentionable]".
 "Dennis is in some pain," I said, trying to sound composed. For I had heard the Lillee words right loud and clear in my headphones. The game continued.
 When I finished my twenty minute stint, I couldn't wait to ring the studio. "Make sure you save that bit for me off the master tape," I implored.
 "No sweat," said the man in the control room. "You are the sixth person to ask, including Australian Associated Press who have already sent it to New Zealand."
 But, reverting to open line, we are generally able to have complete control of what goes to air.
 Do we ban anyone? I do. I admit it. I have this fixation about people being people instead of just voices. And, when I start recognising a voice, I ask my phone operator to tell them to come back five years from now. One replied: "Morning or afternoon?"
 But there is a lot of people we don't want. First, I don't want anyone with nothing to say. Some of my colleagues seem to get folk just saying: "Hi, Fred, just rang up to say that I love your show." From this I deduce the announcer is either on an ego kick and wants to have it fertilised, or they have no other calls waiting.
 Sadly, we ban people with a speech impediment. I know it's not their fault. But they are just lousy radio. People listening, including the open line host, are embarrassed for them, and try to finish their sentences for them. And, of course, they slow the show terribly.
 But there was one exception to this. A well-known sporting person had one of the worst stammers I'd ever struck. I'd known him, and though he was a lovely bloke, I found a conversation with him pretty difficult to wear. Years later when I met him, the stammer had completely disappeared. And then I found out for the first time that I had been used as therapy.
 Someone running a remedial course for stammerers, made their final test - their passing out parade - a call to me. If they could ring my show and have a conversation without a stammer, they'd made it. And this guy had. I sometimes wish I had the address of the remedial person. They had done something nobody else had been able to achieve.
 So, no people with nothing to say, and none with speech impediments, along with those we call "cast", those who seem to appear on everyone else's show. Okay for other people - not for me.
 We are wary of kids. Whilst it would be crazy to place a blanket ban of kids ringing the show, one has to admit that only one in fifty really has anything worthwhile to contribute. Yet, a lot of them try. We may have been endeavouring to do a meaningful show with a real adult twist, only to have a little kid ring and say they wanted to speak of homosexuality and anal sex!
 The ladies who have sorted my calls out over the years, those wonderful at turning them {the callers} back at the switch, are very good at shuffling the incoming calls. We have one rule paramount: if we get a caller angry, particularly angry with me, we want them next . . . before their anger has subsided. As for the suspect little voices, we ask them how old they are. If they say twenty-two, we ask them the year of their birth. That stops them!
 Doing open line shows at nights, particularly weekend nights, we find a lot of little kids. Their parents have gone out, leaving them to play with the home's technological goodies. One of these is the telephone, and so they ring radio stations. One wonders what they also do with mum's and dad's supply of booze and condoms!
 It has been suggested that the only people who ring open line shows are the lonely. This certainly may be true in a number of cases. Yet, when a person gets an original idea, in whom will they confide? When the family reassembles for dinner in the evening, that is hardly the time for starting an in-depth thought. Say it to a neighbour or a relative, and you stand the chance of being ridiculed. Pick up the phone and, under the guise of anonymity, say it to a radio personality, and at last there is someone not only keen to listen - but paid to do it.
 Yet we are aware that radio - and long before open line ever started - is a hand-holder of the lonely. We know that we are very real friends and members of thousands upon thousands of homes. We are, to many, the only contact they have with the outside world except Meals on Wheels.
 Some two way radio people get into personal problems. It's something, like a radio Lifeline, that some can do well. I fear I am not one of them. While being aware that we can make a contribution to people's problem solving, I have always aimed at keeping the show bubbling with a bit of comedy. I was once caught by a caller late night. This bloke kept saying he was on the way to jump over Sydney’s notorious Gap at Watsons Bay, the place where it is fashionable to suicide.
 Behind the scenes, we have on a lot of occasions kept people waiting to get to air, while our telephonists call the police on another line. However, this was an occasion when I didn't believe the caller really intended to take his own life. I remembered back many years interviewing Sergeant Harry Ware, the cop who started the Rescue Squad, and being told that only one per cent threatening to go over The Gap were Jumpers, the other ninety nine were Actors. So I told this caller that, as far as I was concerned, he could jump, as long as he got off the air and stopped mucking up my show. I knocked the call off, and then wondered if I had done the right thing. I confessed checking every news bulletin for the next six hours. But Harry Ware was right. This chap was an Actor.
 Should I leave the impression that we are heartless, caring for the program and nothing else, I should say we have a pretty enviable record off the air, putting people in touch with the police, Lifeline, the Salvation Army, and those other people geared to help.
 The Kill button all-powerful? Maybe. Many years ago, I learned a lesson. I had been hitting the show as hard as I thought it would go, verbally bashing people around when I thought the show would carry it, and getting "the man they love to hate" image firmly up front. I even had two off air calls from psychiatrists, offering me help. I should have introduced them to each other!
 But I once got so carried away I found I'd said something of which I was truly ashamed. {Can't remember what it was - except I didn't want to be associated with it}. So I hit the Panic button.
 For the first and only time, I had cut myself off!
CHAPTER 27:  My father was born in the same year as Daimler Benz applied for a patient on the motor car. He lived to see a man walk on the moon. I was born at about the same time the first commercial radio station started broadcasting, and have since used the power of satellites to send my radio signals to the listeners. As a kid I had a crystal radio receiver upon which I could lie in bed and listen to local radio stations. Today I have a ten-speaker sound system in my car, selecting radio from either AM stereo or FM stereo, cassette or one of the six CDs stored in the boot. {One of the disadvantages of the latter is when a passenger asks the name of a tune being played. I have to stop and look in the boot!}. I also have a telephone in the car. At home there is a facsimile machine, enabling me to send a one page letter to number one son in London instantly, and for only slightly more than an airmail stamp. Yes, I do wonder what is in store for my children and grandchildren.
 But the transmission of a radio signal through the ether must still be a mystery to many. How can you believe something you can't see? You'd better, or give up using electricity or gas.
 And I can imagine my father's generation calling it "wireless". Just as I'd become used to believing a phone conversation, or a radio program, could be transmitted along a piece of copper wire, up comes fibre optics, and as many as eight thousand single conversations, or radio programs, are transmitted along a piece of plastic no thicker than a human hair!
 Whereas the power of a radio receiver was measured in the number of valves it had, none of the technicians at 2GB were trained on valves, and the station doesn't have a valve on the premises.
 Over the years I have learned one thing: make the programs good enough and listeners will go through all sorts of discomforts to listen to them; and not only on the radio, either. In winter, it's not unusual for people to ring the 2GB switchboard and ask to be put on hold so they can listen to the football. These are people interstate or in the country, and beyond the power of our daytime signal.
 At night, the AM signal goes a lot further, depending as it does on waves which bounce from a layer in the sky, and back to earth. On the minus side, we have a lot more radio stations on the spectrum than we used to have, also there is that pestiferous man in the next street who does a bit of backyard welding, making noises where you wanted to listen.
 Out in the country interference is less, and we often hear, by mail or phone calls, from people out in the bush. If you are working for a country radio station, you are a far more important part of the social scenery than in a major metropolis. You are relied upon for more personal contact between neighbours. Thus, country listeners are disappointed when they can't hear you, because of an electrical storm in the vicinity, or for any other reasons, actual or assumed.
One of the technicians on a country station recalls a phone conversation with a listener one night. Although the station was only on low power, not more than 200 watts, it could be heard clearly for more than 100 kilometres around. One night, when atmospherics hampered reception, the station got a call from a listener on a property some three times that distance from the transmitter. The dialogue went something like this:
 "Not gettin' you too well tonight. Why don't you do something about it?"
 "It's leaving here as usual."
 "Well, it's not getting here properly." The country listener was not aggressive. Indeed, as the following words will show, all he wanted to do was help. "Now, let me tell you. We've put up a real big aerial to get your station, because we like your programs. Strung a long bit of wire from the furthest pine tree right up to the chimney on the house. Must be about fifty yards long. Brings you in real good. But one night it was all scratchy, and weak. When I went out to have a look, I saw that it had come off from one end, and was draggin' on the ground in the wind. Now, it's windy tonight; and I'll bet that, if you go out and have a look at your aerial, you'll find that it's come off at one end and is draggin' on the ground."
 Our technician didn't tell the listener that our antenna was a vertical mast, with one end anchored to the ground at all times. He was careful to take the listener's phone number. He called him back the following night, when the atmospherics were not causing any problems with reception, and asked how the signal was being received.
 "Great tonight. Fixed it, did ya?"
 "Like you said," our tech replied; "draggin' on the ground it was. Don't know how to thank you."
 "She's a pleasure. Always listen to your station when we can get it."
 And that's loyalty.
 When we started open line stuff on Macquarie, we had a state-wide network of some twenty-four stations that took our news, sport and some feature programs. When we switched from talk to open line, the network stayed with us. However, the problem was that listeners to outlying radio stations had to call us, paying STD rates. Also in those days, we only had a six line open line switchboard.
 We offered country listeners the benefit of calling us reverse charge, but that brought its own problems. With our five lines {the sixth was kept for ringing out only} they were full at all times, and country telephone Telecom exchange operators lost patience, hanging on, waiting to get a free line at 2GB. Also, our operators had to use up time with all the patter about, "Mrs Smith is calling from Moree, will you accept the call and pay the charges?"
 When STD dialling became the system throughout the state, we offered listeners an "almost free" call. They call us and, after a quick vetting to see that they were neither drunk nor stammering, and with something to say, we take their number and call them back. We do the same with calls from car phones - take a number and call them back.
 Before we got used to handling mobile calls with the alacrity we have today, one of our telephonists got a car phone number, promising to return the call. It was some forty-five minutes before we were able to get around to that call, only to find that the motorist had been sitting in the drive of his home for more than thirty of them, awaiting our call.
 Today we ask them where they are, and I'm expecting one smart driver to reply: "In the front, right-hand seat."
 But there are a lot of people out there, expecting to be entertained by talks radio, and open line. One summer night we had a call from a wheat farmer up in the very north-west corner of New South Wales. He had been listening to the program on a radio inside the air conditioned cabin of his super tractor, ploughing in the night, the coolest part of the day. He was so engrossed in the show, that he had to call in to the homestead at the end of the next furrow, and call in a contribution. I've been waiting ever since for him to call from the phone on his tractor.
 Some aircraft and boats have telephones as part of their electronic equipment. One pilot had the habit of calling my show regularly. He was carrying freight, and was able to listen, at the same time as monitoring his aviation frequencies. I had a call once from the pilot of the massive blimp, the airship {in which company I bought some ill-fated shares}. He called from right over the top of our Sydney studios. I understand that Telecom wasn't very happy as the slow-moving airship, cruising at only forty-five knots, drifting from one cell to another of the cellular network, causing a little inconvenience. I did, however, on the one trip I took on the airship {the only thing I got back for my share purchase} call my home from the airship poised above it. Nobody was home, but I could see the dogs barking in the back yard.
 The reverse call promise started showing us where people do listen to us. A group called from a party in a winery in the Barossa Valley North of Adelaide. We often hear from people in Tasmania. Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands have nothing between them and Sydney to get in the road, so some of them have been known to call. A few Qantas blokes tell me they listen sometimes coming back to Sydney. And a few calls have dribbled in from New Zealand.
 None of this would be surprising if we were broadcasting on a network of transmitters spread around, or even on short wave. But, from a single transmitter in Sydney, albeit a powerful stereo one, we are heartened that the programs are so good that listeners will forego local stations, where the reception would be much clearer.
 We are a part of the lives of many people. This we have always known. However, with today's communications, they are able to interact with us. A call from a truck driver in the middle of the night, between Hay and Balranald, crossing the dreary featureless plain; a call from another truckie on the road train between Alice Springs and Darwin to tell us that not a thing had happened since he left Katherine.
 Cordless and mobile phones brought us calls from people floating around in their backyard swimming pools. One times I scored the jackpot, when the caller was in a characteristic echo chamber.
 "I'll bet you're in the bathroom," I said.
 "Yes. The smallest room in the house. I'm on the throne right at this moment."
 But the one I shall always remember was when we got a call just before the ten o'clock news at night. Like quite a lot of our open line listeners at night, this lady was in bed. My telephonist told her the ten o'clock news was ten minutes long, as, if she wanted to go and make a cup of coffee, or partake of any other chores, leave the phone. When the news was over, we went back, and nobody was on the line waiting. But the line was still open.
 Our telephonist turned off all the other sound and listened intently. She was sure that she could hear heavy breathing. Could it be that our listener and gone to sleep during the news? It seemed very likely.
 As we now have lots and lots of incoming lines, holding one presented no problem. Every ten or fifteen minutes, we'd go back and have a listen. Still no voice answered our inquiries, but just room noise and breathing.
 {Why couldn't we hear the radio and our program? When we make contact with our callers, we put them on hold, telling them to turn off their radios, or they will be confused, listening to a program delayed by seven seconds. They receive the direct program on the telephone.}
 The show was finishing at midnight. Still nothing more than contented breathing from the other end. So, telling the midnight-to-dawn people what was happening, we went home! Later we heard that, sometime between one and two the next morning, the line became active again, suggesting the listener had woken, found my show no longer on the air, hung up the phone and gone back to sleep.
 Life has some mysteries we are not supposed to be able to resolve.
CHAPTER 28  "Some of the best-laid plans of mice and men" . . . fall flat on their faces. Other times, flukes work. The Curies didn't start out to find radium. Nor did Mr Archimedes get into his overflowing bath just to drive kids mad by making them learn that "the weight of the body immersed in water is equal to the weight of the water displaced." And for what possible reason but a fluke did Pythagoras sit in the sand, idly drawing patterns with a stick, and deduce that "the square on the side of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides"? That this became the basis of all subsequent navigation was . . . a fluke!
 I'd love a dollar for every time I've been at a meeting planning a radio program that failed! And we should remember that for every twenty new products launched upon the market, each after an incredible amount of research, only one succeeds.
 Thus, it is a wondrous thing when something you didn't plan becomes a legend.
 Maybe it's only a saying, a phrase. I claim responsibility for at least one of those. Early in the days of open line broadcasting on Australia, someone rang, nervously admitting they had never called such a show before. "That makes you a virgin caller," I said. Virgin Caller is now the generic term. Just as a vacuum flask is a Thermos, a cleaner is a Hoover or an Electrolux - {ah, those memories of the 7HO Electrolux Hour!}.
 But, the most ridiculous - yet most lasting - this I ever did was un invent a town!
 We were having fun one day, when I was doing the show in the mornings. A lady with a know-all approach, happened to say, in passing: "And when we were going through Gulargambone last Wednesday . . . "
 "What was that? The name of the town? What did you say?"
 "Gulargambone."
 "There's no such place."
"Don't be silly. It's up in the north west, along the rail line, Coonamble way."
 "Oh, know the name of the place you mean," I told her. "There used to be a place called Gulargambone. But they took it away years and years ago. There's only the remains of a film set now. Only building facades - nothing behind them"
 "But, I was there last Wednesday."
 "Couldn't have been. You were, I fear, mistaken."
 This was just what my detractors were waiting for. I had built a reputation for being annoyingly right when it came to fact. Indeed I had often claimed, and still do to this day, that, if you are right in fact, people will excuse you for having any ratbag opinions. This is why I interrupt any caller who is about to let fly with a tirade based upon incorrect data.
 However, in the case of Gulargambone, a lot of people listening knew for sure, or certainly suspected, that such a place did exist in New South Wales. Not only that, they would say it was "up there somewhere", making their point firmly. The lady caller was adamant that she had passed through a place called Gulargambone; and I was just as affirmative that there was no such piece of geography.
 A couple of callers were stirred to say I was wrong. And we got on to talking about other things. And I thought that was probably where this harmless piece of action would end.
 But, that was only the beginning. My detractors - and they are legion - started to write.
 In the mail came a piece of the BP Road Map, hastily torn from the original. Gulargambone was circled, along with the words, angrily written: "Look, you smart bastard!" I returned the offending piece of cartography, with the note, "This map is an obvious forgery."
At the time, Australia Post had just made its work easy for those of its employees who cannot read, by converting our addresses to Postcodes. A book of the postcodes had been issued to all Australian homes. My mail disgorged a letter, with a page ripped from the Postcode Book, Gulargambone underlined. I returned this also, with the notation that "it is an Federal offence to deface the Postcode Book".
 The debate continued, sometimes somewhat furiously. But, when I reckoned it was coming boring, I asked my telephonist to stop giving me Gulargambone calls. Still, weeks, and months later, the matter arose again, only to die off.
 I guess it must have been almost a year later when I got a call, off the air and in the office at 2GB, from a gent with a country-paced voice.
 "G'day," it said, "I'm the secretary of the Gulargambone Show Committee. . . "
 For a moment my pulse rate almost went into double time . . .
 " . . . we had a meeting last night, and reckoned we'd better do something about what you've been saying about Gular."
 {Two things here. When he said Gular for Gulargambone, I knew the call to be authentic, as bush people just love abbreviating the names of their towns. Second a very real worry. If they'd had a meeting about me, could I expect the law to descend upon me in the form of a class action?}
". . . and what you reckon is that, seeing you've earned such a lot of fun out of taking the mickey out of Gulargambone, you'd better pay for it."
 {So it was to be a class action. I wondered if 2GB's defamation insurance would cover such an approach?}
 " . . . therefore we reckon you should be our guest of honour and come up here and open our annual show."
 Phew! But, before I could even start thinking of the benefits of such a trip, the logistics hit me. I knew there was no airport at Gulargambone. I told my caller this. I could fly a light aircraft and land it on any airport. But . . . .
 ". . . you can land at any of the properties around, They have all got proper strips."
 {And they did have. The one they directed me to had all-weather facilities, including night lighting and a couple of easy-to-see windsocks}.
 It was arranged. About six weeks ahead, I said, weather permitting, I'd fly up and open the Gulargambone Show.
 "Stay overnight, of course," the offer said; "stay a week if you like." Overnight would be fine. I was on the air Mondays to Fridays, so Saturday for the Show, and fly back Sunday would be perfect. And that's the way it happened.
 Picking up fuel at Tamworth on the way up, we found Gulargambone on the railway line.
{Better explain the "we". My mate the doctor and I were training for an air race at the time, and we thought the Gulargambone trip would sharpen up our navigation skills. Something didn't work, as, in the air race a few weeks later in Queensland, we got lost on the first leg, having to land on a property and ask directions!}.
 We flew as low as the law would permit - and that's my story, even if I no longer have a pilots' licence - over the Gulargambone Showground. We then found the property where we were to be hosted for the night. After landing and tying the aircraft to terra firma for the night, we were driven to the Showground, where the doctor immediately found a structure that contained the keg. He knew his services would not be required until the following day, by which time the aircraft would know its way back to Sydney anyway.
 Approaching the Showground, there was a massive calico sign across the road: "Welcome to the Gulargambone Show, in the town John Pearce says doesn't exist." I still have the sign somewhere, or 2GB has, if it was not cleared out by fussy women, or managers with not enough to do, feeling more space was needed, and what the hell for history anyway?
 The country show was, as you could expect a country show to be. Pony events, animals on display, farm machinery for sale . . .all that stuff that meant not a damn thing to a city boy. The official opening took place in the centre of the arena, where I was to receive a surprise. The President of the Show Committee, a local grazier, looked somewhat familiar. We realised we had been at school at Shore together some many years before. He said a few words, and I replied, remembering the all-important task of declaring the show open. Then to rescue the doctor from the publican's booth and take him to the luncheon tent.
 The afternoon turned to night, and we found ourselves back at the homestead of our excellent hosts, where we had a somewhat early night. During a sip after dinner and before bed, one of the show committee said, "Apart from all this bullshit, you know, we are grateful for you coming here. Because we were able to use your name, we got exactly twice as many people as we ever had at a Gulargambone Show."
 "I'm delighted. How many did you get?"
 "Nine hundred and sixteen."
 There didn't seem to be much more to say but "goodnight".
 The following morning, after a wonderful country breakfast, where you insult your hosts if you have less than three chops and a similar number of eggs, we packed up and were driven back to the airstrip.
 Pre-flighting the aircraft, you know, kicking the tyres and all that technical stuff, we saw a ball of dust approaching. It contained the traditional Holden utility. The driver, one we recognised from the previous day as a member of the Show Committee, got out and took two large cartons out of the back.  "A little token of our appreciation," he said. "And thanks for coming." The cartons contained half a lamb each, freshly butchered that morning. Never was there a better "token of appreciation".
 The willing aircraft sprang into the air, yet wanting to be sucked back by the hospitality of the people of Gulargambone.
 I have never returned. One day, I'm sure the old motor tyres might point me in that direction. Yet I think it is true that you should never return to anywhere that has so many happy memories. Over the passage of years, your mind tends to amplify the good memories, and background the not-so good ones. So, when you return, the place wasn't like you remember at all.
 Even today on the radio, the Gulargambone story crops up from time to time.. But there are two epilogues to the tale, if you can have an epilogue to a continuing story.
 The late great Australian author John O'Grady, a gent with whom I'd lunched long and joyfully a few times, the guy who wrote "Weird Mob" did a later sequel called "Gone Gougin'", where he had the Weird Mob characters on their way to the opal fields in the north west of New South Wales, and over into Queensland.
 At the end of the first chapter he had them driving, and looking for a place to overnight. One of them, peering at the map, suggested Gulargambone. "There's no such place," one of his colleagues replied. "Yes, there is, it's on the map here." "Well, it must be wrong, because that John Pearce feller on the radio says there isn't - and he's an educated man." I wrote to John, thanking him.
 But the final word had to go to the people of Gulargambone themselves.
 Years on, they produced a little tourist pamphlet. Simply printed in black on a piece of pink paper, it urged people driving north from Melbourne to Brisbane and beyond, not to go coastal, but take in inland route.
 It said: Stay overnight in Gulargambone - the town John Pierce says doesn't exist.
 But, as you will note - they spelled my name wrongly.
CHAPTER 29:  Back in the late 1920s, early 1930s, radio found its ability to take its listeners "trackside", as our American colonists used to say.
 Why go to all that trouble of putting on one's best gear, riding the rattler, paying at the gate, having your best dry cleaning saturated in someone else's pie and tomato sauce, when you can sit at home and listen to expert commentators telling you what's happening on the field of sport?
 Horse racing, the "Sport of Kings" became the "King of Sports" - because there was money involved. For, not only need you not go to the track to participate, but, using the telephone and the completely illegal SP {starting price bookmakers}, you could make a fortune. Or, of course, and far more likely and generally, you had the opportunity to lose whatever little may be left after the grocer had been paid for the week.
 It was anything but instant in its result. Sure, you would hear the race run as it happened. But you would have to await your newsagent's aim, throwing the next morning's paper over your front fence, hoping it would miss the fish pond. For, whatever the paper said were the odds at which the nags started, were the odds upon which the bookies paid.
 Well chronicled was the case of a race caller who almost got away with the impossible. Several plotting scoundrels came up with the idea that lots of money was to be made if they knew the outcome of the race before it was broadcast. For this they needed the connivance of a less than honest race caller. One was found, and a provincial race selected. The idea was for one of the gang to cut the broadcast lines of any other station doing the meeting, right at the critical moment the race was about to start. The dishonest caller would then be the only one being heard off the course. He would claim that certain horses were playing up at the barrier, when, in reality, the race was in progress. He would then profess that a certain horse was the most fractious of all. This would be the one that had actually won - right before his eyes, but not before the ears of the radio listeners. Members of the gang would then place last minute bets upon the horse that had already won. Moments later, the caller would, and did, call the race - from memory! It would be the greatest clean up - a scam of the first order. But, one thing - and only one thing, and then only a matter of seconds - brought it all down. One of the on-course plotters was able to cut the landline of one of the radio stations, but his colleague was just a second too slow, and listeners to that station heard the words, "They're off......." The broadcast then disappeared. Listeners would, and did, twist their tuning, and, finding one station still broadcasting the races, were amazed to hear the caller saying that the race hadn't started at all!
And that led to a more far reaching story than the Fine Cotton ring-in. People went to jail; and the racing industry as well as broadcasters had every reason to revise their procedures. Not being a racing person, I have always wondered if this was the only time the scam was ever tried. Had it happened before, and successfully? Also, could everyone be trusted in the many years of their lives following, not to tell?
 Another disagreement between the race clubs and radio broadcasters had the radio calling banned. But, the adventurous of the day found a way around it. Some were able to obtain a vantage point outside the course, where it was possible to see at least a part of the race. The great Ken Howard was ensconced in a flat overlooking Randwick Racecourse. But it was right on the other side of the track. However, from there he called the races with remarkable accuracy. Elsewhere one caller even got himself up in a balloon!
 In my days in the bush, and while still in the Air Force, I flew a Tiger Moth to a small, unregistered race meeting. They were happy to have anyone there. It was a real up-country affair. Indeed, the horses passed from sight for a furlong or so on the opposite side of the track, as there were a lot of trees in the way, obscuring the view of the punters in the grandstand. When I had to go home, I made a point of taking off just before a race and circled over the track. It was then that I saw what happened behind the trees. The jockeys sat up - and had a bit of a rest before settling down to ride to the finish. Not being a horsey person, I never knew why!
 Cricket. And what else in the world - including a war or two - could have people staying up until half past three in the morning, just to hear the outcome of a cricket match half a world away? Yet, it happened, just as it still does. With today's satellite technology, we can hear and see a match in progress. {The same technology can even take us to a war, as mildly interested viewers and listeners}. But, back just one generation ago, this technology did not exist. There were no satellites off which to bounce radio and television signals. There were but two ways Australian listeners in pre-World War Two days could hear cricket from England. They could listen to the BBC short wave service. This didn't work too badly sometimes. But there were others when the atmospherics were so bad that the old BBC could not be heard with sufficient quality for Australian station to rebroadcast.
 The only other link with Mother England was a piece of copper wire; a cable that ran across continents and under the sea, half way around the globe. But this piece of copper wire did not carry speech, only the dots and dashes of the code invented by Samuel Morse. Australia's overseas news all came this way. Telegraph operators would sit at their sounding boards and write, usually on a typewriter, the letters being transmitted from overseas.
 The next technical advance was the teletype, where someone could type at one end, and a typewriter, untouched by human hand, would print their typing to a roll of paper. Broadcasters saw this as their only method of getting the news to the people. Without any input of ingenuity, they could have an announcer sitting reading the cables as they were received. But we could, and did, do a whole lot better than that.
 The simulated broadcast was devised. Using records of crowd effects - applause, shouting and the like - and creating in-studio drama, they set out to give the impression that listeners were really listening to the actual broadcast of the test match. Deep down, I guess they knew it was fakery, but there was no fun in being sceptical.
 The in-studio announcer would say, "The fifth over of the day, and Voce comes in from the Nursery End at Lords to bowl to Ponsford. In conditions of dull sunlight, he rolls the ball over. Outside the leg stump, and let through to the keeper."
 Now he had made up most of this. The messages coming through from the ground via teletype were in a very abbreviated form. They called it "cablese". As charges were made by the word, it was clever to run two words together, or use other devices. So a single line of a cable might say VOCE PONSFORD ONE KEEPER. Often, if there had been no runs scored from a ball, nor any other activity worth reporting, it was not mentioned at all. Indeed, a whole six ball over might be thus: THREE VOCE PONSFORD UNBOWLED FIVE THREE SQRLG SIX BRADMAN UNCAUGHT GULLY. Translated: From the third ball, Voce almost bowled Ponsford, who then took a three from the fifth ball to square leg, and Bradman was almost caught in the gully from the last ball.
 An empty cigar box was next to the microphone, and the tapping of a pencil upon it simulated bat upon ball. Turntables were spinning with crowd effects. An "almost caught" would bring a swell of "ooh" crowd reaction.
 Well, it worked. Mainly because there was nothing else. Some stations, for the ABC did not have this on its own, added in-studio parties, along with expert comments from former cricketers, who were paid commentators to a match they did not see, and which could only be mentally devised from the other side of the globe.
 One of these situations led to a gosh-awful foul-up.
 Young Don Bradman, the hope of Australia, was due to come to the crease at the fall of the next wicket. All listening Australia knew that much was expected from the Boy from Bowral.
 The teletype was clattering outside the studio door. But these reports did not come with regularity. For the line from London had to be used for traffic other than cricket. Maybe a war or something. Thus there might be a gap of ten or so minutes between cables. The commentators would use this time to tell whoppers - that the bowler had broken a shoelace and had to send to the dressing room for a replacement; or that the players were taking drinks. Then the cables would start again, and the commentators would ease them back into the commentary.
 On the occasion upon which I report, one of the Australian openers had lost his wicket and Young Don strode to the crease. However, after only a few minutes - and at a little after nine in he evening, Eastern Australian time - a dreadful thing happened.
 The cable came in, reading SMITH BRADMAN FOUR BOWLED TWO. With a melancholy voice, the Australian announcer told the listening thousands that Bradman had been bowled by Smith from the fourth ball, and was retiring from the fray with only two runs to his name.
 Three-quarters of Australia then went to bed. Had they stayed three more minutes, they would have witnessed the farce in the studio, as the emergency bell rang on the teletype, and the message spat out CORRECTION CORRECTION CORRECTION LAST SHOULD READ SMITH FOUR BRADMAN UNBOWLED TWO. Translation: off the fourth ball of Smith's last over, Bradman was almost bowled; however, he was able to take two runs from it.
 But, Australia had retired for the night. Imagine the confusion when they awoke the next morning to find that the Great Don, rather than having been dismissed for two, was 147 not out and going brilliantly. {Actually, as the paper had been published before the end of play, Don's score was significantly higher}.
 And they put a race caller in jail for faking a horse race!
 Television took a lot of the fun out of the broadcasting of sport. For now all the commentator has to do is say why something happened, rather than describe its happening. However, there has been a bit of a backlash. A significant number of people may watch a sport, but they listen to the radio commentary, preferring to get the added colour of the radio call.
 Now, how does one become a sporting commentator?
 From as far as I can gather, to be a racing person, you need to be born within the smell of a horse box. Some of the top people like Des Hoysted and John Tapp either come from horse-owning or training families. They are so specialised - most of them, that they only ever call horse or greyhound races. There are a few exceptions like Ray Warren, who can call anything including "come to breakfast!".
 For other sports, there seem to be two alternatives. Either you take a good broadcaster and teach them the sport; or you take a washed-up sportsman and teach him to broadcast. Though we seem to have gone for the latter, particularly on television, give me the broadcaster any time. I have long had a deal with my surgeon mate: he doesn't tell me how to broadcast, and I promise never to start extracting tonsils!
 In what must be agreed has been a varied career thus far, I have been called upon to call some sport. The last time was the World Series Cricket, when Mr Dennis Lillee let go with the expletive when hit in a position more painful than square leg. But, if you are an all-round broadcaster {and there is not a lot of fifty-two weeks a year employment for those who aren't prepared to broaden their talents} you cannot know too much about a little.
 Indeed, this is one of the clues of interviewing: know just enough about everything to get someone going. Then you listen and keep them going.
 I mentioned earlier the time I got caught in Hobart and had to call the nationals of table tennis. And then I did tennis once when some Australian Davis Cup players visited the town - back in the days when Australia used to win the Davis Cup. I seem to remember Dinny Pails as one of them.
 But one thing I have gleaned from most sporting people on radio. Many of them get some terrible information - and believe it - and bet upon it. And of the many I have met over the years, I can't remember one who was filthy rich. Yet I have passed by the mansions of many a bookmaker.
 One sporting bloke, years back, used to make a lot of money by selling a race tipping service. Investors in the service would be given a code. Then, on race day morning, back in the days when we had an efficient telegram service, they would get a coded message. In theory, they would then go out and bet upon the horses suggested. During the following week, the bloke running the service would send out a letter, in the most general terms, stating how some of his patrons had been successful beyond their dreams. He was non-specific enough so more of the punters would re invest for the coming week. In effect what happened was the tipster would pick several horses in each race!
 However, back in the studio on race day, the tipster, just finished from counting his ill-gotten gains, would begin his shift as anchor-man for the afternoon of racing and other sports. As a young announcer, I had the job of doing the odd live commercial and becoming very bored with it all. Thus I had time to watch an expert loser at work.
 He had spent hours - indeed, days - assessing the form of horses, so he could tip them, either by his secret telegram paying service, or on the air. Then he would decide {indeed, he would tell me} that there was nothing worth backing in a coming race. But then he would be called out of the studio to take a phone call. It was from one of his racing underworld mates, telling him that something was a sure thing. Out of the window would go all the form he had been studying, and back to the phones to invest lots, if not all, of the money he made with his tipping service, following the tip from someone who, had they really believed in the future prospects of some hay burner, would have kept the knowledge to themselves. Needless to say, mostly the "hot tips" lost, and the sporting gent became less gruntled as the afternoon wore on. I guess, having witnessed so much of this, I do not gamble. Or, maybe it's my mean streak. I just have no wish to lose . . . now or ever.
 But, there was one other chap who worked for one of the radio stations. He was the breakfast newsreader, thereby having lots of time to go to the races, Saturdays and midweek. And the moral of the story was that he was one of the most transparent liars I have ever met.
 Meeting him in the passage the day after a meeting, you'd inquire, "How did you go yesterday, Harry?"
 "Killed 'em!" Translation: came out just about square.
 Or . . .
 "How did you go yesterday, Harry?"
 "Came out just about square." Translation: lost everything including next week's pay.
 My lack of knowledge of horseflesh, apart from a horse being a rectangular animal with a leg at each corner, has kept me away from racetracks, to the delight of a wife, a series of kids and a bank manager. However, there was one time when I was rostered out to Randwick.
 Her Majesty the Queen, a fine judge of equine ability, was to visit the hallowed course, and present a trophy founded in her name. The radio station felt that the occasion should be described by someone with an all round experience in outside broadcasts.
 They probably feared something like: "And now the Royal carriage is passing the four hundred, and looking good at the turn into the straight. The postilion draws the whip and heads up the hill ....." That sort of stuff. For mine, I would far rather had Johnny Tapp or Ken Howard call the Royal Progress, as well as all the other happenings of the day. I was sweating that I'd drop a clanger, mixing my horsey terms.
 Nevertheless, with a lady announcer at my elbow, interspersing fashion notes, I got away with it, and stayed on to watch John Tapp, a master of the race call, at work.
 "They're racing ...." and the event was under way. Though one of the events of the season, to me it was just the same as any other race. Little did I - or anyone else but one at Royal Randwick - know what was to follow.
 For, as the horses were making fine progress around the back of the course, a streaker appeared at the two hundred, the old one furlong, post. This lady, quite naked, strolled across the track, diagonally and towards the winning post.
 There was a shout from the crowd. The race officials realised that, unless the streaker was removed from the track with great rapidity, the horses might do anything - and none of it good. Dust-coated officials raced onto the course, and wrapped the streaker in an outer garment and removed her from the running surface just as the horses were rounding the turn and heading for the winning post.
 It was, indeed, the near miss of the season of racing. Yet, I had not been aware that Johnny Tapp's commentary was continuing, rising to its familiar crescendo as the horses approached the winning mark. Something won the race, followed by the rundown of the other competitors. There had been no mention of the streaker.
 Indeed, when he had finished calling the race, John looked up at the rest of the people in the broadcast box, as he had done so many times in the past. And then it dawned upon us.
 He had been concentrating so much on the horses through his field glasses, that he had been unaware of a streaker at all! Everyone on the course, including Her Britannic Majesty, had had the sight of an unclad dame trying to do whatever motivates streakers . . . except the caller.
 When I, almost disbelievingly, told him of the incident, John could but ask: "A colt or a filly?!"
 Sporting people in the media? Love 'em. They're the only people daring to be different.
CHAPTER 30:  The name of Jennifer Bunbury Carnie would be known to a few thousand of the nicest people in Australia. Hundreds of thousands knew her as John Pearce's "long-haired assistant". She died far too young, after only about 53 summers, in September, 1990. The measure of anybody, come their obituary, is how many know "stories" about them. And just about everyone who had ever met her had a Jennie Carnie story. I was privileged to work with her, and have her work with {rather than for} me for more than 20 years.
 So, what was the measure of this nameless lady? The Bunbury part came from her mother's side, and from the city of the same name in Western Australia. Her father was Mervyn Gale; the Gale part earning him the nickname of "Breezy".
 She was educated at the top Sydney Eastern Suburbs school Ascham, and, like all good girls of the time, went on to business college, and then to bashing a typewriter in a shipping office. It was there she met the budding English merchant marine officer. They had had the odd dinner during his infrequent trips to Australia. Then he sent her a letter, saying she should be prepared to marry him, a month or two hence, and would she please make the arrangements? She would -- and they did.
 He became a captain and Jennie and Bruce Carnie sailed off on their honeymoon, which was to last three years. She was the only woman aboard the tramp steamer, plying the world's oceans, picking up cargo "here" and taking it "there".
 What did she do? What sort of a honeymoon?
 She confided that it had been, well, different. There was but a three-quarter bed to share with her bridegroom, along with the long and disciplined hours of a ship's captain.
 "It was rather fun," she confided in later years after she and the Captain had parted, "making love every six hours when he had to get up and change the watch!"
 He had his full-time job as ships captain, and she was able to help in small ways by doing a little book-keeping. But most of the time she sat on her little captain's bridge and read paperback books. Maybe it was those three years that settled her down to an individual approach to work. Work she loved, as long as it didn't get in the road of a social event. For, as she later proved as my secretary and personal assistant, she was good at work, far better at social events, excellent at organising others. If she had only been as good at looking after herself, maybe the first signs of cancer would have motivated her to do something about it and prolong her life.
 She also had a feeling that money managed itself. Thus, when it came to her own money management, she was hopeless. She truly believed that, as her parents had looked after her initially, and then the Captain subsequently, another "white knight" would come riding over the horizon with all the answers to her problems. Unhappily, he never did.
 The good Captain and Jennie were in the process of separating. He had gone back to Britain saying, "You can have all our assets in Australia. I'll have those back in the U.K." I never learned how many there were in the United Kingdom, but there was a little house on Sydney's North Shore.
 Jennie was a good stenographer and an even better secretary. So many things happen as a matter of timing. Some people call it "by accident". And I was without a secretary. The excellent one, Denise, who'd been with me for years had asked for six months leave to do as so many girls did at the time; the Grand Tour of Europe. We agreed to let her have this leave, assuring her that her job would be waiting six months hence. She met a bloke over there and came back thirteen years later!
 I looked for a temporary. I had just started the open line radio show and so needed, not only a secretary but also an open line switchboard operator to filter out the calls we didn't want to put to air. Jennie took to the latter task like she'd been doing it all her life. She had a natural feeling for the job, and, I still claim, did it better than anybody in the business.
 It's not an easy job. Doing the show at nights attracts not only some of the best people calling us, but some of the ratbags as well. The latter I have never minded. Indeed, it's sometimes said that I worked to an average of one-point-four ratbags per hour. We never did that consciously, but came to an understanding that, if we made a serious show all the time, people would become bored with its predictability. Twenty and more years later, we have proved the need for change of pace.
 Jennie had "been there, done that", was a big grown-up girl, and had heard all the profane words. Like me, she felt that swear words were only a substitution for a lack of knowledge of the other words in the language. She was unshockable!
 This was proved one night when she answered an incoming call: "Good evening, 2GB and the John Pearce Show". On the other end that Saturday night was a nasty little kid whose parents had probably gone out for the night, leaving him with the phone to play with. He sniggered: "Why don't you go and get ......", and used the word I don't need to print here.
 Quick as a flash, Jennie answered: "I do. Every night. And .... it's wonderful."
 A shocked pause at the other end of the line. At which time a horrified kid could only reply: "You're disgusting!" and hung up!
 She also, had to handle people who felt that I was not doing the program to their liking, and called to complain. At first she would be polite, but, if the people persisted, was able to give back as much as she got. Occasionally the management would receive complaints, not only about the way I did the radio program, but about Jennie's handling of complaints. In the main, management backed us to the hilt. That's the way a good radio station runs.
 A handful of years ago, when 2GB was about to celebrate its 60th birthday, the station was trying to make contact with as many former staffers as possible. Jennie offered to help. Tirelessly, she started ringing from home. Day after day, night after night, she called. I implored her to keep a record of the calls she made. In all they topped two thousand! I told her to bill the company for them, but she procrastinated {Oh, how she could procrastinate!}. A year later, in casual conversation, I asked her if she'd been paid for all her phone calls, and she started a tirade about how the lousy station had never paid her. The reason, I discovered, was that she had never sent an account! Again the belief that a "white knight" would do it for her.
 I put her in touch with my accountant. However, he had to give up, as Jennie just never got around to sending him the material needed to look after her affairs. When she died, the same accountant, this time receiving a box of papers my solicitor had discovered at her home, was able to claim taxation refunds for the four preceding years.
 Sometimes she did the right things for all the wrong reasons. She bought a few shares -- not more than one hundred at a time. But how did she pick them? My stock broker, who had agreed to do a bit of business for Jennie, was shocked when he discovered that the shares she had bought in a ladies underwear company had been chosen because Jennie, shopping around for a bra, found just one with a narrow strap at the back. "It was the only one that didn't make me look like a milking cow," she confessed. The company prospered, as did her few shares, later to be taken over by some larger concern.
 She bought News Corporation shares, because she liked the approach of Mr Murdoch to something or other at the time.
 She bought her one hundred shares in Nylex, because she had seen their new snap-on hose fittings in a hardware store the day before. Before the stockbroker could suggest he had a look at the way the company was managed, Jennie had her mind made up.
 She made very few mistakes. The simple philosophy was that, if the company made products she liked, it was worth buying their shares. I guess that's called product loyalty.
 There was one time when it didn't work, however. She invested one thousand dollars in one of Barry Humphries' movies. The accountant agreed that the tax concession offered made it a lesser risk. {However, as it transpired, she never bothered to apply for the tax concession}. The film, which I saw and enjoyed, one of the Les Patterson series, didn't make it to the bigtime. Jennie didn't get any return for her thousand.
 I discovered the reason for the film investment. She had not only met, but had ferried Barry Humphries on one occasion.
 He had been interviewed at 2GB and was about to get a taxi to take him to the theatre for rehearsal for one of his one man shows opening a few nights later.
 "Don't worry about a taxi," Jennie offered, "I'll drive you over in my car. She was just finishing work for the day.
 He accepted, and she spooned Barry's ample frame into her little Honda Civic. But, no sooner had she left the studios and was standing at the first red traffic light, than she spied Jack Mundey.
 Jack Mundey has been just about everything on the left of politics. He was an executive of one of the Communist parties. He was the secretary, for many years, of the Builders Labourers Federation. He led the Green Ban Movement which, depending on your point of view, either saved Sydney's Rocks area and Kings Cross' Victoria Street, or held back progress as nobody ever before or since. Later he became a spokesman for the ecology.
 "Where do you want to go, Jack?" she shouted. He answered, and was invited to get aboard. It happened not to be in the same direction as Barry Humphries was going; and also in a different direction to her own original destination. It mattered nought. It was a social event, and therefore took precedence over all others.
 In her car, her little brown, unwashed and rusting Honda Civic {how she wept when nobody would offer her anything for it, and she got $50 from a wrecker finally, although she insisted in salvaging the radio which she never again used}, was Jennie, Jack Mundey and Barrie Humphries. And, if you think that's crowded, remember that Sir Les Patterson and Dame Edna Everidge were there also!
 The Honda Civic was replaced with a Honda City, a smaller two-door with only two seats. Sometimes, contravening all laws, she gave a lift to more than one person, someone having to lie down in the back, without a seat belt. That never fazed Jennie. If someone could fit there, they could ride there, whatever the law -- or the car's designers -- happened to think.
 After twenty years, none of them with a dull moment, I could go on telling you Jennie Carnie stories. Her life is worth a book of its own, any writer could do it justice. She was the kindest person, as was evidenced when I broke my arm a couple of years ago.
 Not only was I doing the Saturday night show at the time, but was due, a few days later, to do a stint of morning programs, Monday to Friday, to cover for someone's holidays. I was only in hospital one night, but was determined to keep working. We came to an arrangement - or at least Jennie did.
 She lived in the Eastern Suburbs, I on the Lower North Shore. She saw no reason why she shouldn't be my chauffeur for a month or so until I could drive again. The doctors thought it undesirable, which made Jennie even more determined.
 However, there was one thing to her character I have yet to mention. When Jennie slept ..... she slept. Living alone, and never admitting an obvious loneliness, she used often to stay up all night, listening to radio or watching movies on television. But, when it came time to sleep, Jennie was unwakeable! She had a telephone next to her bed, but often it didn't wake her. There were occasions when I would call her and have her answer forty minutes later, unaware that the phone had been ringing. Indeed, the hardest thing I had to do in a week of work was wake Jennie up to come to the radio show.
 At the time of my broken arm, I would start ringing her a full thirty minutes before she needed to get up. When she awoke, she would get dressed, drive her Honda City cross town, and would arrive and have breakfast with us, for she had become a firm friend of the family, being the only non-family member to have Christmas with us.
 She would arrive and have breakfast, as I said. Not just an ordinary breakfast, but the same every day, a sausage and egg toasted sandwich. Thus fortified, she would drive me to work, and then home again at the end of the day. When, a month or so later and I was again able to drive the Volvo, the routine had been firmly established, and I had to go back to not having an extra lady at breakfast.
 She was, as I have written, an organiser. After her parents died, and she moved back into their house in the Eastern Suburbs, in a lovely dead end street, she became the den mother of the street, organising sundown drinks, parties and outings. I have a feeling that she had a lot of people go to places and things they much didn't want to go to, but were {well, generally} grateful for afterwards.
 Nothing, and few people, ever got in the road of one of Jennie's ideas. Possibly the best example of this was when her mother died. I was on holidays in Tasmania with good wife and #4 son, when I received a message upon arrival at Queenstown on the west coast of the apple isle. Would I please ring my secretary as soon as possible. I did, to learn of the death of Jean, her beaut mum.
 "I want you to say some words at the Crem," Jennie almost demanded. "Don't want anyone but you to say them."
 It is always gratifying when asked to say some words at church, graveside or crematorium. Naturally, I would, but .......
 "Hang on," I told her from Queenstown, "we won't be back for ten days."
 "I know," she answered. "We'll wait."
 I know not what everyone else thought, but wait they did. Jo, my wife, and I attended the Crematorium and I said "the words".
 As far as Jennie was concerned, all people were people; but some were nicer than others. There weren't many "others", but she had nothing to do with them anyway. She became most attached to the ones she liked.
 I have a bit of fun once a month, chairing a fun luncheon organisation. This group has been together for a quarter of a century. Some have joined, a few have passed on, a few have left. We meet for little other reason than to have a good luncheon; but we need to know who's coming to book the catering at the hotel. Jennie undertook to look after those arrangements, in her den mother fashion.
 She loved making those fifty or so phone calls every month. Often she complained how much time it took out of her home life. But we all knew that she loved every second. She would call the members; speak to them at length, or to their spouses. She was a friend of all. And this time she didn't have to pay for the phone calls.
 She was a royalist of the highest order. She insisted that I join the Australian Flag Association, a fine organisation I supported morally, but would never have bothered to join, had it not been for her. She bought a flagpole, and flew a variety of flags. As with some people, she could never go into a shop and buy one of anything, so she had bought not only the Australian national flag, but also a state flag, and some earlier and historical flags of Sydney, New South Wales and Australia. Her first decision each day was which flag to fly?
 Therefore, she adored the position of governor, and some of the people who had been chosen for this high honour. If there was a function at which the governor was appearing, she would be there, waving a little flag if appropriate.
 If it was one of those functions where the Governor mingled, Jennie would make sure to say: "John couldn't come, Your Excellency, but asked me to send his regards." In many cases, I didn't even know the function was on.
 She loved animals .... all sorts of animals, but mostly the domestic sort. And they didn't have to be thoroughbreds.
When her husband had quit the sea, he attained a job as harbour master somewhere in Papua-New Guinea, where they stayed a handful of years. By the time they were ready to leave for a posting back in Australia, Jennie was heartbroken to learn that quarantine laws prohibited her two scruffy hounds, mother and son, from immediate entry to the Australian mainland. They had to have served six months in an approved quarantine station. At the time, the way to go was the way she took. It wasn't the easiest way to go; indeed it may have been the hardest. But it suited.
 Whilst her husband flew back to Australia to start his new job, Jennie shipped herself and her two dogs to England! Once there, she put them in an approved boarding kennel for their half-year. She returned to London, where she took part-time work as a secretary. Each week-end she would take the train down to the kennels, have a visit with the dogs, and return to her little London flat.
 Eventually arrangements were made, and she and the two dogs booked aboard a wonderful slow ship of her husband's line, and returned to Australia. All in all, about nine months were used up, but Jennie and the dogs made it. Port Moresby - London - Sydney.
 She was more than a little unlucky with her dogs back in Australia. The older one died of age, and the son lasted a few more years. She got a wonderful dog from the R.S.P.C.A., but he fell foul of some nasty disease and, despite staggering professional bills and more than usual tender loving care, he died.
 But then, as she was looking after a very old dog for an older still neighbour, the sun shone upon her. Across the road in Double Bay, acquaintances were having some renovations to their house. Jennie, walking the old dog, got to speak to the workmen regularly. One day one of them brought a puppy to work. Jennie fell in love with it immediately, asking if there were any more in the litter, Just one, she was told. "I'll have it. Bring it tomorrow."  He did. It was a small dog, nondescript, but, like many crossbreeds, very lovable. Jennie had to mother it, but first came something which painted her character as strongly as anything I knew.
 The dog was female. Jennie asked the workman, of obvious European background: "What's your mother's name?" She was told that his mother was no longer living, but that her name had been Carmen. From that moment, the pup became Carmen.
 Carmen outlived Jennie.
 Jennie was emotional and cried a lot. She cried with joy, and with sadness, and often with many of the sentiments in between. It happens to a lot of people so outgoing.
 But, for all of this, when it came to business, she put herself into the background. She realised that I was the person who did the radio show. In those moments, there was nobody else on the show, on the radio station, or in the whole world, than me. Outside the show, I was there to do as she told me!
 I remember being phoned at home one night. I was going to a function at Government House the next day. Jennie's crisp phone call said just one sentence: "Wear your strawberry-coloured shirt and the OBE tie." She hung up.
 But, when people called her at the radio station, asking her name, she said: "I don't have a name. I'm John's long-haired assistant."
 Jennie had a love for royalty, for fun and for the sea. She had sailed in her youth, and then had those wonderful years circumnavigating the world many times, with her Captain husband. When she knew she was dying, she made arrangements for her ashes to be laid up in a memorial wall at a little Anglican church at Watsons Bay, on South Head near The Gap. "The view of the sea, is wonderful," she told everyone.
 Jennie Carnie, almost anonymous, my "long-haired assistant", much loved by many. Proving you can't be anonymous .... and forgotten.
CHAPTER 31:
Two old gents were sitting in the leather chairs of the Club lounge.
 "Carruthers," one said; "do you believe in clubs for women?"
 "Oh yes, colonel," his colleague replied: "but only when kindness fails!"
 Radio - particularly commercial radio - has been pretty much like that . . . an old boys' club, where women may be admitted, but only to drive the typewriter and make the boss' tea, organise the Christmas Party, and buy the boss' wife's birthday present. They were employed in routine "office-style" jobs. They worked in the accounts department, were quite good at making up advertising schedules. And, of course, you needed a couple of them with good figures on the reception desk, and some sweet-sounding, patient ones to answer incoming phone calls.
 Well, in half a century, that has changed; but not quite as much as one might expect. We are living in an era where discrimination is such a dirty word; that laws have been passed making it almost impossible for an employer to add to his staff the people he wants, unless he is prepared to fight a rear-guard action, explaining why any of the other applicants didn't get preference.
 They've even changed the names for it all, just to confuse. We have Equal Opportunities legislation. And then we have Affirmative Action - two out-of-context-and-meaningless words! This means, of course, nothing of the sort; except that in the ideal Socialist world, there will be an equal percentage of whites, blacks, Protestants, Catholics, physically and intellectually handicapped, women, men and homosexuals of either and/or both genders. The end result is that the bottom line, the finished product, is the thing that suffers.
 I remember well a visit to a large broadcasting organisation in New York. The guy in charge showed me some fifty people working for him, pointing out two with empty desks: "That's my token black," he said, pointing to one; "and that's my token Jew." Incredibly sad, but maybe a foretaste of what could happen if we have to overlook employing those, and only those, best able to do the jobs.
 We must admit that we live in a very different world than fifty years ago; and radio has had to move and cater for it.
 Back in the times when the norm was for dad to go to work, and the kids to school, mum was deserted from about eight in the morning, through until the children started coming home mid afternoon. And that's where originated the expression a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down. Indeed, I seem to remember Vincents APC buying a commercial at ten in the morning on as many stations as would sell it to them, saying: "Time for your Vincents break." Any such thought today of medication by habit would, and should, shock, but that was the state of play.
 Radio filled that time in with a mixture of relaxing music, serials {for radio invented soap operas, so named because the soap companies queued to sponsor them, knowing them had a relaxing, attentive and available audience mid-morning}, and women’s' interests.
 In country radio, a lady announcer would do the mornings, and doing it as if she had been the woman from next door over the fence. She would either bring in experts, or be the expert herself, and pass on household hints. The recipe of the day might well mean that half the town would be eating the same dish a day or two hence. Housekeeping matters would be discussed, along with the reading of letters from those who wanted to write. It was all very chummy.
 And city radio wasn't very different either - maybe a little more sophisticated. Just as children's sessions were conducted by a gent known as "Uncle" someone, some of the morning lady announcers were Auntie or Cousin. The organisations sometimes spread beyond the abstract of radio. Some radio stations had their women’s clubs, where people wrote for membership, and then attended functions.
 As a kid, listening avidly to morning radio when on school holidays, I knew that 2GB, the station I determined to speak on one day, had its Happiness Club, run by Mrs Stelzer. I don't think anyone knew what went between "Mrs" and "Stelzer", but her Happiness Club was legend.
 Her daughter Joyce became a very junior member of the staff, and stayed on to be the chief telephonist. She was an unflappable lady and I had the pleasure of having her drive the phones for me in the very early days of open line radio.
 But still there were very few women before the microphone, certainly for regular sessions and shifts.
 Feature people came and went. Andrea, Gwen Plumb I knew and worked with. Dita Cobb did some stuff for us; and got me into trouble.
 Dita teamed with Terry Dear in a program of "advice to the lovelorn" sort of thing. Terry had had great success with "Leave it to the Girls" on both radio and television, and this was to be a mini-version of same. We slotted it in early afternoon, promising to upgrade it to a better slot commensurate with any success it may achieve in the ratings.
 It started okay. From our point of view, it was convenient, as it was "live", meaning it required a lot less program and production time. However, in one of the early episodes, Dita dropped the magic word "Bloody". Today, it is commonplace - and has been superseded with words far stronger - as our society "grows up". But "bloody" was a no-no. I was instructed to tell Dita not to do it again. However, the very next day she said: "I have been told I mustn't use the word bloody. How bloody silly. Bloody - bloody - bloody!"
 There was only one possible outcome. The program ended that day.
 Producers have always had problems with women performers - and I'm told that this goes right back to similar situations in the theatre. Women are different! And thank God for that, say I! Realising it, they play upon that femininity, using the wiles of tears, stamping of feet and other ploys. Get a man on the air making a mistake, and he wears it. Let a woman before the microphone stuff something up - even a simple word mispronunciation - and she giggles, or most of them do. It is perfectly natural for the feminine gender to do this. Yet, if you claim, and even demand, equality, you had better be ready to be damn equal!
 Mary Hardy in Melbourne, who was a sort of down-south Andrea, as far as I've heard, was a real star. And we have had the odd one in Sydney for a while. Generally, however, they have not been acceptable as presenters of run-of-the-mill programs.
 There are some well-defined reasons. Back in the days when gentlemen didn't mention ladies' under garments by name, in case it showed that they knew ladies wore them, we found it difficult to get a man to do a bra or panties commercial. The reason was simply that it was mildly offensive to the women in the audience. Thus we had often fallen back upon the talents of some of the office secretaries to come and record a "girlie" commercial, as we called them. The same is the rule for women doing "rugged" commercials. A woman announcer is just no damn good at selling four-wheel-drive utilities, investment, real estate or any of a large number of items.
 Sure, as I said, we live in a changing world, where young females in sports cars have become a latter-day menace upon the roads, showing their newly-earned station in life. But the very bottom line is that women presenters don't sell! Like it or not, this business I've worked in all my life is chauvinistic.
 I've never had to use the female equivalent {if there is one} of male chauvinist pig, in the hope of fighting back to the equality of the un-levelled playing field. Indeed, there are some areas of radio where the female gender has become acceptable. News gathering and writing now has more than its share of ladies. But, when it comes to the presenting, the surveys show that the major bulletins are always handled by the male, simply because, with the male comes authority. It may all change - yet I wonder? If I have my finger on the correct pulse, I think the pendulum, having swung, swingeth back again. {And how about that for a mixed metaphor?}!
 Assuming that man and woman will go on living together, with or without marriage, there will be a getting together at the end of a working day. In the home, as in the office, there will be tasks one does, and enjoys doing, better than the other. But, if there is a sameness in living, work and everything, a sameness thrust upon us by "you will be equal, or you will be shot" regulations, couples will find they have nothing to share with each other, for each knows equally. What a dull world!
 There are still a few differences between men and women. For heavens sake - let's recognise and exploit them. We'll be far happier if we do.
CHAPTER 32:  Well, there it is - more than forty years of broadcasting for me. I realised many years ago that nobody was writing a book about radio. Why? Could be that some of them were good at talking and not at writing. Long ago I learned my writing limitations. I am not a good writer, except for radio, and never will be; for I have been too lazy to work at it. Also, with so many years of speaking, I find it much easier to write as I speak, not as people have become used to reading. Some folk have written worthy books about the technical aspects of radio. Others have spent far too much time researching the industry. It has been pretty futile. Radio, being so much a day-to-day operation, and with management changing so often, has a very poor priority for archiving that which should have been kept. Only recently, someone went looking in the basement of 2GB, searching out some thought-to-be-lost (it was!) piece of history, and came across the original minute book of the company!
 A year or two ago, a group of old broadcasters, realising history was on the way down the old gurgler, believed it a wonderful idea to start a company called "Once Upon a Wireless", and record on tape the impressions of the pioneers of the industry - not only the on-air people either. It would require a little money - not a lot of it, as the labours of the worthy were free. But the decision makers in advertising, and in companies that had been massive radio advertisers in the past, were of a different generation. The project, to get this tape library into the Archives in Canberra, is proceeding much more slowly than such an undertaking deserves.
 I remember a phrase from the past. It was describing England. I have seen much to be thankful for - much to forgive . . . ." And I guess that describes me looking back at radio, and the motivation to tell you these stories. For, if I am not a writer - maybe I'm a fair-average story teller. From the first time I thought of writing this, titles cropped up. I did once write a book about radio interviewing called How to Win Friends and Interview People. But that was all. I had thought of Speaking with People - "with" rather than "to". Then a bold thought: Thirty Years Beneath The Mast. But, would people associate radio with masts any longer?
 I had registered a company to cover not only my radio earnings, but investments, and other things I do for a living, and called it Steam Radio Pty Limited. That originated from the BBC in London. When television came along, the young TV people, looking at the oldies {aged forty and above} of radio, called them Steam Radio employees. I had thought of it as a book title. But, would anyone get the message? {I have had so much trouble explaining the name of my company to people}. And then, in devilish mood, I wanted to write a book called Bastards I Have Met. Trouble is that it's not original enough. Been used several times before, they tell me. It comes from a military remark, when one soldier became angry with another he was heard to exclaim: "One day I'm going to write a book called Bastards I Have Met, and you'll be in it!" But that wouldn't be very honest about radio. Sure, I've met a few. But they've been far outnumbered by the nice people. Unfortunately, they both have been outnumbered by no-talent bums. It is sometimes said that, if you've been a failure at just about everything else, there's always taxi driving. I've met some radio people who were failed cabbies!
 The industry has nobody but itself to blame. It believed that talent would be knocking at the door. It wasn't. There have been a few schools of radio; and some of their graduates have secured jobs. Presently there is the massive Government monolith the "Australian Film Television and Radio School" in Sydney. Students pay and do a twenty-six week course. Yet they do not have as instructors or guest lecturers, top people from the industry, past or present. How to start? You can try as I did: go to the country and be prepared to work for near-nothing, learning your trade on the way up. I've always thought this most unfair to country listeners. A lot of programs are being sent to the bush by satellite these days, and less country communicators are needed. Also, a lot of stations are automated. There is nobody in the building, just a bank of computer-programmed tape recorders playing music, giving time calls and doing commercials. Why pay an announcer to sit, watching a record spinning around when they could be out selling or doing other duties? {Even sweeping the footpath outside?}
 The Fraser government got carried away with the idea of so-styled Community Radio Stations. I fear it has been a deceptive joke. They were supposed to be the audio version of the free throw-over-the-fence newspaper, full of local material. When consortia applied for these licences, they made all sorts of fanciful promises, very few of which have materialised. Listen to them and you'll mostly find "never-was" and "never will be" voices. Once a week the local Mayor gets five minutes to give a spiel. Records are played for people in hospitals. It worked - but fifty years ago. No longer. These stations are not surveyed, which is a good thing - for them! For, if they were, red faces would follow the disclosure that the only people who listen with any regularity are the immediate families of the announcers! A training ground for future radio talent? Training is only valid if the instructors are also valid.
 The specialist radio time salespeople have also diminished. One finds so many cases of people who have been able to sell used cars thinking they can do the same with something as abstract as the talents of the spoken word.
 And then, there are the controls. They are destined to make tomorrow's batch of lawyers rich beyond their dreams. Way back when I started in this wonderful world of wireless, we had technical restrictions on which part of the band we transmitted an undistorted signal. We could advertise anything that could legally be sold, with a rider that anything medical had to be approved by the Health Department in Canberra, to stop the unscrupulous from advertising they could cure cancer or the common cold. In every other way, we were on our own - to make radio as we believed the listeners wanted it. And we did it very well.
 Then came the pressure groups. First were the musical folk; and out of Canberra came a rule that we had to play a certain percentage of Australian-composed and Australian-performed music. A broadcasting authority was set up. It has changed its name several times, but the changes cannot disguise the heavy hand of non-radio people telling radio licence holders what the people shall be given. {Television has even greater controls}.
 For instance, an authority, made up completely of government employees and appointees, and therefore knowing little or nothing about business, decided how "commercial" commercial radio should be. It laid down the number and duration of commercials; and when they may, or cannot, be broadcast. For more years than those people have been alive, there has been an in-built control; the listener and the on-off switch. If the listeners are becoming bored with too many commercials, they have but to turn off the radio, or tune to another station. And this control also assumed quantity, quality and entertainment factor of commercials to be measured equally. They are nothing of the sort. There are, and always have been, some presenters whose commercial pitches are better than any of the programs. The late great John Harper of 2KY fame, could do with commercials so many things that his morning listeners would tune him, just to hear what outrageous things he said, as he sold them the goods. Graham Kennedy did the same on his early "In Melbourne Tonight" television shows. But, deep down, authority does not want to see this country progressing commercially. That might lead to governments losing some of their hold over the people.
 At election times, politicians go right overboard. First they demanded commercial radio be fair, allocating an equal amount of commercial time to political parties. {There was an exception, seemingly, where some stations were owned by the Labor Party}. But this was then too commercial. The party with the greatest amount of money could buy the greatest number of commercials. So there followed demands for free time for all, as the cost of advertising became greater than the amount of followers' money the parties were able to gather. And then, of course, the political parties being paid their electoral expenses out of taxpayers' funds in proportion to the number of seats they had won at the election. I always thought this a bit like death duties: if you can't get it out of them while they're living - hit 'em when they're dead!
 At times I have needed to remind my listeners that this country was built by business - not by Governments!
 Then there came a pipeline of complaint. Not only the Australian Government, but in some other countries {but not the United States}, the power of being able to allocate licences has been taken as the power to control programs. And this is not only dangerous but very ugly indeed. The word "censorship" is more than a ghost of things to come! To justify the existence of the controlling bodies, a line of complaint had to be set up. If a listener didn't like what they heard on the radio, they could {indeed, were encouraged to} complain to the authority. The radio station was then required to provide the authority with a tape recording and a transcript of the supposedly offensive portion of program. This is a very expensive exercise. But governments, baying for blood, have no idea of such expenses in the general picture. Often the matter complained about was not well identified by date or time, and great searching had to take place. And sometimes the complainant wasn't even sure which station they had heard offend them!
 Rather than improve, this got worse. Radio stations started getting complaints from the authority, requiring them to comment upon a listener objection. Then the personality complained of getting them too. They were required by law to be answered in a short period of time.
 {I remembered back to Gordon Chater, unable to pay a bill immediately, writing "Thank You - but I have no wish to join this club" on it, thereby gaining breathing space until the next pay cheque}.
 But the ultimate came when the authority started sending listeners' complaints, photocopied, but without the complainants' name and address! I don't know if they thought that we would go out at night, bombing the homes of people who whinged about something we had said on the air.
 But, of more recent time, we have had even more pressure put upon the communicators. We now have Anti-Discrimination and Vilification laws upon us. If minority groups complain that they are being held to what they believe to be hurt or ridicule, we can be fined for it - to the point of even being de-licensed. We already have laws that say we must not encourage people to break the law, attacking minorities or anyone else. But, as I am reminded, each time a law is passed, with it goes one more little piece of our freedom. In this case, it looks very much like the freedom of speech! So, we may not vilify Aboriginal groups, or homosexuals, nor Jewish people, unusual religions, or anyone else. At the time of writing this, we still have to have the test case. But a lot of people are waiting for the dam to burst in this now minority-driven country.
 Well, all that having been written, let's see what has gone before.
 An industry that started not much more than sixty years ago; the plaything of technical people; has become an essential. I can remember the time when we boasted that more than ninety per cent of homes had a radio; and the time when many cars had them. Now cars come with one as standard, instead of a cigarette lighter, for smoking is anti-social. Now so many homes have at least half-a-dozen radios as to be thought of as standard. Kids walk down the street with their Walkmans, either listening to music, talk or cassettes. Go to sport and see the number of people with earphones on, listening to the same sport they are watching live. Old pictures will show families sitting around the lounge room listening to the 6-valve superheterodyne receiver. Each time I broadcast, I wonder how far the signal is getting, and into which unusual situations it penetrates.
 I've even had the thought that, maybe right "out there somewhere" there might be a barrier, bouncing back the signals broadcast so many decades ago - the first still to arrive home. If some of those programs ever come back again, I hope posterity will record them. For we kept so few of them when they were first broadcast. But, we are told that the signals we transmitted have gone out there "somewhere into space" - and they are continuing to go. Perchance some distant civilisation will receive them, and have as much fun listening to them as some of us have dedicated our lives to making them. Out there will be the voices of Jack Davey, Eric Baume, dear old Andrea, Keith Walsh, John Dease, Charles Cousins, Bill Weir, Harry Hambridge, Noel Judd, Harry Dearth, Brian White, Len London and others no longer with us, and next to whom I had the distinct pleasure of being able to rub. Then there are those still living as I write. John Laws, Doug Mulray, superstars. Those I never met, for this is not a very social industry. I have over-used a line that, "Marconi and I joined radio in the same year - only to discover that Howard Craven had beaten us both by eighteen months!" Don't know about Marconi, but there is no gentleman of my profession I'd rather have followed than Howard.
 In Melbourne there was Sir Eric Pearce. We received a bit of each other's mail when he was in Sydney, and we only ever met once, accidentally in the foyer of Melbourne's Southern Cross Hotel. In Melbourne also, Norman Banks who called Aussie Rules football with failing eyesight. The race callers, by far the best in the world: Cyril Angles, Des Hoysted, Ken Howard, Johnny Tapp; and the father-son team of Clif and Garth Cary. The names are destined long to be forgotten, I fear. And we should have no remorse. For we make radio for today and, more important, for tomorrow. Those who have gone before this generation of broadcasters learned one thing - and learned it the hard way - the ability to communicate. If ever I felt I was losing this total essential, I returned to a game I invented very early in my career. I am no longer in a radio studio. I am in a room with the average Australian family of man, women and two kids. Man is reading the paper, woman is knitting, the kids are on the floor, playing with the dog. I speak to them. They are my friends. I have known them for so many years that, as I refuse to let them get any older, I refuse myself the same progress in time. Once I re-start speaking with that family, I know I'm speaking to many tens of thousands.
 I guess it was round about the time when I was getting people angry with "the man they love to hate" on open line, that I thought up the ending, "I've had the last word". For, I reckoned, if I can't leave them all mentally applauding, I'll at least make the angry ones a little more so. Make sure they'll be back for more of the same. They are, you know, one's greatest fans.  They come in various guises. Some say, "I never listen to your station . . ." or "I never listen to commercial radio, but . . ." or "I only tuned to hear the news . . ." or {and this is the one I love most of all} the listener who, while claiming they hardly ever listen to you, are prepared to quote what you said days, weeks, months or years ago - and with disturbing accuracy}. As Baume said, "My boy, it matters nought how many hate, and how many love you, as long as the lovers and haters equal one hundred."
 The last word? What shall it be? Not yet. As I'm still wondering what I'll do for the rest of my career.