Gathering the News

Floods, fires and fings...

Always looking for a different angle on the weather I once laid down in the gutter to film the watery torrent rushing down the hill towards me. It was definitely different and required a pragmatic approach - swimmers. Rationalising that since I was bound to get wet filming a wet weather story I left my dry clothes in the office and struck out in my budgie smugglers becoming consequently immersed in my work. Quite some years later on a turbulent and chilling night Jim was to suffer a greater immersion, fully clothed in a menacing Dora Creek near Toronto. As befits these events it was a wild and wet Friday night with a continuing deluge causing significant local flooding in the Blackalls Park/Toronto area. Despite being rugged up to protect ourselves from the elements we were soon drenched to the skin as we endeavoured to cover the story. Quite how Jim ended up in the creek I can't recall but it was a tense few minutes as I dragged on one of his arms and while with his free arm he anxiously clawed at the bridge in search of a second grip as much to avoid being swept away in the torrent as to get back on the bridge. Our coverage of the impact of the deluge led Saturday night's bulletin but our shared moment of truth remained a story untold.

Growing up in Blacksmiths afforded me little knowledge of Newcastle and its environs which consequently demanded my studious use of a street directory when despatched to assignments, the more urgent ones developing the skill of being able to simultaneously drive and navigate. The need for the street directory was soon replaced by the need to simultaneously load your camera and drive. With one hand busy with the camera and the other on the wheel changing gears was an act of faith.

Murdering Gully is an ominous name for a highly desirable piece of beachfront real estate five minutes south of the city. It's a great hang gliding site, the only blight on this bucolic scene is the city's major sewage treatment works which has spread its tentacles across the gully floor. But on this afternoon Murdering Gully came close to living up to its name with the shooting of a policeman down there. On learning of the shooting Pat was immediately despatched in one vehicle while I was to later follow in a second vehicle with the sound camera. At the entrance to the property Pat joined the gathered throng which headed off down the hill to the gully. Dropping down Scenic Drive towards the entrance I was surprised to find that everybody had already left for the bottom of the gully. With the gate open I figured I could take advantage of my downhill momentum to catch the others. This advantage instantly turned to disadvantage for when I turned into the gateway I discovered a drop of at least a foot on to a cattle grid. My Mini Clubman van was barely weeks old when it tried to move that cattle grid. It was a futile endeavour and my poor little 'brick' catapulted effortlessly into the grid to be forcefully redirected down the road, its front wheels splayed, the steering column up through the dash and its brakes no longer functioning. Having to rely solely on the handbrake to stop the van dictated a delicate journey back to the newsroom.

Unfortunately news editor Murray Masterton was not quite so delicate and it took me quite some time to explain to him how two vehicles could have travelled the same road yet only one returned bent and broken; the first vehicle had the advantage of being part of a convoy which was aware of the existence of the cattle grid. I was flying blind although others would say flying low might be a more accurate description. Determined to pass on the value of his extensive number of years of driving experience he asserted that if I had taken my foot off the brake the damage would not have occurred. As diplomatically as I could I intimated to him that had I braked there was a chance that the whole vehicle would have buckled and my knee would have joined the steering column, embedded in the dashboard. The repair people vindicated my explanation noting that everything was symmetrical about the damage including the amount by which the mudguards had flared. Having put into the van my own carpet, radio and customised gear knob I felt a sense of ownership of the brick even though it was a fleet vehicle. Accidental though it was the incident was a cause for some personal angst.

The prospect of an industrial relations confrontation turning violent at the Lake Munmorah Power Station saw Chris Ford and I hurtling south late one night in the Mini. Back then the dual carriageway ended just south of Charlestown on the approach to the notorious curves, Frequent accidents, some fatal would eventually see the road widened but that was some years away. I won the race for the single lane over a taxi but found myself somewhat in excess of the speed at which one would normally negotiate those bends. Front wheel drive can be very forgiving and judicious use of the throttle saw us breeze through the corners, the taxi a distant memory. Chris never batted an eyelid. Whether it was a vote of confidence in my driving ability or they were frozen in fear I never knew.  Like the Charlestown curves the curves south of Swansea were similarly reviled for their ability to cause calamity and tragedy. Fatal accidents that I filmed at both locations recorded their notoriety. The Swansea curves were replaced some years ago with a largely straight piece of dual carriageway but on a bright Saturday morning in 1970 Gunther and I were navigating them en route to the Pilgrimage for Pop Festival at Ourimbah, an Australian response to the Woodstock phenomenon. We travelled in separate vehicles as I was staying for the duration of the festival while Gunther had to return with coverage for the evening bulletin. I had a clear run through the curves but Gunther was caught behind a couple of less enthusiastic punters. When he suddenly appeared grinning in my rear view mirror I freaked. He had passed the vehicles on the wrong side of the road on the  assumption that I was monitoring the oncoming traffic on his behalf. I wasn't. To this day it still sends shivers down my spine.

Our Minivans were innocuous vehicles until they lost their mufflers as one had a habit of doing. The raucous noise emanating from such a loss was music to the ears of aspiring Formula One drivers such as Gunther and myself. It was a quiet Saturday morning so we decided to take advantage of the missing muffler and shoot a sequence with the van that mimicked something we had seen in a race car film called "Winning". Having filmed the preliminaries; Gunther running to the car with the camera; close-up key into the ignition; close-up exhaust pipe as the engine roars into life; close-up shift into gear it was time for an interior shot looking forward to see Gunther's furious gear changes as the Mini accelerated away. As we were shooting sound we decided to leave the rear doors of the van open to ensure the best recording of those exquisite notes.

As the camera rolled I told Gunther to gun it, something he needed little encouragement to do. Defying its mini status the throaty roar reached testosterone levels as Gunther dropped the clutch. Insufficiently braced for the rapid acceleration I found myself heading out the open doors the weighty and expensive sound camera on my shoulder making its own special contribution to my horizontal momentum. At that instant something prompted Gunther to look in the rear view mirror. My impending hasty exit with Channel 3's sound camera demanded an urgent response. The brake! Almost out of the vehicle I now found myself hurtling forward back into it at an

equally alarming rate. It was a welcome change of direction and while the final impact didn't damage the camera it left me a little tender in some areas. The genuine relief we felt at not having destroyed the sound camera dissolved into laughing disbelief as we reflected on our narrow escape. Strong friendships are forged in such moments. The edited clip ended up in a staff Christmas party film. It caused great merriment as much for its tongue in cheek commentary on our news operations which confirmed their perception of us as pseudo racing drivers as for the illegal noises emanating from the vehicle. If only they knew the full story .....

Allan, Gunther and myself were the principal architects of the 'racing driver' reputation. We'd had an exuberant role model in John Longworth who managed, despite their significant cost, to have his Minivan shod with high performance radial tyres setting a new if contestable precedent. And contested it was, for the acceptance of such tyres brought with it implied acceptance of speedy driving, an acceptance that had to be publicly denied yet privately condoned. It was a latent tension that surfaced only when it came time to purchase tyres or replace the vehicles, the trade-in price being noticeably lower than that of other comparable Minivans.

Facing Channel 3's eastern wall was a concrete retaining wall that effectively created a canyon. During the day our news vehicles lived in this canyon, accessed through an external door from the newsroom. The door was timber back then which probably saved Colin Hill's fist when he slammed it almost through it in a display of temper over a story of his that had been stuffed up on air. I was a little taken aback but passion has at times a strange way of expressing itself. The vehicular canyon amplified the noise of the reversing vehicles much to my eventual chagrin. Unacceptable though it was, when in a hurry I would reverse at premium speed out of the canyon and while still travelling backwards throw the front of the vehicle around into the carpark while changing into first gear and dropping the clutch to promote a rapid if noisy trajectory towards the urgent news assignment.

Lawford Richardson was Channel 3's chairman of the board. A tall, bespectacled gent with wisps of grey hair and braces over his lank frame to support his trousers, he was the stereotypical chairman of a more benign era. Unfortunately he happened to be in the building when I performed one my hasty exits to an assignment. I was duly carpeted in a scene reminiscent of a headmaster and schoolboy confrontation. After an appropriate admonishment I was dismissed but only from his presence, my career prospects a little shaken.

We news cameramen enjoyed a particular camaraderie with the guys from the Police Rescue Squad possibly because we shared kindred spirits. Fraser Park about forty minutes south of Newcastle is notorious for the number of rock fishermen who have lost their lives there. On this Sunday afternoon another rock fisherman was in trouble down there and the Police Rescue Squad had been summoned. I was subsequently despatched catching up with their truck south of

Swansea. The rescue truck, sirens blaring and lights flashing encouraged a stream of cars to move over. Not wanting to be delayed I tucked in behind the rescue truck and proceeded past the cars now pulling over. How they might respond when they saw my Minivan clinging to the rescue truck like a limpet to a rock took a while to register in my consciousness. Unconventional it was. But it was also high risk and in flagrant breach of the law. It took a while for this indefensible position to seep into my brain and then to my right foot. Decelerating created an equally alarming situation for now I had opened a gap between the rescue truck and my vehicle that encouraged the traffic that had just pulled over to resume its previous position in the stream on the highway. Except that it wasn't aware of my presence having been obscured by the rescue truck and as I was still travelling substantially quicker than them, an unexpected and unwelcome intruder. More by good luck than good management I secured a place in the traffic reluctantly watching the rescue truck disappear from sight. "We saw what was happening and knew that shit was trumps for you" was how one of the rescue guys later recalled the incident a knowing smile playing across his face. And it turned out to be a false alarm. The ignominy of it all. 

With the exception of a Hillman Hunter station wagon, Channel 3 had purchased for news use the smallest commercial vehicles available. No doubt an economic measure though we felt they didn't trust us with anything larger, for larger read more powerful. However our equipment needs had grown and with the regular need to carry a third person an impossibility in the small vehicles we moved into Ford station wagons. I was assigned responsibility for the first one we received which was a loaded dice. It might have been my responsibility but it was still a pool vehicle and because it was the only one of its type demand for its services meant a daily discussion as to who should have it. All responsibility and no care.

Nevertheless I secured its use for a non-news purpose. Along with Ian Host and Mark Dunkley I was shooting a corporate documentary which necessitated travelling to Melbourne and back by car. On the return journey from Melbourne we inadvertently left Ian's suit carrier on the roof consequently losing it, a portent of things to come. The journey finished in even more agonising circumstances. A woman had parked her car in the driveway into the studio carpark and as I rolled past her car on this Saturday afternoon she opened her driver's door, creasing three panels on my vehicle. After all the risky escapades I'd undertaken with nary a scar I was to lose three panels at 10 km/hr. It was an undignified and insulting journey's end.

"Not the Kingswood !! " Ted Bullpitt's famous catch cry from the television series "Kingswood Country" was silently uttered by several colleagues when our first Holden Kingswood station wagon was assigned to me. Somehow or other Allen had mysteriously altered the order so that our Kingswood came with a V-8 engine and adjustable suspension. The boy had his toy despite the collective groan. It was quick and handled very respectably for such a 

vehicle ..... which was just as well. Robyn and I sailed over Kitchener Parade the front suspension stretched well beyond its limits as we headed for a warehouse fire in Wickham. Having barely cleared that obstacle I was confronted by a Volvo attempting to negotiate an ill-defined T- intersection at Brooks Street. A concerted braking effort and a flick of the wheel brought the Kingswood to a noisy but strategic stop facing the direction it next needed to travel. The Volvo continued its sedate ambulation down Brooks Street but as it was night I have no idea of the driver's reaction to my rather unorthodox approach to the intersection but he hampered my progress and I was annoyed. Robyn was stoically silent. The fire was inversely proportional to our efforts to reach it.

Breakfast News

"It's four in the morning the end of December ... " cry the lyrics of Leonard Cohen's mournful dirge "Famous Blue Raincoat". Obscure maybe but he is not the only lyricist to settle on that hour as a determinant of future distress and in part acknowledges why we prefer to be snug in bed and asleep at that hour. Certainly nobody in full control of their faculties would want to start work at that obscene hour, Midnight and 7 am are generally accepted shift times determined by industrial precedence. But 4 am? Returning from my honeymoon in 1979 my first shift back was the recently introduced breakfast news shift starting at 4 am. As I lived in Swansea this demanded an even earlier start on my part in order to be in Newcastle by 4 am. The dead of night sums me up.

My first week of breakfast shift was uneventful, unexciting and routine until the last morning, Friday March 9th. Some time during the previous night an explosion on board the drilling rig that was working on the harbour deepening project claimed the lives of four men and injured another three. Clearly a major story it would take time to garner sufficient detail to be able to file a report for the breakfast news. The lack of light was an additional handicap which ultimately left us with barely enough time to film the report and get it processed and edited in time for our 7 am bulletin.

A very young David McCombe had the responsibility of filing the report. With the drilling rig in the background and finally sufficient light in the sky I commenced filming David's commentary to camera. For reasons only those who have had to talk to a camera can appreciate he couldn't deliver his lines. Our time frame was now critical which only increased his anxiety and consequent mistakes. In an uncharacteristic outburst I bit off his head, figuratively speaking, demanding that he stop fart arsing around and just talk to the bloody camera. It worked. Almost dumbfounded at my remonstration he nevertheless effortlessly delivered his piece and we piled into the car and hastened back to the newsroom. I'd never before or since spoken like that to anyone and I later apologised profusely to him for my actions. Despite his youth he was sufficiently professional to recognise that my words carried no malice and accepted that while it might have been tough at the time on rare occasions drastic action is called for.

Breakfast shift did have its lighter moments such as the daily surf report with Nat Jeffery. Nat was a concreter by trade but through his own efforts evolved to become one of the station's high profile presenters. The morning surf report was his introduction to the medium and his basic training ground. The introduction of video equipment gained us some precious extra time to film the surf report as we no longer had to worry about processing. Looking for something a little different to our conventional shot of Nat talking to the camera with the beach behind him I decided instead to film him driving past the beach while still talking to the camera.

Ever willing to try something new he readily agreed. I'd decided to shoot through the driver's window so that by standing up I could then see the beach as we drove past. Attaching my hang gliding harness to the roof of the Kingswood and with my feet planted firmly on the window sill we drove around the beaches filming our report. It was a crude approach but it worked. Fortunately at that time of the morning there was little on-coming traffic and no police.