I miss the smell of the hot metal and the sound of the big presses rolling – together with the interaction between editorial and the Chapel. The Father of the Chapel taught me so much about hot metal, assembling galleys of copy for proofing and how to read the stories upside down.

I worked for a daily broadsheet which took some filling, but we always managed to find interesting material  and photos – the latter thanks to our “Refugee from an acid bath”. Tom’s clothes were always riddled with holes from the acid used to do the blocks in the photographic lab.

Salacious stories were not printed and court reports listed only the sentence and names.

I had no journalistic training, no university for me – I was employed as a C grade journalist because I had good English and I knew so many people.

Interviewing world famous artist Beth Dean was a highlight. 

Then there was the then moderator of the Methodist Church, the Rev. Frank Walker, whose forecast that hunger would be the world’s worst crisis has proved correct; and FJ Thwaites, Australian author and an Indian philosopher who put my shorthand to the test.

It gave me my biggest thrill when the sub-editor, Eric Irvine, stopped the press and replaced the front page story with mine. 

I will never forget the arrival of a plane full of refugees who came to Australia after the Hungarian uprising. They landed in Wagga in the middle of winter in summer clothes. 

By far the most significant work I did as a journalist was interviewing and writing the stories of 15 Griffith ex-service personnel for The Area News. One of those interviews, of Tabbita man Ian Campbell, won a Certificate of Merit in the E.C. Sommerland Memorial Award for Journalism.

I have always been proud of my work ethic and this was illustrated when my expected two weeks relieving at The Area News ended six months later.