Chapter 11: Bendigo - radio and hypnotism

Bendigo is a most attractive former gold mining city with outstanding architecture from the Victorian era. It was a huge change of both location, life and career for me. For starters, it meant my move into radio journalism. Much more importantly it resulted in my meeting my wife, Rosemary Batson.

My two years or so with Radio 3BO — jokingly called The Perspiration Station back then, but now renamed Triple M 93-5 — was wonderful. I very much enjoyed working with news editor David Horsfall and the others in the team, not least Graeme Turpie and Terry Conroy.

I’d been a print journalist for some time in Charlton and Quambatook, but Dave Horsfall taught me to write for the ear, not the eyes. Just one example: “Jack Sxxxx is a long-standing violent bank robber. That is the view of Chief Superintendent Bill Bxxxx when speaking in the Supreme Court in Melbourne.” That is fine for print journalism but not for radio which should be along the lines of “Chief Superintendent Bill Bxxxx has told the Supreme Court in Melbourne that Jack Sxxxx is a long-standing violent bank robber.”

We produced six regional bulletins each day: A couple during the breakfast program; the others at lunch time and in the evening. 3BO was one of the few rural commercial radio stations that had a serious regional news operation. The news wasn’t just about Bendigo, but also about towns within the transmission area that extended about 60 miles (100 kilometres) in every direction. There were three eight-hour shifts: the early morning shift beginning at 5am, the day shift from 10am and the evening shift from mid-afternoon.

I lodged with a lovely woman, Hilda Scott, in the suburb of Golden Square. If I was on the early shift, I would drag on a few clothes — any clothes — at 5am and drive to 3BO when it was above the The Beehive department store central Bendigo.

I would go into the control room at 3BO and put a code in a dial that would remotely switch on the transmitter at Myers Flat, just outside Bendigo. At the same time, one of the announcers would read the first bulletin of the day, followed by a half hour of dreadful Aussie country-and-western music, a legal requirement to broadcast a minimum number of minutes of original Australian music. Once that was out of the way, the announcer would start the breakfast program. I would update the local news bulletins which followed relays of the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s international, national and state news at 7am and 8am before driving back to Golden Square where I would shower and put on a suit and tie before sitting down to a nice breakfast prepared by Mrs Scott. I would then return to 3BO to complete my shift.

There was a wonderful milk bar in Bennett’s Arcade close to the entrance to the 3BO studios in Allan’s Walk. It was called George’s but the owner was Angelo Belesotis. It stayed open until 5am when the duty 3BO journalist and the announcer arrived for work and were given a freshly-made malted milkshake. The business closed down permanently near the end of my time in Bendigo and it was sad to see Angelo wandering the streets at night like a totally lost soul.

The on-air staff in my time were Russ Pilley, John Dripps, Campbell Spain, Malcolm Bell, Brian Whetstone (later to rename himself Jon Sidney), Rick Perry (who went to the ABC in Darwin as Rick Radford), Nancy Waller (who presented the women’s programs) and Desmond Tocchini. All were interesting in their own ways, but Des was the most interesting and became a long-time friend. (See my reference to the hypnotist Van Lowe and Des in Chapter 4.) Here’s an obituary I wrote for the Bendigo Advertiser:

Here’s one of the risky stunts we pulled in my time with Ronricco, risky because we would have looked foolish if it didn’t work.

By far the biggest stunt was a promotion of the annual charity football match between the 3BO Bendigo Bashers and the 3SR Shepparton Sluggers. It was agreed that I would get dressed as a woman and complete the outfit with football boots, then be hypnotised on air by Ronricco. He would send me around the shops in the centre of Bendigo with DJ John Dripps in a pram and dressed as a baby. I was given Ronricco’s shopping list to fulfil.

I was definitely hypnotised live on air — there is a recording to prove it — and I became convinced that I was “Mrs Florrie Brown” with a son playing in the football match. That said, I was not at all sure that the stunt would work, but the moment I walked down the station stairs into the main street, Pall Mall, I did become “Mrs Brown”. A huge crowd turned out to watch me doing Ronricco’s shopping. These photos appeared on the front page of the Bendigo Advertiser. As I returned to 3BO, Ronricco snapped me out of the trance.

When I first became involved with Ronricco, I simply organised the shows while his wife at the time, Gwen, was his stage assistant. When she was unable to continue, I was asked to join him on stage, so I bought a black bow tie and a bright blue tuxedo. Over the months, I became a skilled hypnotist. Ronricco was very happy about this because it meant we could have more things happening on the stage. But as far as the audience was concerned it was totally Des’s show.

Looking back through my files, I am surprised to see just how many shows we did and the distances we travelled. We did at least two shows in Redcliffs in the far north of Victoria, a trip that couldn’t be done from Bendigo under at least three hours. I guess we must have staged most of them at weekends, otherwise we would never have fitted them in with our 3BO commitments.

I loved working with Ronricco. It was enormous fun and quite profitable. Unlike some stage hypnotists, his shows were pure entertainment. No-one was ever put at risk or humiliated. This is confirmed by the reviews I have on my file. Although I became a skilled hypnotist, I was never attracted to set out on my own as a stage performer. The most I did was a couple of small charity performances and some party pieces. I remained a journalist first and foremost for most of my working life.

Des Tocchini was not keen to get into hypnotherapy as he didn’t feel competent to do that. However, he did do simple things like stopping patients from smoking and he once successfully treated a man who had lost the power of speech.

One of Des’s responsibilities at 3BO was to present Cohn’s Cobbers for kids in the station’s auditorium every Saturday morning. This was a live show and was immensely popular. My wife, Rosemary, remembers going to the show in the 1950s when it was sponsored by BCX Drinks. She clearly recalls winning a bottle of BCX Orange for correctly answering that the initials “RN” stood for “Royal Navy”.

Dave Horsfall was the main writer of 3BO’s weekly program, News Behind the News. As he sat down to write it, I would sometimes ask him what the subject was and he would reply “I don’t know yet”. He would type: “A” or “The” as the first word, pause for a while, then off he would go with an informative, powerful and elegant 15-minute radio essay.

3BO’s relations with the bosses of the Bendigo Advertiser were not good for two main reasons: 1) the flexibility and speed of our operation meant that we were usually first with the news, and 2) we often ran stories that the Advertiser chose not to run because they embarrassed mates of the-then very conservative editor. The situation changed only after the Advertiser was burned down in July 1962 and David Horsfall helped out for a few weeks by providing copies of all the 3BO stories.

News is expensive to produce, but 3BO and its listeners were privileged to have two successive station managers who believed the money spent was worth it. First was Frank McManus who left to start up Bendigo’s first commercial TV station, BCV8. He was followed by Keith Duncan.

After I moved to Melbourne, Graeme Turpie left 3BO News to join the Australian Broadcasting Commission (as it then was) and Radio Australia in Melbourne while Terry Conroy went to Radio 4CA Cairns, then to the The Bulletin in Sydney. They were replaced by my younger brother Jeffrey and by Norm Beaman, who later went on to become a well known television reporter. In the late 1960s, 3BO’s owners, Amalgamated Wireless of Australia closed down the newsroom, judging it to be too expensive. Dave Horsfall was sacked and moved to the Bendigo Advertiser where he began an entirely new and successful journalistic career. (More on this later.)

Next chapter. How I met my wife on the dancefloor in Bendigo.