Voices from the Air (46 page)

ABC war correspondent John Thompson (far right rear) with members of the Australian military history field team at Rabaul, with a former Japanese staff car which they used for transport in the days after the Australian troops occupied the town. (AWM)

John Thompson recording on the flight deck of HMS
Glory
describing the offcial surrender ceremony for Japanese forces on Rabaul. 6 September 1945. (AWM)

Talbot Duckmanton as a young broadcaster (Photo courtesy of Christine Lowndes)

Talbot Duckmanton (foreground with back to camera) attempting to record a broadcast at Martin Place in Sydney, surrounded by ecstatic crowds celebrating VP Day, the end of the war in the Pacific. This was shortly before Duckmanton was sent to Morotai as a war correspondent to cover the Japanese war crimes trials. 15 August 1945. (AWM/Courtesy of Duckmanton family)

Bill MacFarlane, ABC war correspondent (radio technician) 1940 –1945. MacFarlane was the longest serving of all the ABC war correspondents and worked with the field units in Australia, the Middle East, North Africa and Greece and in New Guinea and the South West Pacific theatre. He was in Tokyo for the offcial Japanese surrender. (ABC Archives)

TONY HILL
is the managing editor of ABC News 24, the ABC's television news channel. As an ABC foreign correspondent in Indo-China, South East Asia and the Middle East he covered stories such as Tiananmen Square and the first Gulf War. He was also head of the ABC's foreign news operations and its network of correspondents and overseas bureaus. He lives in Sydney.

The ABC ‘Wave' device is a trademark of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and is used under licence by HarperCollins Publishers Australia.

First published in Australia in 2016

by HarperCollins
Publishers
Australia Pty Limited

ABN 36 009 913 517

harpercollins.com.au

Copyright © Tony Hill 2016

The right of Tony Hill to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
Copyright Act 1968
, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

HarperCollins
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978 0 7333 3502 0 (hardback)

978 1 4607 0637 4 (ebook)

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Hill, Tony, 1957– author.

Voices from the air / Tony Hill.

Includes index.

Radio journalists – Australia – Biography.

World War, 1939–1945 – Journalism, Military – Australia.

World War, 1939–1945 – Radio broadcasting and the war.

Radio broadcasting and war – Australia.

940.540944

Cover design by Alissa Dinallo

Front cover image by the AWM (016751): Nadzab, New Guinea. 29 March 1944. US Army Air Force Consolidated B24 Liberator aircraft manned by RAAF and flying with No. 65 Squadron of the Fifth Air Force are in action in the South-West Pacific. Out on a mission with them is Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) reporter Ray Paull, speaking into a microphone.

Index by Puddingburn