OUR 60th ANNIVERSARY

Big stories from the 1980s

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Freelance writer and former Woman's Day news editor Jerry Fetherston recalls the stories that shook our world in the '80s.

The Azaria Chamberlain case

I got my biggest scoop with the first exclusive, in-depth interview with Michael Chamberlain after his release from prison.

Lindy was still in jail, and the media was divided on their guilt. Michael was deeply suspicious of any approach. The Seventh Day Adventist community at Cooranbong, between Gosford and Newcastle in NSW, gave him sanctuary, and no media could get to him.

I spent many days trying to contact him by phone, but he never called back. Then I started writing to him, letter after letter. Finally, quite late one night, the phone rang and a voice said, "Well, I'll pay you full marks for persistence. My name is Chamberlain." Gotcha!

He wanted to see me at 10am the next day to talk 'man to man', and if he felt he could get on with me we had a deal. We got on terrifically well — I was a compulsive jogger and so was he, so we chatted about our shared passion — and then got down to the business of his remarkable story a story that fascinated the world. A dingo had taken his baby, and his wife was still in jail, shouldering the blame for Azaria's disappearance.

I did several stories with Michael for Woman's Day over the next couple of years, including another in-depth story with both Michael and Lindy after Lindy's release.

Remembering Ricky May

When the great Aussie jazz singer Ricky May passed away from a massive heart attack in the early hours of the morning of June 1, 1988 after his opening night at the Regent's Don Burrow's Supper Club, the whole nation shed a tear.

He was larger than life and just 44 when he died and the country was much poorer for his passing. His wife Colleen had been in bed with a bad back when she received a phone call from one of Ricky's close friends telling her the paramedics were working on her husband. She called a cab and got to the hotel as the ambos were rushing Ricky to the hospital but it was too late for that great man, who just a few days earlier had vowed to Colleen he was going on a health kick.

Of course, everyone wanted to talk to Colleen and Nene King, who was then working for the opposition, and I were vying for the story. For some reason Colleen chose to speak to me and the interview was done just a week or two after Ricky's death. It was a remarkable outpouring of emotion.

The bravery of Alicia Capell

In the mid '80s the remarkable story of eight-year-old Alicia Capell and her struggle for life gripped Australia. A world wide search began for a donor to donate bone marrow to counter her aplastic anaemia and one was found in Britain.

He flew to Australia and Alicia soon started producing her own red blood cells and the doctors and her mother Lesley believed she was on the mend. But Alicia knew otherwise and realised she was going to die from the golden staph infection she had probably contracted while in hospital.

I had become friendly with the family and a few weeks after her death did the most remarkable interview I have ever done. Her mother, Lesley, told how Alicia had told a family friend that she knew she was dying and had chosen to wait to pass away until she was eight years old and her mother was strong enough to cope with her death.

She planned her own funeral — even choosing the music — and told the friend that her mother was to wear pink to the funeral because it was Alicia's favourite colour. The lovely little girl even hid a necklace she had made as a Christmas present for her mother telling a neighbour where to find it.

Gillian Chalmers, the editor at the time, told me it was the best story she had ever handled. It created an avalanche of mail. Alicia's mother couldn't bear to read the story until a few years after it had been printed.

The saint of Mt Macedon

A year after the devastating Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia in February 1983 — when 71 people died and more than 2200 homes were burnt to the ground — I went to Macedon to see how the people of that devastated district were rebuilding their lives.

There I was told about Brother Vincent Daly, a 69-year-old priest who was literally the glue that pieced that broken community back together. Holidaying with his brothers at the time, Br Daly, who was the superior of the local church, heard the radio news that Macedon and Mt Macedon had been reduced to cinders and he immediately returned to help his flock, 500 homeless families — 80 per cent of whom were not Catholic.

Somehow he found 87 caravans for families who had been living in tents. He gave an old man his own best suit. He begged for furniture and he borrowed it. He gave each family $500 and each single or couple $200. He dug gardens and cleared debris, played with children and counselled married couples. In short, he did the work of a saint.

And then, just before the first anniversary of the Ash Wednesday fires, the locals learned Br Daly was moving on. So they organised a going away party for that generous man, who turned up wearing a Santa suit and handed out presents to the kiddies before the community gave him a colour TV. This story was picked up by newspapers and Catholic magazines around the world and I still think of Br Daly often.