by Les Hinton
Actually, this entire feeling turned out to be a drug-induced illusion. A few years later I could recapture that sense of invincible charm by drinking a couple of glasses of wine. I had clearly been under the influence of mind-altering medication designed to get me through those weeks of bedridden stillness.
I hadn’t yet worked that out on the day Dr Peter Stobie, my eye surgeon, arrived to remove the blindfold. After hating the darkness, I was dreading the light.
The first face I saw was no surprise. The last person I had seen before the general anaesthetic took me away was Dr Stobie. Here he was again — balding, pallid and serious. Immediately after removing the blindfold he replaced it with a pair of strange spectacles; the lenses were covered but for two tiny circles of light at the centre of each frame. So I re-entered the seeing world through these two tiny portals; they were intended to stop my eye moving too much while it continued to heal.
The ward was vast, like a great hall, with a soaring ceiling, yellow walls, tall windows, and a floor of polished brown linoleum. The beds were spaced far apart, their frames made of black iron, and nurses paced along the wide middle passageway dressed in light-blue uniforms under starched-white aprons.
As I squinted at it all, I could see in a blur one blue-and-white nurse waving far across the ward as she walked in my direction. She stood beside my bed, smiling. She was short, a little over five foot, with an ample figure, very ample. Her cheeks were full, very full, and her short hair frizzy and unkempt, as if she did not take much trouble with it. But her smile was a warm and caring smile, and her bright hazel eyes were smiling, too. ‘Hello, Les,’ she said, taking hold of my arm. ‘I’m Sophie.’
This was the real Sophie, the raven-haired beauty of my imagination, with the long neck, red lips, and perfect ankles. Nothing I imagined about her was true. Yet the warm and gentle voice was still there, and the kindness. And I could never have imagined her beautiful smile.
One by one, reality replaced my imagination. The stern, stout senior sister was statuesque, slender, and beautiful; Bob, my braille teacher, was very short with a big round stomach, and almost entirely bald; the petite, handholding nurse was not petite, and her chestnut hair was black and quite straight. I got only one right. Marilyn Monroe really was blonde and shapely. She also remained uninterested in chatting to me. As a 15-year-old, the gift of those five weeks was that it gave me no choice but to get to know people from the inside first.
After five weeks in bed, the body grows accustomed to being out of use. My ignored muscles had atrophied. My legs were useless. I could not walk, or even stand. I took my first shower sitting in a chair because my legs would not bear the weight of my body.
The operation had saved my sight and stemmed the damage, but the shadow across the top right of my vision had not gone, and distortions also remained, and colours were less sharp. I was also unable to recognise a face at 50 paces, but presumed after the operation that this was a handicap I must learn to live with. For some reason, no one thought it might be a good idea to test me for spectacles — not until I was learning to drive and my brother-in-law Don refused to continue with his lessons until I had my eyes tested.
In 1960, the requirements for a driving licence in Adelaide were undemanding — probably no stricter than those needed to drive a horse-and-carriage 100 years before. You did not need to take a driving test at all, and could be given a licence without ever sitting behind the wheel of a car. I was asked about 20 questions on the rudiments of the road. It was not a challenging examination — red lights mean stop, don’t accelerate driving past a school, don’t rev your engine to hurry old ladies crossing the street, when it’s dark turn on headlights.
Also, reasonably enough, you were not allowed to drive if you were blind. For me, this was the tricky part. In a doctor’s eyesight test I might have nailed the big letter at the top, but it would be pure guesswork after that. Luckily, this test was not so sophisticated.
The examiner just took me into the street, and pointed. ‘See that street?’
I could tell from the direction he was pointing where the street must be — beyond the large garden in front of us.
‘Yes.’
‘OK, tell me what model car that is.’
Since I could hear engines but see only blurring movement, I had to think quickly. At that time, by far the most popular car in Australia was a local product called a Holden. So I replied: ‘It’s a Holden, sir.’
‘That one?’
‘Another Holden.’
‘That?’
‘Holden.’
After the same question had been followed 10 times by the identical answer, the examiner wrote something on his clipboard.
‘Seven out of ten — that’ll do,’ he said.
And I was let loose on the roads of Adelaide.
What alarmed my brother-in-law was not so much my inability ever to take a corner without mounting the pavement as my failure to notice any approaching stop sign until I was within 20 feet and travelling at 35 miles per hour. My first pair of spectacles changed everything, and I have driven accident free, more or less, ever since.
Although safe to drive, I still didn’t see all that well, and imperfect vision has many drawbacks. Sports, for instance. Seeing through a single eye does not aid hand-eye coordination, or help in judging the direction of a fast-moving ball. Cricket did not come naturally to me. Facing a fast bowler, my only defence was quiet prayer, since I had no chance of seeing the approaching missile.
People who didn’t like me exploited this weakness. I was sometimes played at a position called silly mid-on, which requires the fielder to stand suicidally close to the batsman. I only ever stopped one ball while playing in this position, and that was when it scored a direct hit a little below my throat while travelling at least 100 miles per hour. The only sound I heard as I lay near death at the batsman’s feet was my captain’s cackle and his words: ‘Well stopped, Les.’ That was 50 years ago; I finally forgave the captain five years ago — when he died.
Watching sport was not easy, either. Even with spectacles, it was difficult to identify players. In Adelaide, I earned an additional £3 10s a week writing about soccer. These were the days when soccer was a minor sport in Australia — so minor no one else wanted the job. But being the soccer writer for The News made me a big-shot in a small world. I joined a panel to judge the man of the match at every game. I enjoyed the prestige of this position until the day I forgot to bring my binoculars. There was an awkward silence when I handed in my choice for best player: ‘Err, Les — he wasn’t playing today.’
—
I was old enough to drink when I heard the news. It was 7 July 1962, and I was an 18-year-old cadet reporter arriving for a Saturday shift on The News’ sister paper, the Sunday Mail. Before I could find a desk, the Sunday Mail’s chief reporter, Bill Reshcke, hurried towards me. ‘There’s been plane crash. An Alitalia jet flying out of Sydney has crashed in India, and it looks like there are no survivors. We need to check if any locals were on board.’
Alitalia Flight 771, bound from Sydney to Rome, via Bangkok, Bombay, and Tehran, had 94 people on board, and had been approaching Bombay through a blinding summer monsoon when it crashed into a jungle hilltop 50 miles northeast of the airport. Search parties trekked through miles of rough terrain to reach the wreckage. Two days later, only half the bodies had been recovered, but it was clear everyone on board had died.
Four victims had begun their journey in Adelaide: a six-year-old girl, Dagmar von Brasch, had been flying to Frankfurt to visit an aunt, and Luigi Monti, 70, was going home to Forli, Italy, after a three-month visit to see his daughter and two grandsons. They were two tragic stories, but by now I was learning the necessary detachment; too much terrible misfortune filled the columns of a newspaper. At times, however, bad news breaks through your defences, and that is what happened when I learned the names of the other two v
ictims. They were Mr and Mrs Guglielmo Proietti of Frederick Street, Stepney, newlyweds who were flying to Rome on their honeymoon.
Guglielmo, my hospital friend, had worked and saved, and gone home in a jet plane, not a ship, to introduce his new bride to his Italian family. It was just as he had promised himself as we lay in our hospital beds plotting our lives. He had talked to me of becoming wealthy building homes, but Guglielmo had started his own trucking business. He would have been so pleased with himself climbing aboard that plane, off to see the poor relatives he talked about, to arrive with his beautiful bride and tell them of his new life in a lucky country.
The grainy photo we published had been taken two weeks before, on their wedding day. A tiny tiara pinned to the beaming bride’s dark hair held in place a long white veil. She was beautiful, just as Guglielmo had said. The groom to her right was neatly combed, with a big knot in his dark tie, a slight smile, and delighted eyes.
But it was the face of a stranger. I would always remember my vibrant unseen friend as short and wiry, with close-cropped black hair, blue eyes, and teeth askew. And his happy, hopeful voice.
CHAPTER 6
‘Yes, Mr Murdoch’
The Australian immigration officer in Liverpool wasn’t encouraging when I told him I was going to be a newspaper reporter. ‘It’s a tough business to get into, son,’ he said. ‘You should stay in school and improve your education.’ My parents weren’t hopeful, either — Mum thought it was a fantasy I would soon work out of my system.
The immigration man gave me one address. The Advertiser, he said, was by far the better daily newspaper in Adelaide. It was a morning broadsheet and the city’s leading daily. The other newspaper, he said, was ‘a tabloid’.
I did not have high hopes after my interview at The Advertiser’s offices on King William Street, the city’s central boulevard. It was a warm day, but Mum said I must look my best, which was why I arrived beneath a heavy, brown Harris Tweed jacket, and wearing thick grey flannel trousers. Dad provided his regimental tie from the Royal Army Service Corps to perfect the outfit. Even before the interview, I could feel the perspiration travelling down the middle of my back.
Whatever appeared on The Advertiser’s list of required qualities for an aspiring journalist, the man who interviewed me gave no indication that I possessed a single one. I had, however, stepped inside my first newsroom; walked into the glamorous blue haze and down the ranks of cigarette-burned desks, heard the hammer and ring of massed typewriters, smelt the musty blend of newsprint and ink, and discovered how a newspaper building trembles to the rhythm of its great basement presses. It seemed like a fine place to be.
Five days later, the letter from The Advertiser delivered an unexpected problem. No, there was no vacancy in the editorial department — no surprise there — but there was a position in the accounts department to which it was felt I would be ideally suited.
I knew what Mum would say before she looked up from the letter. She had sat down on her squeaking bed in the grimly utilitarian immigration hostel where we were lodged, leaning one hand on its rough grey blanket and holding my letter in the other.
‘Great, love, you’ve got a job.’
‘But I don’t want to work in an accounts department. I hate maths. I’m useless with numbers. I want to be a reporter.’
These were the moments when my mother adopted her famous look of furrowed, dark-eyed threat. But not yet of anger — the anger was held in reserve, to be unleashed if resistance continued. It was a familiar sight, my mother coiled for battle, but it no longer scared me.
She spoke slowly, each word uttered with thumping menace. ‘You must go back to see them and take the job. You need a job.’
‘No. I’m not going to do it. Don’t keep telling me because I won’t.’
I understood this was her survival instinct. The rule for her was simple: take what you can get when you can get it. It had been a tough childhood — born into a large, struggling dockland family, her widowed mother’s daily double-shifts cleaning, her education at a home for the poor, operating the lift at a dry-cleaning factory at the age of 14. Why would I knock back the offer of a job, any job? But I had made my stand and waited for the counter-attack. What happened next was unheard of in the history of Hinton family skirmishes. Mum let out a long, surrendering sigh. ‘Well, okay, but you’ve got to find a job somewhere. What are you going to do?’
The News was Adelaide’s evening newspaper, the one the immigration officer disdained as a ‘tabloid’. Its offices were on North Terrace, one of four streets that were the boundary of this neat square mile of a city, each named by its literal-minded founders after the four points of the compass. It was a plain building, painted desert-brown, and much less majestic than The Advertiser’s sleek new tower on King William Street.
I climbed one flight of stairs, as the letter had instructed, and arrived in a corridor of tall, white partitions. Sounds spilled over these walls: shouts and laughter, clattering typewriters, and the clamour of unanswered telephones. I pressed a bell beside the unmanned reception desk. A boy a little older than I arrived to lead me through a wide, blue door 20 feet along the corridor, where a woman about my mother’s age looked at me seriously. Her grey cotton dress had a tight white collar and her hands were poised above the keys of a huge Remington typewriter, its oily innards visible inside a black steel frame. ‘Mr Rivett will be here in a minute. Sit down there.’
I sat on a hard chair with a high back of wooden slats, and waited outside the office of Rohan Deakin Rivett, the editor-in-chief of The News. A framed cartoon on the wood-panelled wall showed an angry man beside a closed door marked ‘Editor’. The man was wielding a long bullwhip and looming over a terrified secretary. The cartoon caption said: ‘I want to see him NOW!’
I have no idea why Rohan Rivett gave me a job. I’m not sure whether he did it out of pity, or because he had mixed me up with someone else, but I left that meeting and ran through the bright sun of North Terrace with the title of ‘copy boy’, a promised salary of £5 10s a week, and an instruction to be in the office the following morning at eight.
The cheerless hostel where we were staying was only a five-minute walk away, set improbably in beautiful riverside parkland at the city’s heart. I was there delivering my breathless news within two minutes.
The meeting had lasted half an hour. Rivett’s low-lit office was sealed against the noise outside. On his desk were four telephones. Along the front of a large wooden intercom to his left were two rows of switches, one red and all the others black. Newspapers sat in neat piles on shelves against the wall, held together by pink ribbon. He studied my letter in the light of a green-shaded desk lamp. It was an honest letter, so I knew it offered no qualifications likely to impress him. He put the letter aside and asked me to tell him about my life so far. So I talked about Bootle, the British Army, and our wandering life, and how we had come here because my sister had met and married an Adelaide soldier in Singapore. ‘I lived in Singapore,’ he said.
When he asked me why I wanted to be a journalist, I delivered my prepared answer, which I knew contained nothing original. I wanted to meet people, go places, tell stories, and I liked to write. I had read every page of The News for the previous few days, and talked about what I admired: the feature articles of John Miles; Doug Easom’s quirky ‘Odd Spot’ column; Norm Mitchell’s cartoons; Douglas Brass’ dispatches from London.
Rohan Rivett pressed down on one of the black intercom switches.
‘Murray, can you come down please?’
Murray Willoughby James was the newspaper’s chief of staff, and when he arrived Rivett rose to stand beside him. They were two silhouettes against the sunlight through the window.
‘Mr Hinton will be joining us as a copy boy tomorrow morning.’
I had a job.
Even though Rohan Rivett’s next words sounded reproachful. — ‘He’s fif
teen years and three months old,’ — he said them while looking at me with a faint smile and I knew that, somehow, I had made the right impression.
I was too young, without any useful education, had no testimonials, no family connection, and knew nothing about Australia except that Don Bradman had been a good batsman, which is the same as knowing nothing about the United States except that Babe Ruth could hit baseballs. And yet I walked straight off the boat to be given a job on a whim by Rohan Deakin Rivett, the patrician son of one of Australia’s leading scientists, and the grandson of its second prime minister, Alfred Deakin. I think Murray James was as surprised as me.
Newspapers are high-functioning dictatorships. One all-powerful mind is in control. In a world of instant decisions, in the late-night heat of an oncoming deadline with a silent pressroom waiting, there is only so much time for debate. At The News, I witnessed for the first time the power and frailty of an editor’s life. Even in the saluting subservience of the British Army, I had never known such deference to one person’s beliefs and requirements. Journalists, junior editors, and sub-editors fretted constantly. ‘I’m not sure about this? Does Rohan know?’; ‘Who wrote that head? He’ll hit the roof’; ‘I know it’s long, but he says we’ve been underplaying the story.’ Day-to-day, page-by-page, an editor’s decision must be final and unassailable.
But editors are not invulnerable. Their power is great, but it is also frail. Regime change will follow if readers fall away, or if one of those split-second decisions proves to be wrong once too often. An impatient proprietor will quickly overthrow an editor who loses their grip. Cassandra of London’s Daily Mirror wrote about the shadow that hovers over editors: ‘Editors! I seen ‘em come. And I seen ‘em go. But way up on the mountain overshadowing Fleet Street the Abominable Snowman goes on for ever.’
Rivett’s fatal moment came a year after I arrived. He was the first editor Rupert Murdoch ever fired.