Reflections on a 1961 Fellowship

To say my 1961 Commonwealth Press Union (CPU) Founder's Fellowship changed my life personally and professionally in many ways, is not to wax lyrical with exaggeration, but simply to state the truth.

The stature of the CPU and its members became graphically apparent, even before my arrival in Britain.

Mere mention to editors of where I was headed, why, and under whose auspices, was enough for arrangements to be made for visits, and in some instances brief work experiences, at major newspaper and newsagency offices on the east and west coasts of the US.

In the a few days I spent with the White House Press Corps working with Reuters, I became, so President Kennedy's Press Secretary Pierre Salinger told me, "the first Australian journalist ever to have had a one-on-one interview alone in the Oval Office with a US President".

Mr (subsequently Senator) Salinger said the President had noted a stranger in the ranks, had been told I was an Australian, and wondered whether I might know Australian World War II "coast watcher" Lt Evans, then visiting Washington. This man had organised the rescue and probably saved the lives of the then Lt Kennedy and crew of PT109 when enemy fire sank their patrol boat, and they'd swum to a Japanese-held Pacific island.

I told Pierre Salinger I'd never met Evans but President Kennedy, who from all reports had a marvellous time on leave in Australia during the war, said he wanted to talk to me anyway.

Striding out from behind his desk, he shot out a hand to greet me with: "I gather you're working with Heffernan and Flannery of Reuters - how could I forget those guys? They sound like a vaudeville billboard don't they?....So tell me, how are the girls in Melbourne Mr Stone?" "Missing you Mr. President," I said. He threw back his head, roared with laughter, and thus began a conversation, mostly about Cuba and the extent of his commitment to ANZUS Treaty. I was able to draw for some time on this - with his permission - not quoting him direct but using such phrases in newspaper articles as: "Sources close to the President insist that...." or: "White House sources believe...".

Thence to London where at 34, the most valuable of all the lessons learned in 1961 as I lived, travelled and studied for six months with the most racially and culturally varied group of men I'd ever encountered, was taught me by India's CPU Fellow of that year, Prasanta Serkar.

We were sitting one afternoon in the garden at Queen Elizabeth House, St John's College, Oxford, having what diplomats like to describe as a forthright yet gainful exchange of views. He said I should go to his country to see how far "the new India" had gone after the last of the Raj had been kicked out. I said if I did I'd probably find any advancement had been enabled by what the British left behind - namely a template for democratic government, a civil service, some good schools and a railway system.... and cricket.

So to the lesson: "Ah now Jonathon," he said, "I can see the trick here, as always, is going to be to seek areas of agreement and widen them!"

We did, we became friends and on the way back to Australia I spent a week in Calcutta with Prasanta.

Using what he'd taught me at Oxford in my relationships with the other Fellows, had launched me on a steep learning curve of other lessons and experiences of immeasurable worth. In the process I found I'd more in common in many ways with these guys of exotic looks, countries and backgrounds that I had with many of the people I knew in Australia.

Harvey Tyson the Fellow from Natal, became a good friend. My sister had married a South African surgeon whose family owned nine newspapers there, and because Harvey was a political writer I was keen to balance his view of what was then happening in South Africa against my family's opinions.

From the first time I met Nigerian Fellow Emmanuel Jaja at a cocktail party at our digs in Queen Elizabeth House, I've never again held a glass of champagne other than by the base or the steam. I remember him looking at me in mild disdain, my fingers wrapped around the top of my glass and him saying: "You're warming that champagne man! Why do you think the glass has a stem?"

The Barbados Fellow Ulrich St Elmo Rice and I, after perhaps a drink or two too many at The Trout one night, declared that "our Queen Elizabeth House cricket team" was ready to challenge "the rest of Oxford". The match was played at The Dragon School where a fine marquee was set up from which spectatprs and players were supplied with copious quantities of food and drink.

The Rest of Oxford included three Blues, their team allowing us to win the single-innings game by 10 runs. Nonetheless it should be noted, that displaying scandalous gamesmanship before the game, our opponents got he CPU XI (including ring-ins from the staff of Queen Elizabeth House) half drunk on scrumpy. I was accordingly run out giggling for 12 while trying to run between wickets. New Zealand Fellow Eric Beardsley was thrown in the river by the Englishmen "because patently he needed sobering up". The match was a huge crowd pleaser.

Meanwhile, how extraordinary was it to be getting CPU-organised work experience on legendary Fleet Street. This varied from brief stints at the now long-defunct Daily Sketch to the still-renowned Daily Telegraph - where I'll never forget the editor saying to me one night: "Tell 'em to get that ad off the front page we've got a good story to go there!" He knew that'd be a mind-boggling experience for me, unattainable in sparsely populated Australia where ads were so vital to the financial viability of newspapers they wouldn't be moved for an exclusive on the Second Coming.

Secondment to Liverpool's Post & Echo took a lot of beating in more ways than one at a time when The Beatles first began singing in The Cave.

Perhaps to preserve the sanity of reporters I would attempt to dispatch (as "Assistant News Editor") to Welsh towns whose names of 27 consonants and no vowels I couldn't pronounce and was lucky if I could locate on a map, the management devised an ingenious strategy. This removed me from the premises from time to time, yet offended neither the CPU nor me. I was sent to represent the Post & Echo as a judge in heats of the 1961 Miss Britain Quest.

Leaning on the rail of a ferry in the Menai Strait one day I was approached by a pretty young woman who said: "You poor bugger. You look lonely." We chatted briefly and I told her I was from Australia, working at the Post &Echo and living at the YMCA. "Oh my god! That's terrible," she said. You better come and live with us." So I did. Totally fascinating it was. I'd never previously lived with five women, let alone five nurses from the Liverpool Royal Infirmary.

For three weeks the Fellows were delivered into the care of the Central Office of Information, which delivered astonishing bonuses beyond even the richly educational experiences of seeing so much of people and life in major cities of the UK.

At a lunch in London - I think in the boardroom of Channel 4 -- I met Lord Bessborough (the 9th Earl) and we hit it off to the extent that he invited me to stay at Stansted Park, his so called "little place in the country". ("Catch the train to Rowland Castle Jonathon and I'll pick you up." - which he did in his SS Jaguar.

Eric - as he insisted I call him - said famous Australian aviator Amy Johnson and pilot-husband Jimmy Mollison used to land their aircraft on the front lawn at Standsted Park. Keats wrote quite a lot of his poetry in the estate's chapel, former South Australian Governor Sir Robert George and Lady George were then living in Standsted Mews, and around the swimming pool beside a splendid pavilion was an array of (alas broken) Roman columns salvaged from The New Forest.

One day when Eric insisted I use his chauffeur-driven Roller to help me "get around London", I used it to round up a few of the CPU Fellows after our visit to Ealing Studios and take them back to their digs.

My CPU-triggered friendship with him grew. In 1962 Eric wrote me a charming note after seeing a review I'd written on his book "Return to The Forest". He came to Australia, dined with my wife and me at our house at the Adelaide beachside suburb of Brighton, where we invited him to take a few steps from our garden down to the beach for a dip in our "swimming pool", The Gulf St Vincent.

I remember we joked about some of the things I done during my CPU sponsored sojourn in the UK that he'd never done and probably never would. I'd made a speech in the House of Commons (well, not actually in the House but on the terrace, a few words of thanks on behalf of the CPU Fellows after a luncheon there). And Eric had never joined a practice session with Britain's water skiing team or been mobbed like a rock star (as had I, by fans who'd mistaken me for someone I think was called Adam Ant).

The epilogue to the Fellowship was no less significant than the prologue.

The job done, the CPU staff and Central Office of Information organised a grant for me from the West German Government. enabling me after extensive travel throughout West Germany, to be flown across East Germany down the intensely monitored air corridor into Berlin.

The wall dividing the city had just been built. Where buildings were part of it, Berliners, desperate to get to the west, were leaping from windows, often to their deaths, and were being shot trying to cross open spaces between the two sides of the city.

I managed to get into and out of East Berlin by way of infamous Checkpoint Charlie. Hidden from watchers in West Berlin were hundreds of Russian tanks, muzzles of their guns almost touching the wall on its eastern side. It seemed an itchy trigger finger might start World War III. But that's another story.

Back in the Land of Oz post 1961:

• A variety of executive positions with Advertiser Newspapers Limited in Adelaide, the South Australian capital.
• News Editor of The Advertiser Broadcasting Network of four radio stations.
• Radio columnist and commentator.
• First South Australian to become Press Secretary of a Cabinet Minister of the Federal Government.
• Inaugural Regional Director of the Federal Government's Australian Information Service for South Australia and the Northern Territory.
• Transferred to Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as a Director of Information, being seconded occasionally to the personal public relations staffs of royalty and visiting Heads of State.
• Was Acting Regional Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, South Australia and the Northern Territory when I resigned in 1990 to establish my own public relations consultancy.
• The author of three textbooks on writing articles for publication, I'm currently, at the age of 80, lecturing on them at The Adelaide Centre for The Arts' Professional Writing Unit. I'm still servicing several PR clients, the most significant of which is a leading South Australian accountancy firm that's part of a national group with international connections.

In short the CPU's 1961 Fellow has become a sort of Mr Chips of Journalism, having more fun than some say is good for him.