Of all the things George Negus will be remembered for, helping Australian journalists find their voice will probably be the best.
After all, Negus introduced the Australian accent to Australian broadcasting.
Before him, we spoke like the BBC or Bob Menzies. They were both remarkably similar.
A walk through Australia’s sound archives is a revelation.
It reminds us that even in the 1980s, how English were the cadences of the nation’s airwaves.
Why should this surprise us when, at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, we are still a monarchy and about to welcome our English head of state?
George would have said many angry words about it in the most demotic Australian tone he could muster.
George Negus was the journalist who brought the real Australian accent to television, literally
Charles Wooley (second right) has paid tribute to the late George Negus (third left). They are pictured with Liam Bartlett (left), Liz Hayes (second left) and Ray Martin (right) at the 2018 Logies.
In the late 1960s, Negus first attracted attention in the hallowed halls of the ABC, then located in Gore Hill on the Upper North Coast, where people spoke like polite Poms.
Have you heard his awful Australian accent? He should be taught to speak,” I remember a senior executive still complaining when I got there a decade later.
“If that is considered acceptable, anyone can appear on television.”
And, of course, that was George’s forte. He wasn’t anyone but he sounded like everyone.
Maybe he was a diamond in the rough imitation, but to us slightly younger recruits trying to sound like the BBC, it was clear that Negus was stealing the show.
When he did the unthinkable and left ABC for the vulgar commercial world and something called 60 Minutes, our bosses assured us: “My dear friend, this will never last.”
Although if you go online and pull up some 60 Minutes stories, even from my time, still in the ’90s, we all still sounded quite British. The great Ray Martin included.
“Good evening and welcome to television” were the first words spoken on Australian television on September 16, 1956.
By today’s standards, Bruce Gyngell sounded like he just jumped off the boat.
But he was a Sydney Grammar boy and therefore, following George, he might comment that “Bruce would have had no problem putting on the dog.”
Releasing the true Australian accent and conveying it to the masses in the language they spoke was a huge breakthrough, and 60 Minutes was a runaway success.
George Negus gave the show mainstream traction by introducing the world to ordinary Australian families every Sunday night at 7:30.
Years later, traveling the world for the program he had pioneered, I always had the feeling that we were setting up our camera in the holes on George’s tripod.
George’s death was not a surprise.
I call it death because, as an old-school journalist, I hated beating around the bush. He wouldn’t pass. He would die.
And it wasn’t a shock. With Alzheimer’s it had quietly escaped us some time ago.
I like to think that in the mute silence that enveloped him, George could still repeat his great adventures in all corners of the world and hear them over and over again in the everyday language and accent of Australia.
The tone that was his great legacy.