Launch of The Backyard: ABC Local Online
Tuesday 28 September 1999
Good evening and thank you all for attending this launch. We see here today a culmination of the ABC’s response to two prodigious challenges: budget cuts and the new media.
On both scores the ABC has prevailed with sharp and imaginative flair .
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In 1998 I built my first web site, a corporate brochure site for 612 ABC Brisbane, then called 4QR.
Looking back on the frames based navigation, the animated email gif, and the rather cumbersome graphics it seems somewhat naive.
In November of 1998 I took part in, and completed an intensive “Negotiation Skills” course.
In the late 1990’s I stopped off in Maleny, Queensland where I interviewed architect Ahtee Chia about the straw bale house he had built.
Links
Talent: Ahtee Chia, architect and builder
( To air: Weekends, 6 March 1998, Duration: 04:56 )
In 1996, I took part in and completed a defensive driving coursde for 4WD.
The course was arranged after several accidents involving ABC staff unused to the power of the 4WD, nor used to driving on roads that leave a bit to be desired.
In 1993 I interviewed, Robert Jordan, a fantasy author from the United states.
Probably best known for his mammoth series “The Wheel of Time“, he also wrote a number of the “Conan the Barbarian” books, and is less well know for a period romance trilogy “Fallon”
[audio:https://www.raeallen.net/audio/robert-jordan.mp3 | titles=His background and his books | artists=Robert Jordan]
It would be difficult to work in the Northern Territory in the last half of the 20th century, and not have come across Charles Perkins.
Born in Alice Springs in the late 1930s, Charles Perkins career reads like a template for indigenous activism, from the Freedom Rides of the 1960s to his work with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in the 1970s and his role as Commissioner and Deputy Chair, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Commission in the 1990s.
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I’ve always enjoyed it when I get the chance to happen upon a bit of living history.
In 1991 the Alice Springs School of the Air celebrated its 40th anniversary, and one of the people who turned up to share her story was one of the original teachers, Molly Ferguson.
Her story however was as much a picture of our society in the 1950s as it was about her work at the School of the Air. Molly spoke of her stint as acting Principal, and that being a woman she could only be an acting Principal as at the time only men could get the job full time.
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I met Winston Peters in 1990 while he was traveling through the Northern Territory.
At the time he was a Maori member of the NZ National Party, and his star was such he was tipped to become New Zealand’s first Maori Prime Minister.
Unfortunately the highest he flew was Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, when his New Zealand First party held the balance of power following the 1996 election.
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While many think of Central Australia as a desert, there is real beauty in this arid environment.
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