By his personal description, Ray Martin has been a journo for “properly over half a century”. That tenure has included a number of stints internet hosting A Present Affair, the job that made him a family title, in addition to spots on all the pieces from ABC’s 4 Corners to First Contact on SBS. Alongside the way in which, Martin has picked up 5 Gold Logies and an Order of Australia for his work.
Final month, the media star unveiled a brand new documentary, Norfolk Island with Ray Martin, which is now streaming on SBS On Demand. It sees Martin journey to the gorgeous island with panorama photographer Ken Duncan in the hunt for the right shot. Getting behind the lens is one in all Martin’s passions – in actual fact, he owns over half a dozen cameras and an archive of round 60,000 images.
Right here, Martin tells us why he’s come to want images over writing – plus the story of two different essential private belongings.
What I’d save from my home in a fireplace
I spent my early childhood shifting from city to city throughout nation New South Wales. All up it was 13 cities earlier than I went to highschool. My father was a mechanic and largely labored on dams, which, for some purpose, was a booming enterprise after the second world warfare. Packing our household’s world into a group of suitcases meant that toys, private possessions and particularly books have been largely left behind. So there’s little from my childhood that I might sadly miss ought to a fireplace strike.
Besides, maybe, for a group of AB Paterson poems, my first Christmas current e-book. I nonetheless have it. It's crammed with rollicking pages of verse by The Banjo, printed in Sydney in 1955. I cherish this dog-eared, tattered, literary basic that by some means survived my peripatetic wanderings, secreted with my boyhood shirts and underwear. It was given to me by a younger English migrant named Eric who got here to stick with us for a couple of days, turned my pal and ended up marrying my sister, Pleasure.
Perhaps the actual fact I by no means grew up surrounded by books explains why they muddle up my examine, bed room and media room right now. A lot of them are signed, unique editions. But it surely’s the Banjo assortment, with the light mud jacket, that I’d virtually definitely seize because the flames licked the steps behind me.
My most helpful object
Having been a journalist for properly over half a century, I owe my “fame and fortune”, cobwebbed as it's, to phrases I’ve written. Or spoken. Or jotted on stray bits of paper when I've been caught in need of a pocket book.
However nowadays, I believe I want taking images. That’s why my cameras are my most helpful object. I've in all probability half a dozen, perhaps extra. No exaggeration, I will need to have 60,000 images in my private assortment.
If, because the cliche goes, an image is price a thousand phrases, then no snap I've ever taken is pretty much as good as my finest thousand-word essay. Or column. YetI discover my digital camera extra satisfying – even therapeutic – than writing. Today, with digital cameras or cellphones, it’s additionally prompt gratification. Click on. Accomplished. And with images you set your personal bar. Should you’re pleased with the picture, properly, it’s your artwork in spite of everything!
The merchandise I most remorse dropping
I most remorse dropping my … virginity. Simply kidding. However now that I've your consideration, there was one merchandise I’m sorry I misplaced.
Once I was first graded as a journalist, in my ABC youth – again within the Sixties – I used to be despatched to Perth as a reporter. My girlfriend, who turned my fiance and is now my spouse of fifty years, got here with me throughout the opposite aspect of Australia. We had no cash and even borrowed from the Credit score Union for our wedding ceremony. Now, as we have been making preparations for our nuptials, an ABC colleague made me a suggestion I couldn’t refuse. Nearly.
He was going to London to attempt his luck with the BBC and had a automotive that he needed to provide me. Properly, he really needed 1,500 quid for it. But it surely definitely was a present at that value. It was a British racing inexperienced, two-door Cooper Bristol tourer which he had present in a farmer’s shed and restored immaculately. Constructed of aluminium, it had survived the nesting chooks and the weather. Only one,500 quid.
My wife-to-be issued the ultimatum: her or the Cooper Bristol. All these years later I actually do remorse dropping that basic British tourer.
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