"LISTENER" WRITER GOES TO FILM STUDIOS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 115, 5 September 1941, Page 12

"LISTENER" WRITER GOES TO FILM STUDIOS

FTER two years watching The Listener grow from its first issue and take shape, Sydney Brookes has gone to the Miramar Film Studios as an assistant producer. There he will work under E. S. Andrews, who recently resigned the editorship of National Education to organise the new film units the Government is establishing. This year the magazine has been without his services, except for the past two months, when he has been back in civilian occupation after training with units of the New Zealand Army Service Corps. He entered camp as a private in January, trained at Army School of Instruction during February and March, and was commissioned in April as an officer of a transport company. It might not seem usual for a journalist to specialise in the army on transport work, but Mr. Brookes, during a varied career, was at one time driver of a passenger bus, and will be remembered not only by readers who have seen shis name over Listener articles, but also by many hundreds of people who bumped along the ‘Ball Hut road with him from — the Hermitage, Mt. Cook. Journalism and bus driving, however, are still not the whole list of his experiences. He has sampled farm life as well, tried being a hermit, has " panned" for gold, gone rabbiting, and, in general, has qualified in every respect to write some day an_ autobiography entitled "From Newsboy to Millionaire." The only catch in this idea, he says, is that millions are the one form of trouble unlikely to overtake him. Well-known Mountaineer His " lapse" from journalism occurred when he decided some four years ago that mountaineering as a hobby might well, for a time, become mountaineering for a living. He secured work as a junior guide at the Hermitage and was. given an opportunity, in his first session, of climbing with Guide Jack Cox. With Miss Margery Edgar Jones these two began their season by, making the second ascent of New Zealand’s third highest mountain, Mt. Dampier. They turned this ascent into a first traverse and, on the same trip, traversed St. David’s Dome. Shortly after the same party made the difficult. east-to-west traverse of Mt. Sefton. In other climbs with Guide Mick Bowie, Mr. Brookes climbed Mt. Tasman (and made the first descent by Syme’s Ridge), the a berhorn, Mt. Teichelmann, Mt. Perouse, and the third peak of Mt. ies These ascents as a guide in the Mt. Cook district followed a number of sea-

sons in which many fine climbs were made as an amateur member of the Canterbury Mountaineering Club. The outbreak of the war found him one of a party of club members completing plans for a large-scale expedition into the Himalayas through Sikkim. In between seasons at the Hermitage he drove buses and a_snow-plough, learned. how to muster sheep and cattle without dogs or horses in high mountain country, received first lessons in upcountry butchering, and, finally refreshed by all these and many other experiences, came to Wellington to join the staff assembled to publish The Listener. _ Mr. Semple’s " Running Shoes" His earlier journalistic experience has been scarcely less unusual than his departure from the trade. When he left Timaru Boys’ High School he worked first as an office junior in a Christchurch newspaper’s agency. From there he went to Rangiora to work for the North Canterbury Gazette. His apprenticeship there consisted of reporting anything from funerals to floods and _ political campaigns. (His report: of Mr. Semple’s historical "running shoes" speech to the Ashley River protection scheme workers was the first one published.) Before he left Rangiora for "the misty . gorges " he had entered into partnership to purchase the printing and publishing business, and sold his interest when the appeal of outdoor work became too attractive to resist. Last year he married Miss Anne Davies, of Pontypridd, Wales, and reports that he is still trying to pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngwllgogerychgwyndrovw llllandysiliogogogogoch, or " something like that."