Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 891, 31 August 1956, Page 18

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS ON AND OFF THE RECORD

. PIONEER BACKGROUND

Station Manager know about the everyday lives of pioneer housewives? is a question we asked ourselves when we heard that Leo Fowler, of 2XG, was giving a series of talks on the subject in the Women’s Hour from 1XN, 2XN and 3XC. Mr. Fowler explains his J what would an NZBS

knowledge of pioneer housekeeping this way: "When my family came out from

England in 1900 we went to live in the Far North-and it was the far North in those days. Conditions hadn’t changed much, so far as I can gather, in 50 years. We were there for five years, and there were no roads (in winter, at any rate), no cars, no electric light. Delivery from the store seven miles away was once a month, except in the winter, and the nearest neighbour was two miles away. My mother was a pioneer housewife." Since those days Leo Fowler has done all sorts of things for a living. He worked in the gold-mining industry at

Thames, had two years in the bush at the back of Kaitaia-that was in the early *twenties-then went on to tram conducting, newspaper reporting, navvying and coal-mining. "I’ve just begun my 20th year in broadcasting," he tells us, "For three years of that I was in charge of the Mobile Recording Unit. While with the Unit I interviewed old-timers throughout Taranaki, Waikato-Hauraki and Otago. I’ve always been interested in eatly history, and have written articles and talks about it on and off for the last 30 years. Recently I finished a novel about race relations around Auckland and the Waikato just before the Waikato War in the 1860s. It’s the first of a trilogy and is called Brown Conflict." In broadcasting Leo Fowler has been announcer, programme officer, copywriter, Director of the Western Samoan Broadcasting Service, and Station Manager at 2XG. This career was interrupted a couple of'times while he spent three years as Editor of Kiwi, the newspaper of the N.Z.E.F. in the Pacific, and two years as Director of the Gisborne Museum-a job which chimed in well with his interest in ethnology, archaeology and history. In 1937 he published a volume of verse, Pit Poems, and he collaborated with the late J. Grenfell Williams in his work, Radio in Fundamental Education, published by Unesco in 1950. a

HE Viennese-born viola player Walter Gerhard, who has_ twice visited New Zealand with the Pascal Quartet-he was last here in April-has been appointed repetiteur violinist of the South Australian Symphony Orchestra. On the Quartet’s New Zealand tour he replaced Leon Pascal, whose health does not allow him to make long tours. In Paris, Gerhard recorded quintets with the group as second viola player. He formerly played the viola with the Radio Zurich Orchestra.