Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 914, 15 February 1957, Page 18

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS ON AND OFF THE RECORD

COUNTRYMAN

N the few weeks it has been on the air from 3YA, Home Paddock-*"a journal for country people’"-has had a warm welcome, not only from farmers and their families but from city folk interested in country life. so Canterbury listeners

generally will be as interested as we were to hear something

about the man behind the broadcast. Thirty-eight-year-old H. L. Pickering comes to his new job as Rural Broadcasts Officer at 3YA straight from the land. Since 1947 he has been farming on

his own account at Motunau Beach, North Canterbury, where development work begun by the Lands Department has been carried on. But he hasn’t always been a farmer. After going to school at Marlborough Col‘lege, he trained in the 1930s as a school teacher and studied at Canterbury University College. That was interrupted by the war, in which he served -"very inconspicuously," he says-on the Army staff and in the Air Force as a flying instructor and on administration. His

steps were turned towards farming when he left the armed forces. On doctor’s orders he took up shepherding, and work for the Lands Department renewed his enthusiasm for land development before he actually became a farmer in his own right. Mr. Pickering is a family manhe has three children. When we asked him to jot down some notes about his approach to rural broadcasts, Mr. Pickering reminded us that New Zealand’s natural wealth consists of "some reasonable land and a glorious

climate" and that our future prosperity depends primarily on the way we make use of these assets. "First," he said, "we should protect our heritage by diligent care of the land and its flora and fauna. Secondly, through good farming and forestry, we must use the land and climate to best advantage. Radio can be a great help towards this objective." Mr. Pickering said that quite apart

from specific country sessions, radio broadcasts had already greatly helped. "By taking music, the news, drama and entertainment into rural areas, radio has made the country a pleasant place to live in," he said. "The old sense of isolation, the lack of music and fellowship, is gone. Country people have a better sense of fellowship and community with their city cousins and the rest of the world. That’s all to the good. But we're going on from there. Radio can foster greater co-operation . between district and

district and can bring town and country into closer understanding, to our mutual advantage. That’s the aim-and an important one-of the entertainment, social and family side of country sessions." The knowledge of our many agricultural experts-men of international re-pute-was freely available to farmers, said Mr. Pickering, but unfortunately not enough advantage was taken of it. "Radio broadcasts can’t replace the printed word as a means of giving farmers all that scientists and other ex-

perts have to offer," he said. "But it can introduce the scientist to the farmer --whet the farmer’s appetite for more knowledge, keep him abreast of modern trends, advise him on urgent matters, warn him of pitfalls and bring him into social and semi-technical fellowship with other farmers. Rural broadcasts are being planned with this outlook and these objectives in mind." It was hoped, Mr. Pickering added, to get more audience participation in the programmes — and if farmers and their families wouldn’t come to the microphone then it would have to go to them. Replacing the old winter quarter-hour Thursday night session for farmers, Home Paddock runs for 25 minutes each Thurs-day-and all the year round.

THIRD KING

* ARTIN WILSON, who was heard as Balthasar in the highly-esteemed local production of Amahl and the Night Visitors, was what you might call a late

starter in music. When he left school there were other things which

seemed, for the time being, more important, and he was one of: the many local boys who made their way to Canada as’ cadets in the Empire air-training scheme. He passed out in 1943. during

1943-44 flew in Sunderlands of Coastal Command -a_ tour of duty which he now dismisses as humdrum-and was a mature 21 when the war ended. That, of course, was a while back. In the years since 1945 he. has become a secondary school teacher and is now settled, with a wife and two young children, at Wainui-o-mata, whence he commutes daily in term time over :the hill to Hutt Valley High School. A pupil of Stanley Oliver since 1953 (he sang in the Schola Cantorum during the

last two years of its existence), he was heard on the air for the first time last year in the NZBS preduction of Peregrine Pickle, and later sang the roles of Wimpassinger (acted by Selwyn Toogood) in Blossom Time and Dr. Grenvil in the radio presentation of Traviata.

FABIAN

ERTRUDE HUTCHINSON was not quite 14 when she was engaged as an office girl by the Fabian Society. That was towards the end of the First World

War, and the Fabians had already done much that was to make them one of the

great forces in English political life, Later Gertrude was a secretary to H. G. Wells. In The Fabians and I, a BBC programme heard recently from 2YC and 4YC and later to be broadcast from other YC stations, she describes the impact the Fabians made upon her and tells a delightfully informative story of life "behind the scenes." She decided after her first day’s work that Fabians were "quite mad and perfectly delightful." She talks of her frequent encounters with Bernard Shaw, who was then chairman, Sidney and Beatrice Webb (she was surprised when they turned out to be two persons), G. D. H. Cole and manv others. ineclidine W

H. Hutchinson, the trade union leader whose son Harold she later married. There was also "a woman with fiery red hair and a resonant voice’ — that was Ellen Wilkinson, who later became Minister of Education. To 14-year-old Gertrude, a Cockney inclined to view foreign names and places with the deepest — suspicion, Fabianism seemed to be a harmless}, enough game, and her story tells how she not only learned to appreciate Fabians but became one herself.