About Andrew

I love reading books or watching movies about people who achieve their goals overcoming what appear to be overwhelming odds. Olympians continue to amaze me. They know what the past records are but their mental attitude is such that they still set out to do better and keep on breaking records.

I was working at ABC Television in 1956 when the Olympics were launched in Melbourne and everyone at the studios was working around the clock to make sure everything went smoothly. In those days the programs, huge reels of 35mm film, came down by air from our head office in Sydney. It was the opening night.One of the programs was late. I rushed out to the airport to pick it up and arrived back just in time for the program to be loaded onto a telecine machine. The studios were full of important people including the managing director, Charles Moses. Everyone was tense lest anything went wrong. The operator pushed a button and as the first frames went to air everone groaned as a commercial went out across Australia. The hour long program was full of them and there was nothing anyone could do. I don't remember the ramifications of that except that someone at head office would have received an earful.

I stayed at the ABC for exactly seven years, the first four as Film Librarian, the last three as a film editor. It was a great place to work. Then Crawford Productions offered me a position in their editing department just as Hector Crawford was endeavouring to persuade the Seven network to accept the first police drama on Australian television. Homicide had such an extraordinary response from the public that the Government was forced to legislate drama quotas for the commercials. I was lucky enough to cut the first program working with the director, Ian Jones. I don’t know how many Homicides I edited in the five years I was with the company but one morning Don Saunders,President of the Film Editors Guild in Sydney, phoned me at Crawfords and offered me a job on the second series of an international series being made in Sydney called "Riptide". Suddenly I had hit the big-time. I even had my name on the door of my editing room. It was very exciting to work with people like Ralph Smart who had been pulled out of retirement to produce the series. I'd been an avid fan of his series "Danger Man" for years.

When it was all over I went back to Melbourne to become editor of another industry magazine after my (first) wife insisted I get a real job. However, I’m not a corporate type and while editing the magazine was a pushover it was also boring. I missed the excitement of the film industry. I stuck it out for three years then my boredom must have shown because they fired me. However, my Guardian Angel stepped in and an astute American, Howard Bellin, for whom I’d been producing a newsletter for his franchising business, offered me an office, a phone and financial backing if I would set up in his office. He could see potential in what I was doing and the buckets of money I could make for him. Little did he know that I’d always had enough trouble making money for myself let alone anyone else. Anyway, I signed an agreement and off we went. I called the business Kiplings Newsletter Services as someone once told me I was related to Rudyard. I could never prove that but it didn’t matter as it turned out to be a great name. After a couple of years it was my turn to pull the plug on my agreement as it wasn’t working for either of us. Howard wanted more out of me than I was capable of giving so we parted company.

Down the track a little I was lucky enough to find a business partner, a much younger bloke name of John Gillespie, and a number of prominent companies came on board as our clients. Kiplings soon became Kiplings Business Communications and began to make its mark. In 1980 I was contacted by a legal firm and asked what did I know about setting up a film company which led to me becoming a director of Andromeda Productions, with the aim making programs for TV and cinema. Leonard Teale, who I knew well through our association on Homicide, became its chairman. John took over managing Kiplings while I devoted my time to Andromeda. John and I began talking about selling Kiplings as I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue down that track, and so we put a proposal to the largest PR company in Melbourne. Their interest became a contract and we were about to sign on the dotted line when John decided he didn’t want to sell after all so I cancelled the deal. But I was becoming more restless.

In 1989 I co-founded a 7-day live-in accelerated learning program for teenagers called "Discovery", the most exciting thing I’d ever done in my life. That same year I became Melbourne editor of "Greenweek", an environmental newsletter also published by Phillip Luker, the first serious attempt to publish anything about the environment. I did that for three years until Phillip sold it as its circulation wasn’t growing, a sad reflection on the business community’s attitude, which is still much the same eighteen years later.

In 2007 I self-published my first book, an environmental fairy story called "Jorell", which is enjoying a great reception from both children and adults.

Original profile information:

About me

Industry	Communications or Media
Occupation	Writer
Location	Northern Rivers region, New South Wales, Australia
Introduction	Idealist. (Andrew's widow, Rosemary, now maintains his blogsites. Apart from this  note and the dates after his name, the information in this profile is as Andrew wrote it — including the description of himself as 'Idealist'.)
Interests	Reiki and Theta Healing, screenwriting, cinema history, journalism, personal development, environmental issues.
Favourite Films	Frank Capra movies, Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter movies, early British documentaries (John Grierson), All Quiet on the Western Front. The King's Speech.
Favourite Music	Blues, some jazz, classical, country, some rock, Beatles, all the big musicals.
Favourite Books	For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ernest Hemingway, Goodbye Mickey Mouse: Len Deighton,Into Thin Air: Jon Krakauer, All the President's Men: Bernstein & Woodward, "Let the Word Go Forth": John F. Kennedy, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy, Grierson on Documentary; ed. Forsyth Hardy, Saint Paul's Cathedral in Wartime 1939-1945: Rev. W. R. Matthews, The Citadel: A. J. Cronin, The Anzacs: Patsy Adam-Smith,Campbell's Kingdom: Hammond Innes, The Film Till Now: Paul Rotha, The Magic of Findhorn: Paul Hawken, Behaving As If the God in All Life Mattered: Machaelle Small Wright.