Eric Bodell - book on his life tells his story for future generations

Inside Radio Woodville with Eric Bodell and Pete Pollitt. Photo / Dave Murdoch

Eric Bodell has always considered himself a bit of a tinkerer.

He reckons it’s because his grandfather, who would do his share of tinkering in his shed.

Now Eric, who started Radio Woodville 25 years ago, is working on a book about his life and the people he’s met along the way, especially in radio.

What prompted it was the idea of writing down accounts of his experiences to leave behind for his children, and future generations, something he feels others should think about doing, especially as they get older.

It’s a book filled with stories of his experiences in broadcasting, his time as a volunteer firefighter, and what led him to start the community radio station.

Volunteer manager Eric Bodell outside the station during its birthday celebrations last year.

He’s always had a hankering for radio, he says.

That hankering started when he was 12 and he was given an electronics experimenter kit for Christmas.

“My mum knew that I had a bent for playing with electronic stuff – real basic back then – because I was always watching my granddad in his shed,” he wrote in his book.

His grandfather was very frugal, hating to throw broken machines and appliances out, doing what he could to extend their lifespan.

Eric’s grandfather was a mechanic by trade, who fixed motorbikes to aeroplanes, radios to gramophones and everything in between.

Eric’s family had a somewhat difficult past, having spent a few years as prisoners of war during World War II.

The family had moved from the Netherlands to Indonesia when Eric’s mum was young, in search of a better life.

Back then, Indonesia was a colony under a Dutch government, known as Dutch East Indies.

Then in 1941, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the government declared war on Japan and in early 1942 the Japanese invaded the colony.

Anyone of Dutch descent was incarcerated in detention camps.

Eric, much to his regret, didn’t get much of his family’s history but what he did manage to find out from his mum was enlightening.

He says in his book he was told that the Japanese made a habit of not leaving prisoners in any one place for more than about 10 days so every two weeks they had to pack up and move to the next place.

“Toward the end there were no possessions left. You either bartered possessions for food or you just off-loaded them because it was too heavy to carry.”

Eric’s grandfather was considered one of the lucky ones due to his background in mechanics and he worked for their captors.

At the end of the war, all the prisoners believed they would be able to get back to a normal life, but that was not the case either.

Eric says the first ones released lost their lives at the hands of Indonesian nationals, so the Australian and American forces closed the gates.

After much negotiation, Dutch ex-pats were repatriated back to Holland.

Eric’s mum met a man who would be Eric’s biological father but to his shock, he was not told about this until he was in his 50s.

He was raised by his stepfather, but he did have the opportunity to meet his biological father on a trip to the Netherlands.

“I met him and the bond was immediately strong,” Eric says.

Eric’s radio career got off to a bumpy start.

He was still in high school in Palmerston North when the local radio station, 2ZA, was running a programme where students could come along to run the station for an hour.

It was part of a recruitment drive to get young school leavers interested in the industry.

But Eric missed out twice and it was only when another student had to drop out that he got his chance.

Despite things going wrong in the High School Hour, as it was known, Eric was hooked.

He wrote a letter to 2ZA asking for a job and got an interview.

In his book, Eric says his dad wasn’t happy, wanting Eric to take over the concrete post manufacturing business, but his mother was very supportive as she didn’t want him getting dermatitis like his dad which was caused by contact with the cement.

The interview at 2ZA did not seem to go well, with the interviewer, Wally Smith, not impressed with Eric’s School Certificate results.

But in November, Eric was sent to Wellington where he was told staff were needed for head office engineering.

So it was in 1970 that Eric began working as a technical trainee.

Five years later, the government of the time decided to split broadcasting into four corporations: TV1, TV2, Radio New Zealand and the NZSO.

Eric chose Radio New Zealand, which would eventually lead him to working for 2ZA in Palmerston North, then transferring to 1ZU in Taumarunui in 1980.

Unhappy with the amount of work he had to do at Taumarunui, Eric took up an offer to work at Wharite, where he stayed until around 1993.

Eric started Radio Woodville in June 1998 as a way of helping the local community.

“I’ve always been a giver,” he says.

He also helped start Radio Dannevirke and went on to start another community radio station in Ashhurst, where he now lives.

Leanne Warr is editor of the Bush Telegraph and has been a journalist on and off since 1996 when she joined the Levin Chronicle. She re-joined NZME in June 2021.