The year that Kevin Milne discovered his true calling

Kevin Milne. Photo / Mark Mitchell

In 1970 I turned 21 but more importantly, I was leaving home. Even more importantly I was, for the first time, pursuing a career that meant something: journalism. I was on the ferry from Christchurch to Wellington to do the Wellington Polytechnic one-year journalism course.

Much of my life until then had been a train crash. College had been a disaster — five years' study and I hadn't even qualified for university. I'd been fired from my first job, as an airline reservations clerk; and dismal at my next, as a bank officer. I'd failed an audition to become a radio announcer — my Kiwi accent wouldn't cut it with those who'd done elocution and learned to speak like Londoners.

Besides, in the past six years, my dear, clever brother had been killed in a car crash, my dad had died suddenly on the way home from work, three dear great-aunts had passed away — they were all my "grandmothers" — and my grandad and an aunt had died.

In an interview at Wellington Polytechnic, the wonderful Chris Cole, head journalism tutor, felt sorry for me. Not about the bereavements — I didn't tell her about them — but that I was working as a bank clerk. That night her husband told her to "get him out of there". She let me on to the course, despite my not having the requisite high marks in English. I had age on my side, she said, being a few years older than the others. "You can't be a reporter when you're still a kid." With that, Chris, later to become Dame Christine Cole-Catley, national treasure, changed my life.

I loved my family to bits but it was grand to relinquish a buttoned-up Catholic life in Fendalton (my dear mother preferred I wear a tie to Ballantynes). There had been church every Sunday, youth groups, even Young Nats' wine and cheese parties, for God's sake. For the first time in Wellington, I mixed with liberal lefties, music fans who didn't care for James Last nor Herb Alpert. Wholesomeness was consigned to the past. Our tutors sent us to review movies like Easy Rider and Oh! What a Lovely War.

We swore a lot, sang a lot, claret was woofed, weed was shared. I met a gorgeous 18-year-old fellow student who wore hotpants, and we listened to Leonard Cohen and the Chicago Transit Authority. I wore flares — and quite a bit of paisley. A classmate was Judy Morrison, who later became mother of the nation. Back then she was just another child of the revolution.

I shared a room in a flat with a guy called Phillip Leishman — a kid from Timaru who worked for the NZBC Accounts Department. He badly wanted to be an announcer. We both did. He lay in bed all night with his head on his radio as if transfusing broadcasting waves through his ear, direct to his brain. It worked. He became a broadcasting legend.

I discovered, for the first time, if you're excited by a task it's no longer work. And most likely you'll be good at it.

As the year ended, I was taken on by the NZBC purely on the recommendation of my journalism tutors. No psychometric test, no appointment with HR, no vetting by a recruitment company. My job was "News Reporter Head Office". Journalism was a public service back then. The black and white national TV news, networked around New Zealand, was just a year old. And in 1970. I was taking off with it.