Obituary: Carmel Friedlander

Carmel Friedlander, journalist and broadcaster, has died in Auckland aged 72.

She is perhaps best remembered for her radio and television coverage of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the 1979 Erebus disaster.

Friedlander flew to Antarctica as part of her assignment, and became a regular and recognisable part of radio news bulletins.

She began her career with the then New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation as a scriptwriter and announcer.

In 1960 she joined the Auckland Star as a general and court reporter, before moving to Australia and then Europe.

During a spell in London she wrote for several publishers, including Time-Life Books' Good Cook series.

In the early 1980s, Friedlander and her partner Bart Stokes moved back to Auckland, where she and Elizabeth Burgess published New Zealand's first glossy food magazine, New Zealand Kitchen, which ran for eight years.