I KNEW Brian Halesworth well. He was a shy, tall, balding, conservative, anti-cigarette smoking, 30-something who was my first boss in the ABC, out there at the Five Mile.

We all smoked cigarettes in 1967. All except Brian, that is, who (quietly) would remonstrate with us (rightly, we now know) and say he would never marry a cigarette smoker. Which meant, back then, that you would never marry. And he didn’t. Even the girlfriends were thin on the ground.

Brian was the ABC’s Supervisor of Education in PNG. He’d been at teachers’ college (in Wagga Wagga, I think) where, in 1955, he met and married a fellow student, the beautiful Tanya Halesworth [right].

Soon after, in television’s infancy, Tanya became an ABC newsreader. Back then she was everyone’s darling. Too many people’s darling, as Brian discovered. They divorced in 1959. Brian never got over it.

Furthermore, long after the divorce, he resented that Tanya would not relinquish his surname for her own maiden name – Kemp. Brian felt this was insulting.

"Marriage is an untenable state," Tanya said later. Adding that it was "entirely against man's instincts to be tied down to one woman". And vice versa one could add.

In any event, she later married Australian TV personality John Bailey and, despite a rocky time of it, remained with him until he died in 1998. Tanya herself died of cancer two years ago, aged 73.

Back to the story. Understudying Brian in ABC Education in Port Moresby, when I arrived there in 1967, was the late Lester Goodman [ABC designation - Education Officer Grade 2], a powerhouse in bringing the force of radio to education in PNG. And later to many other countries, including Indonesia and India, until he ended up as a senior officer with Unesco in Paris in a futile battle with the UN bureaucracy.

With me occupying the diminutive position of Education Officer Grade 1, the three of us produced hundreds of radio programs: instructing in English, current affairs, social studies, music, health and probably others I’ve forgotten. Like Teachers' Teatime.

As the total complement of ABC Education in the late sixties, Brian, Lester and I were close colleagues and close companions. At and after work.

And, not counting the newsroom, where David Prior and Albert Asbury held court, we were the second most boisterous and noisy production unit at Broadcast House.

Brian was the first person I knew who had a hair transplant. The frail fronds grew as small shoots from the pink plugs bored into his scalp. I had never observed anything like it. At 22, and with hair like a Mekeo, I did not fully comprehend it.

In those days we did everything to do with making a broadcast. Planned, researched, wrote, trained actors, produced, acted, did sound effects, edited, published books [above] and publicised.

Then we went into the sticks proselytising to teachers the techniques of using those broadcasts in the classroom. Not that we had to do much instructing. Radio, back then, was adopted enthusiastically as a vital part of the educational mix.

Brian Halesworth returned to Australia in the late sixties and spent many years in the independent school system. He had a kidney transplant about nine years ago, and a period of excellent health followed.

A few months ago, however, in Queensland, he caught pneumonia and died. He was 80.

Vale Brian Halesworth - an unsung pioneer of PNG educational broadcasting.

Additional credit: John Leah, another pioneer