‘Full circle: country journo to country journo’
By Megan Dawes Jones and Mike Rosel
IAN ALLAN DAWES May 24, 1930-June 1, 2024
Ian Dawes, from a family that has produced four generations of journalists, has died at Maldon in central Victoria, at 94.
Son of Allan Dawes, a war correspondent in WWII, the shrewd, gentle Dawes learnt his craft in a startling range of publications – Mountain District Free Press (Dandenong Ranges); Labor Call (where he met his wife, Irene Lovegrove;) Radio Australia in Melbourne and Canberra, The Geelong Advertiser, The Argus Melbourne, The Herald Melbourne, and the Daily Telegraph Sydney.
That hard-won experience prepared him to tell Australia’s story abroad when in 1959 he joined the Australian News and Information Bureau, later the Australian Information Service (AIS).
For 29 years he served as a public affairs officer in Australian embassies or high commissions in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Stockholm, London and Washington. Respected as a calm professional, he also served as AIS editor, and manager of the Sydney office.
If quizzed by outsiders, Ian would explain that while the diplomats and others did the secret stuff, the AIS journalists did the front of house in enormously varied and often challenging tasks that included briefing local media and encouraging them to see Australia first-hand; supporting tourism, migration and investment as appropriate; tackling cultural promotions and speaking programs. Always combatting the stereotypes of surf, sunshine, sports, beer and lethal wildlife.
In 1955, Ian married Irene, daughter of formidable politician Denis (“Dinny”) Lovegrove, a former federal president of the Australian Labor Party. It was some time before politician and journo appreciated each other.
Irene died of cancer at only 43 in 1975, leaving Ian to raise daughter Sally during his London posting while Megan remained in Melbourne doing her Age newspaper cadetship.
In London, he married Fran Shelby, who worked for News Ltd. After his retirement in 1988, they spent 10 years embracing an idyllic village life in Pershore-Birlingham, in Worcestershire, where Ian launched the Birlingham Bystander local paper and contributed to local publications.
Ian and Fran Dawes editing the Tarrangower Times, Maldon, in 2006.
They moved to Australia and found an equally peaceful rural life in Maldon, near Castlemaine. Few friends were surprised when Ian concluded some 60 years in journalism by editing the local Tarrangower Times in tandem with Fran.
Ian moved into care in 2019; Fran died in 2020.
The journalistic line continued with daughter Megan Jones, a former journalist with The Age, Murdoch’s The Sun in London and in the London bureau of The Australian Women’s Weekly; Megan and Simon Jones’ youngest son, Jeremy Jones at the ABC, Jack Fisher, eldest son of Megan’s late sister, Sally (Fisher) at the ABC, and nephew Michael Dawes at The Sun and the ABC.
At the funeral service at Castlemaine, family and friends spoke affectionately of this warm, generous man. With his impish grin and expressive eyebrows, he delighted in puncturing the pompous. He was equally deft with wood carving tools, producing dolphins, Australian flora and fauna and more for friends and relatives.
Speaking at the funeral service, Ian’s colleague at Australia House for three Thatcher years, Mike Rosel, expressed regret that Ian did not leave a biography, only witty snippets from the colourful early newspaper days of his wide-ranging career: “Some of his most telling stories remain in Top Secret files.
“You had journalistic Dawes members witness to hot wars, cold wars, public service wars (which killed the Australian Information Service) and now lethal internet wars strangling print media.
“All that experience, and he was always happy to share it with the next generation.”
Another AIS colleague of half a century, Adrienne Jones, praised Ian’s “gentle worldliness, a synthesising boss in Sydney office who managed people, personalities and Canberra deadlines seamlessly, and somehow knew precisely the best reporter-photographer combination for just which story or occasion”.
“He helped many of us transition from daily journalism to the world beyond.
“He knew the East and the West of the world: he knew, for instance, what southern hemisphere tales would beguile which editors in which country – indigenous history for Indonesians who empathised with colonial oppression, social reform and tales of the ocean for the seafaring, individualistic, adventurous Swedes.
“I recall many a genteel tea break at Ian’s favourite retreat, an elegant little Japanese tearoom in Pitt Street just around the corner from our more habitual pub lunchtime boltholes. Ian was a long-time teetotaller, a novel condition in the social climes of the times, but he hospitably socialised with the rest of us wherever we congregated, inconspicuously eschewing the refreshments of common choice, while equally inconspicuously facilitating the oral memoirs, aka pub talk.“
Adrienne told of the day in Jakarta when Ian’s lawn went walkabout and was spotted, cut into squares, in the neighbourhood market.
Typical Dawesian diplomacy, she recalled, no questions asked: “Ian called Untung, his night watchman, and told him “just bring it back!” Next morning he walked out the front door, and there it was, mostly reassembled.
“Full circle,” Mike Rosel concluded. “Country journo to country journo, with the world and a wonderful family between, and infinite respect earnt.
”Farewell, our friend. We relics from the hot metal days of print media always concluded our copy by typing … ends.”