Radio Programme For The Forces

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30884, 18 October 1965, Page 2

Radio Programme For The Forces

Conducting a daily short-wave radio programme for Australian forces in South-east Asia keeps Melbourne’s leading model, Maggy Wood, continually on the alert for snippets of.. homely gossip for the boys.

“I try to imagine I’m talking to a brother, telling him the chat from home and the neighbourhood, the kind of thing they would not get in their usual news sources,” Miss Wood said yesterday “That is what they want, the personal touch.” Many of the boys were only 19 and had not been away from home, before doing their service in the army, air force or navy.

“It is sad to think of them in South Vietnam not even understanding what they are really fighting for. Some of the messages I tell them from parents, wives or girl-friends are often quite heart-rend-ing,” she said. As well as messages from home, she plays request records —from the Beatles to Joan Sutherland. Classical music is surprisingly popular with the forces. The servicemen write to her.

“But I don’t think of myself as their pin-up girl. For one thing, they don’t have pictures of me,” she said.

She has made two calls to New Zealanders in Vietnam from Australians who know them, and will send messages to more Kiwis when she returns to Melbourne next week.

Life has become hectic since she took up full-time modelling after winning the “fashion on the field” contest at the 1962 Melbourne Cup meeting. “I love this work, but I’ve had some anxious moments as well as a lot of fun,” she said. "Though I had only been on a horse twice before, I once had to ride up Melbourne’s busiest street to promote stretch jeans. "The traffic was very heavy and the horse wanted to trot all the time. I had very little control of the situation. “Just after I dismounted a fire engine roared by and the horse went mad. I was very glad the siren hadn’t come along a few seconds earlier.” Maggy Wood has no need of a business manager. “My mother does all that for me. She is my accountant, secretary, dressmaker —the lot. She’s wonderful. When I dash home for a quick change she has all my clothes pressed ready for me. I can be out again in five minutes flat,” she said.

On Saturday evening Maggy Wood was entertained at a 5 o’clock party by the management of the D.1.C., the store she will be doing parades in this week.