Reporting 47 years, shuts typewriter

Press, 26 February 1977, Page 4

Reporting 47 years, shuts typewriter

Forty-seven years in a! varied journalistic career! came to an end yesterday with the retirement from the staff of “The Presss” of Mr Ray Dobbie, a senior reporter who has covered the local body round since he joined the newspaper in 1965. Mr Dobbie began his career as a copyholder on the “Lyttelton Times” in February, 1930, but within a month was “on the road” as a reporter and — a point he regards with special satisfaction — has been “on the road” ever since. ! During that time he has been on the staff of three Christchurch newspapers — the “Lyttelton Times”, the “Christchurch Star”, and “The Press” — and has been the proprietor, editor, copyboy and sole report.: of the “Akaroa Mail.”

According to Mr Dobbie he was given no choice about the career he was to follow; at the end of one school year his father, also a journalist on “The Press”, told him his education was over and that he was going to work for either "The Press” or the “Lyttelton Times.” He preferred not to work with his father and was in the reading room of the “Lyttelton Times” the next Sunday night. But he never regretted his father’s choice of a career for him. “I’d do it all again gladly with only a few changes,” he said. In those early days his assignments were varied and he worked for two newspapers: morning assignments appeared in the “Christchurch Star”, afternoon and evening stories in the “Lyttelton Times.” This situation continued until 1935 when Christchurch’s four dailies were merged into two, “The Press” buying out the “Lyttelton Times” and the “Christchurch Star” buying out the “Sun”. Mr Dobbie continued to work for the “Christchurch Star-Sun” (as the paper became) and was the senior reporter on its staff when he left in 1953 to buy and run the “Akaroa Mail.” It was during this period

I with the “Christchurch Star-: i Sun” that Mr Dobbie became very much a reporter of local government affairs. During the whole of Sir Ernest Andrew's term as Mayor of Christchurch Mr Dobbie covered the City Council round and the other local bodies, both territorial and ad hoc. He also covered the Gov-

ernment departments, particularly the Ministry of Works while Bob Semple was its head. His relationship with the Minister of the Crown was particularly close, and Mr Dobbie was often invited personally on tours of inspection with the Minister. Of particular interest to Mr Dobbie during this period was the early development of hydro-electric power on the Clutha River and the development of coal mines on the West Coast — a tract of New Zealand for which he still holds a special regard. With obvious relish Mr Dobbie recalls the incident at Hawea when, on a trip [with the Minister and his party, a telephone call was put through late one evening to the Minister’s room. It was from the “Otago Daily Times” wanting to speak to Mr Semple about the results of the present tour of inspection, and it interrupted a pleasant session of relaxation and libation. On being told of the call, the Minister turned to his

companion and said: "You :know as much about it all as I do, Ray; you tell them.” So Ray Dobbie became a Ministerial stand-in and took great pleasure in reading the “Minister’s quotes” the next day. His 12 years as proprietor of the "Akaroa Mail” were among the most pleasurable he had — “if in many other respects a waste of time” — and Mr Dobbie’s connections with Akaroa continue.

“It’s vastly different being the editor of a small town’s only newspaper, and working for a large daily. I often gave them a stir up through the columns, but 1 don’t think I made many enemies. At least I can still go back there,” he says, somewhat wryly. London-born, Mr Dobbie arrived in New Zealand on his third birthday; but he was soon in the Pacific Islands, where his father worked for a newspaper in Tonga, and owned one in Samoa. By 1924 the family was in Christchurch and, apart from the sojourn in Akaroa, it was Christchurch where Mr Dobbie made his home from then on.

His years of specialised knowledge in local body affairs, including several local government commissions over the last 30 years, have stood him in good stead when dealing with the sources of news on his rounds, both the elected councillors and the paid officers. But not all of his work has been confined to local bodies and he regards the best of his published stories to be the series covering the Graham manhunt on the West Coast in 1941. It will be for his local body reporting, however, that Mr Dobbie will be longest remembered. Counties, boroughs, regional planning authorities past and present, the Catchment Board, and the National Roads Board, all have come within his scope and the tributes recorded in the minutes of local body meetings he has attended over the last six weeks witness the respect he has earned during his long career.