Early Life and Education
After emigrating from Wales as an 11-year-old with his mother Lillian in 1953, David Johnston settled in Victoria's western districts and later started his secondary education at Terang High School. But his mother soon moved them to Olinda to start a children's holiday home and when that venture failed financially, David had to leave school aged 15 to earn some money. He did various jobs, including working in a nursery and in the middle of it all David realised he wanted to be on radio. With his mother's help, David found the Bill Roberts Radio School in Melbourne known as "The Vincent School of Broadcasting" and made the journey, sometimes hitchhiking, from Olinda to Ferntree Gully to catch the train into the city.
The radio school regularly sent student tapes to radio stations around the country. David's was one voice on an audition tape sent to 2RG in Griffith, New South Wales and at 17 he secured his first professional radio gig. David spent three years at 2RG and it was in Griffith that he met his future wife, Eve, to whom he later had two daughters, Georgie (born 1971) and Romy (born 1973).
David enjoyed riding his small motor-scooter around the streets of Griffith and hanging out with fellow announcers John Knox, Graham Miles and Peter Churchley, all of whom went on to have long careers in radio in Brisbane, Melbourne and the Sunshine Coast.
Read more about this topic: David Johnston (newsreader)
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Whether talking about addiction, taxation [on cigarettes] or education [about smoking], there is always at the center of the conversation an essential conundrum: How come we’re selling this deadly stuff anyway?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)