My husband Andrew, who began this blog in October 2007, died peacefully on September 3rd 2012, at the age of 83, after long and well-controlled illness culminating in a sudden, brief decline. I'll be posting pieces of his life writing and autobiographical reminiscences to his other blog, The Game of Life. This blog will be used for other material relevant to Andrew, beginning with the wonderful tributes to him which poured in after his death, both by email and on facebook. At some point this blog will become an archive, without further additions.— Rosemary Nissen-Wade


Andrew's Milestones

This list was prepared for Andrew's 80th birthday party.

1951. Dad died.

1952. Sailed to London, got a job distributing films for J. Arthur Rank.

1953. Coronation of Elizabeth II. Toured Europe, returned to Australia and Education Dept job as film librarian.

1955. Married Diana Davenport.

1956. Appointed as film librarian, ABC Television.

1960. Transferred to film editing.

1963. Joined Crawford productions as film editor on Homicide. Duncan born. Began as part-time journalist with Ringwood Times.

1964. Mum died. Cecilia born.

1967. Adam born.

1968. Appointed editor second series Riptide in Sydney.

1969. Returned to Melbourne. Founded Lumiere Magazine for film, TV and photographic industries, initially backed by the Arts Council.

1972. Lumiere bought by Richard Walsh. Joined Plastics Institute as editor of Plastics News.

1974. Fired. Founded Kiplings Business Communications, publishing newsletters.

Began contributing to Business Week, broke a story about corruption on the waterfront. Journalist who published it, who had silent number, was rung at 2am and threatened. Melbourne Herald was told by the union their paper supplies would be cut, but followed through with a number of stories.

1980-81. Took leave of Kiplings to become a director of Andromeda productions to produce films for television.

1986. Co-founder with Jo Rawson of Discovery, seven-day residential accelerated learning program for teenagers, which spread to NSW, SA and Qld.

1989-92. Melbourne editor of Greenweek, national newsletter on environmental issues.

1993. Joined Horizon Fund as Public Affairs Executive and Coordinator of Watchdog. Gave evidence at Senate Inquiry into investigatory powers of Australian Securities Commission.

1992. Began Reiki training.

1993. Married Rosemary Nissen.

1994. Moved to NSW, to the Mt Warning Caldera. Began a BA majoring in writing, still incomplete.

2006. Published Jorell … for those who believe in fairies and those who don’t.

2008. Joined local film company Screenworks, with the aim of writing a screenplay of Jorell.

2009. Enrolled in screenwriting course to start in March. One of only 12 students accepted. Turned 80 on 4th February.

Notes:

Andrew omitted from this list a publication which succeeded Lumiere, called Script, Screen and Art.   

The reason he didn't complete his degree was that the three remaining subjects were compulsory academic subjects not directly related to writing. He decided that he had learned what he wanted and the piece of paper wasn't important to him.

He didn't finish his screenwriting course either, due to age and increasingly poor health.

There are plans to republish his children's books as e-books.

'Discovery' is now presented in New Zealand.

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