AUSTRALIA-OBITS-L Archives

From: "Peter_McCrae" <>
Subject: DARNODY: John William Francis Patrick Darnody--2006
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 14:09:49 +0100

Jack Darmody Journalist 1937-2006

JACK DARMODY, who has died from cancer in St Vincent's Hospital's Sacred
Heart Hospice, was a fearless old-school newspaperman who built his own
legend as a police rounds and investigative reporter in Melbourne and
Sydney.

Darmody made his name with The Age and Newsday in Melbourne before moving to
Sydney, where he enhanced his reputation on The Daily Mirror.

He broke some of the biggest crime stories of the day, but perhaps his two
biggest scoops were on an international level: during the Vietnam War he was
the first reporter into the village of My Lai following the infamous
massacre of civilians by US soldiers in March 1968; and he broke the story
that the British Great Train robber Ronald Biggs was living in Melbourne
after he had escaped from London's Wandsworth Prison in 1965. Biggs, who was
working as a carpenter, slipped away just before Victorian police pounced,
and made his way to Brazil.

Darmody also helped to free a Vietnam War national service objector, John
Zarb, who served 10 months of a two-year jail term before being released
from Pentridge Prison in August 1969.

John William Francis Patrick Darmody was born in Colac in the Western
District of Victoria. He left school at 15 and became a butter grader for
Western Star. He delighted in demonstrating his old trade: he would flick
his forefinger on a half-pound pat of butter and in an instant complete six
rapid licks to taste it.

The larger-than-life Darmody came to share a flat with two journalists in
East Hawthorn: Robert Fairfax-Cousens of the ABC, and an Age reporter. He
reckoned our lives beat butter, so, after getting a story published in
Sports Novels, a national monthly, he got his first staff job on the
Gippsland Times.

Chided later for being hard on young reporters, Darmody boomed: "That's how
Martin Ryan trained me!" Yet for all his gruffness, Darmody was admired by
younger colleagues whom he mentored.

Then came a stint on The Border Mail in Albury, and a trip to London and a
job on the Hampstead and Highgate Express, followed by a fortnight on an
English-language paper in Athens, before he headed home.

One of the hell-raiser's more memorable escapades during his stay in
Hampstead involved a leap to a first-floor window ledge to visit a lady; he
lost his grip and sailed through the lower window, feet first. With his
behind gashed, Darmody left a trail of blood as he jogged home to his attic.

The bush boy with a bullock build, jutting jaw and bristling hair - some
female admirers believed he bore a resemblance to the actor John Wayne - was
not your usual broadsheet dandy. Hired by the Age editor Graham Perkin,
Darmody soon took police rounds reporting to new heights. He even got his
own daily column, Darmody.

The new afternoon paper Newsday carried his great reads, unfortunately to
too few readers, before it folded.

Darmody's personal life was also in trouble. When an advertisement placed by
his former wife in his own newspaper asked, "Does anybody know the
whereabouts of Jack Darmody?", he threatened to sue his employers. That
storm passed but Darmody moved on to join The Truth newspaper. A colleague,
Frank Quill, said: "Jack was the most thorough newsman, a kind now vanished.
He would spend a day with police contacts, a day with crim contacts. He
really investigated."

Darmody next moved to Sydney to work for The Daily Mirror, where he again
built a reputation as a news breaker. News Ltd advertisements on
double-decker buses proclaimed: "READ DARMODY!"

Mark Morri of The Daily Telegraph reminisced: "I was Jack's copy boy. He'd
send me for two packs of Camel Plains and a Coke." Nine years later Morri
was Darmody's boss but, he says: "I still fetched Jack his two Camel Plain
and a Coke." The cigarettes, and the beer, gave Darmody's constitution a
40-year hammering.

In his youth Darmody was Olympic Games material - Jack Fitzgerald, an
Olympic cyclist, was his uncle - in two sports. In the Victorian country
cycling championships, Darmody won the road and track junior and senior
titles in the same week. But he preferred the rough excitement of the boxing
ring. His most famous victory was in the Silver Belt tournament at Moreland.

Darmody defeated the 1956 Olympic Games bronze medallist Kevin Hogarth, by
TKO, then declined to take the Silver Belt for best boxer. He insisted it go
to Kevin's brother Des.

Years later, Darmody was still the champion lamppost foot racer outside The
Age in Lonsdale Street after night shift. He would give young reporters a
lamppost's start, then whoosh! With a sound like an approaching express
train, he would hurtle past them.

In the newsroom, Darmody was a man of few words when a yarn had to be bashed
out on his battered typewriter. Sometimes, however, he would shatter the
calm. On one memorable occasion Perkin stood reading over his shoulder.
"That's not it," the great editor said. Darmody jumped up, picked up the big
Remington, tossed it at Perkin, and snapped: "You write it." The unflappable
Perkin caught the flying typewriter.

In more recent years, Darmody worked as an information officer for the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

He was disabled by a fall in his Pyrmont unit but still managed to lift the
spirits of patients, especially children, as he did the rounds of hospital
wards in a wheelchair telling tales, often true.

Darmody used to be a devotee of St Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower.
He was cremated in Sydney.

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