People Australia

John Douglass, 1960

National Archives of Australia, SP1011/1, 1795

John Douglass, agriculturalist and broadcaster, was born on 27 April 1900 at Wickham, New South Wales, the son of Andrew George Douglass (1857–1834) and Mary Elizabeth Wrightson (1861–1941). John’s father was a locomotive driver and active member of the Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Enginemen, at one stage being head of the Newcastle branch. He was also an avid reader and writer who frequently contributed editorials on local civic issues to the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miner’s Advocate. Many of the Douglass family members who did not work with the Australian railways were educators. Of John’s siblings, two worked as teachers and one with the railways. His uncle, also named John Douglass, a teacher, was married to Francis Harriet Simonson, who had a distant ancestral connection to the famous United States steamship and railway magnate, Cornelius Vanderbilt. His maternal cousin was Australian artist and Archibald prize winner, Sir William Dobell.

Douglass’s family were proud Scots. However their direct ancestors have thus far been traced only to the first half of the 1800s to Berwick-Upon-Tweed, an Anglo-Scottish border town in the English county of Northumberland. His great-great-grandparents, George Douglass (1787–1841), a tailor, and Elizabeth Thompson (1796–1841) died of cholera in Berwick-Upon-Tweed in 1841, leaving at least three orphaned teenagers: Andrew (1823–1892), Margaret (1827–1879), and Elizabeth (1826–1878). All eventually made their way to Australia, leaving hard times and embodying their proud Scottish Douglass values of independence, determination, frugality, humour, and an appreciation for the importance of education.

After completing high school in Newcastle, John Douglass went to Hawkesbury Agricultural College, from which he graduated in 1920 with degrees in agriculture and dairy science. Following this he spent at least two years working on sheep and cattle properties and general farms throughout the state, before joining the NSW Department of Agriculture as an extension officer. He was also an avid sportsman: he played Rugby Union and squash and was a good swimmer.

Prior to his appointment as the first director of rural broadcasts with the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Douglass held various agricultural government appointments including special agricultural instructor with the NSW Department of Agriculture, director of agricultural production with the Department of Supply and Development, and chief executive officer of vegetable production with the Australian Directorate of Agriculture. 

Douglass travelled extensively around the world meeting with farmers and agricultural experts, learning and reporting on new methods of agricultural production, and comparing growing conditions with those in Australia. Articles detailing his findings were published in many Australian newspapers and magazines throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Topics of particular interest to him were the importance of seed selection and soil quality to production, as well as disease and pest resistance. During his travels he investigated irrigation techniques, advances in farm machinery, developments in canning and dehydration equipment, and the use of the hot house for fruit and vegetable production, as well as marketing and distribution methods. 

In 1944 the minister for agriculture and commerce, William Scully, instructed Douglass to investigate agricultural broadcasting in the USA, Canada, and England. In the USA in particular, he learnt about the importance of rural broadcasting in getting agricultural advice and developments to farmers throughout the country, including information about the markets and the weather. The next year he was appointed director of rural broadcasts with the ABC and launched the program ‘The County Hour’ on 3 December. The broadcasts aimed to aid the increase of agricultural production, help city people understand the difficulties encountered by farmers, and help farmers understand the difficulties city people encountered obtaining high quality farm products. To ensure relatability, ‘The Country Hour’ was transmitted nationally and regionally, and broadcasters with voices that sounded authentically Australian were recruited. Reports were made not just from the studio but also from the field, where interviews were conducted with farmers while on the job. The hour-long show aired at lunch time, after the news, and was followed by a radio serial, first ‘The Lawsons’ and later ‘Blue Hills’, which also conveyed rural information and themes and on which Douglass was a consultant.

During Douglass’s tenure the ABC made their broadcasting facilities and staff available to train Asian agricultural experts in the benefits and strategies of rural broadcasting as a means of increasing food production in countries experiencing high population growth and food shortages. In countries with high rates of illiteracy, radio as opposed to technical publications and newspaper articles provided a more beneficial means of transmitting agricultural information and technological developments. 

In 1962 Douglass left his position at the ABC to work for the Food and Agriculture Organization as a consultant in farm broadcasting. He left at a time when the use of television alongside radio as a means of disseminating agricultural information was coming to the fore. He believed that the vigorous outback types would be natural television stars and that the Australian sunshine and open spaces would be the perfect setting for the camera.

 Said to be an energetic bull of a man with a passion for agriculture, Douglass’s dynamic larger than life personality and thirst for education and international travel made him the ideal visionary father of rural broadcasting for the ABC. He died on 4 July 1991 at his retirement home on the Gold Coast, aged ninety-one, and was survived by a son, George Line Douglass, a dentist and World War Two pilot, as well as several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His wife, Manuela Gatt, predeceased him. Douglass is remembered by a plaque on his parents grave in the Sandgate Cemetery in Newcastle, NSW.