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CHARLES WOOLEY
Joined the team in 1993
You never know quite what to expect when Charles Wooley brings his quirkish style and incisive mind to a 60 Minutes story. Acknowledged as perhaps Australia's most gifted television writer, Charles brings subjects alive with a unique mix of wit, philosophy and strong journalistic and film-making skills.
As anyone who has ever met him will tell you, Charles is fiercely and proudly Tasmanian. He flies around the world for 60 Minutes, visiting the most exotic locations, staying in the most exciting cities, interviewing celebrities and newsmakers. But for him, real happiness, real contentment is standing on the bank of some isolated Tasmanian waterway, fly fishing rod inhand and having a beer afterwards with mates in a local pub.
The other side to Charles Wooley is the deep-thinking, poetry-reciting, honours graduate in history whose idea of a relaxing read is a book of verse by Yeats, a Coleridge or Burns. You can hear the poet in him in his delivery and the love of language in his scripts. His first book, Travelling Tales, was published in 1997.
Charles' start in journalism came when he joined the Hobart Examiner as a graduate cadet. But it was the spoken word that interested him so he left to work in radio, starting out with the ABC in Perth, where he worked as an on-air reporter for programs which included AMJ and PM.
Then it was television and the ground-breaking This Day Tonight program. The '70s found Charles in Britain, working with BBC Radio. Then it was back into television in Australia as a reporter with the ABC's Four Corners, based in Sydney.
As has happened so often in his career, Tasmania beckoned again and he returned to work on the program Nationwide. It was a case of a talent being not so much wasted as under utilised, and the ABC sent Charles back to London as Nationwide London and European correspondent.
It was in London that he worked with a young journalist named John Westacott, who was to have a profound influence on his career. When Westacott left the ABC to join Channel Nine in Sydney, he lobbied furiously to have Wooley hired for the Network's prestigious Sunday program and later, when Westacott became Executive Producer of 60 Minutes, he again fought to have Wooley as part of his reporting team.
It was not an easy battle. For Sunday, Charles had produced and reported some of his most memorable work. His story on the 1992 US presidential elections won a Penguin Award as the year's most outstanding current affairs story and was considered so good that the CBS Network repeated it and showed it across America.
But Wooley's yarn-spinning style of storytelling and his love of eccentrics and eccentric stories didn't readily fit the 60 Minutes style. Nor did Wooley himself, a man who shunned personal publicity and abhorred the notion of journalists as stars. But John Westacott first convinced Wooley, then the network bosses. And his perseverance has been rewarded. Charles Wooley has been a vital part of 60 Minutes' continuing success, and the man who habitually wears his Akubra hat and reluctantly a suit, has become one of the best-known and best-liked faces on Australian television.
Among his most memorable stories for 60 Minutes have been stories on voodoo in West Africa, returning to France with World War II heroine Nancy Wake, profiles of singer Melissa Etheridge, model Elle Macpherson and actors Garry McDonald and Mel Gibson. And, of course, those stories in which this reporter-cum-fishing fanatic has found time to take up his rod and reel.
Some are stories of legitimate interest -- for instance his report on the terrible dangers of rock fishing. Others have been more indulgent -- Charles catching 42-pound barramundi in the Northern Territory (he tells us fish have never gone metric). With others, though, there's been little excuse other than Charles' power of persuasion -- fishing with Garry McDonald, fishing with Nova Peris, fishing with American tourists. If there's a fishing angle, Charles will find a story to go with it. It is part of the irrepressible charm that has made his reporting so different, so watchable and so much a part of Australians' lives come Sunday night.
You never know quite what to expect when Charles Wooley brings his quirkish style and incisive mind to a 60 Minutes story.
The other side to Charles Wooley is the deep-thinking, poetry-reciting, honours graduate in history whose idea of a relaxing read is a book of verse by Yeats, a Coleridge or Burns. You can hear the poet in him in his delivery and the love of language in his scripts. His first book, Travelling Tales, was published in 1997.
It was in London that he worked with a young journalist named John Westacott, who was to have a profound influence on his career. When Westacott left the ABC to join Channel Nine in Sydney, he lobbied furiously to have Wooley hired for the Network's prestigious Sunday program and later, when Westacott became Executive Producer of 60 Minutes, he again fought to have Wooley as part of his reporting team.
Among his most memorable stories for 60 Minutes have been stories on voodoo in West Africa, returning to France with World War II heroine Nancy Wake, profiles of singer Melissa Etheridge, model Elle Macpherson and actors Garry McDonald and Mel Gibson. And, of course, those stories in which this reporter-cum-fishing fanatic has found time to take up his rod and reel.