About Coastwatch founder Ken Brown
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I'm a born and bred Queenslander who has lived a colourful life that has always in some way been influenced by the sea. My parents were into boating, fishing and the beach and I was always doing something associated with the water. Dad owned a little 22ft sharpie with a small cabin and Chapman Pup engine. We roamed all over the southern bay in that little boat. Boating was simple then and a far cry from the luxury of family boating today. When I was still at school I was mad on sailing and crewed in Sabots and Thorpes and could usually be found every Saturday morning hanging around the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron, which in those days was at Bulimba on the Brisbane River, hoping for a crewing position on a boat for the afternoon race.
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In the early 60's, I discovered surfing and for the next fifteen years or so I surfed every chance I got. To finance my passion, I did dozens of different jobs, from making surfboards, managing surf shops, working in oil refineries, waiting tables and deck handing on the boats at Hayman Island and other charter fishing boats. In 1969 I travelled to South Africa and for a few years, I enjoyed surfing places like Jeffries and Elands Bays and other remote surf breaks on the South African Coast. For money, I worked on shutdowns in the oil refineries near Durban and on a tug and a mooring line boat in Durban Harbour. On my way home I spent time in Mauritius surfing the then relatively unknown Tamarin Bay with 6 other surfers. Those days are extremely pleasant memories.
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In 1974 I scored the job as deckhand on "Odyssey" a new 70ft boat owned by Keith Williams. We were chartered for 9 months by The Royal Society of England and Cambridge, Stanford, Queensland and Australian National Universities to undertake scientific research between Cairns and Pippon Island. Part of the job was mapping the ancient river systems that ran out through the Ribbon Reefs and we were towing side scan sonar and special sounders that could ping deep into the bottom and show geological features. It was before the days of GPS and we used radio navigation hi-fix grids and had to hand steer very accurate courses. It was a demanding yet exciting job and I learnt a lot from my skipper Bruce King.
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In the mid to late 70's I was in Sydney selling advertising for Surfing World Magazine and doing beach and surf reports on 2UW. In 1977 I was asked by Wayne "Rabbit" Bartholomew to see if I could organise a sponsorship for him, as it was early days in Pro Surfing and the guys competing were paying their own way. I had known "Rab" since he was a kid and liked his brash approach and powerful surfing. Through a bit of hard work, a few good connections and a lot of good luck, I was able to negotiate a sponsorship for him with Smirnoff Vodka. This was first major Australian corporate sponsorship of a professional surfer from a company outside of surfing. He was to be paid $20,000 for the year plus free airline tickets around the world and the use of a vehicle at all destinations. This was considered huge in those days and "Bugs" was interviewed by George Negus on Sixty Minutes about the deal, creating massive exposure for himself and Pro Surfing, which was in its infancy.
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"Rabbit" was to be Smirnoff Vodka's "Man in White", which was their marketing strategy at the time. They decked him out in a white linen suit, white panama hat and tan and white wing tip shoes. Anyone who knows him, particularly those who knew him around that time, would understand that he would rather eat his own liver than wear clobber like that. Within 6 weeks the suit and the wing tip shoes were trashed or lost and replaced with a white t-shirt and a pair of sneakers. The only part of the "Man in White" get up left was the white panama hat and it was decidedly battered. So as Rabbit competed on the 1978 World Pro Surfing Circuit, he looked more like the "Bum in White". Forget the look, he charged that year and turned the previous years narrow loss to Shaun Thomson into a decisive victory in the World Professional Surfing Championship. Amazing stuff from the kid who had surfed Kirra and Greenmount Points and Snapper with PT and Michael and Tommy Petersen and the hot grom crew from the southern end of the Goldie ... and dared to dream.
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The previous year "Rabbit" and I convinced 10 Eyewitness News in Sydney to cover the World Professional Surfing Circuit. It was the first time that pro surfing had been regularly covered as a sport on Australian television news. I was already working for Surfing World Magazine and doing surf reports for radio 2UW and The Sun newspaper and it was this start covering the pro circuit with Eyewitness News that led me into television. I started doing Friday night surf reports on the news and soon joined Gordon Elliott, Sue Kellaway, Tim Webster, Buzz Kennedy and Di Morrissey as the weather presenter on the first national breakfast television show in Australia, "Good Morning Australia". Suddenly it wasn't a game anymore. I was in the deep end and had to learn to swim fast. GMA was the place to do that, live national television where any mistake you made was seen by the whole country. It terrified me at the time, but it was great training for what was to come.
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It was around that time that I scored a few acting roles in films. The highlight being playing "Ben Leggat", "Ringer Harman's" mate in the mini series A Town Like Alice. Bryan Brown was playing Ringer Harman and being a mate of Bryan's before I got the part made the experience a lot easier. I was in episode 1, which won the first Emmy won by and Australian drama, something that I didn't have a lot to do with, but am nonetheless very proud to have been a part of. I had a few other minor parts in films and television dramas and the acting work started to pick up due to the success of A Town Like Alice. Eventually I was faced with the decision of either quitting my jobs on GMA, Eyewitness News, 2UW and The Sun newspaper, of which the combined incomes far exceeded what I could possibly earn as an actor, or to pursue an acting career. To be honest, I thought I was pretty ordinary at acting and couldn't see much future in that direction, so I opted to stay with the bucks.
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In the early 80's, I'd had enough of living in Sydney and returned to Qld. to do weekend weather for Channel 9, boating, beach and surf reports on 4BH and a weekend weather, boating, surfing and fishing page for the Sunday Sun newspaper. I started going marlin fishing off Brisbane, saw the potential, used all the sea time I'd built up working on boats in the past, obtained my Marine Masters Ticket and bought a game fishing charter boat. I had just moved from Channel 9 to Channel 10 and was doing weekend coastal oriented weather reports in their news, so the boat was called "Eyewitness News". My week was made up of catching marlin most days and then a mad dash up to Mt. Cootha on weekends to do the weather. To be honest, I just made it a few times and I recall a few very funny moments of doing the weather in my suit coat and tie, but out of shot wearing the boardies I'd fished in all day
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I had been taken out to the Continental Shelf off Moreton Island in 1985 by long time marlin skipper, Bill Edwards. Bill showed me that there was big billfish to be caught out there. For the next two years I had the time of my life. It was great fishing wide of the coast. Most days there were just a couple of boats out there and we caught an amazing amount of blue marlin, usually in the 250 - 400lb range, but there was the odd really big one to keep us on our toes. During my whole time marlin fishing, I was lucky enough to have as my crewman, Brad "Tappet" Bobbermein. We were a great team and remain good friends. Brad has been a marlin skipper for many years and runs one of Australia's best game fishing boats. He certainly made me look good when we fished as a team and I am very proud of what he has achieved.
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| My little 32ft Cresta, now called 7 News, as I had moved to Channel 7, was too small to successfully fish the often very rough seas 20 or 30 miles east of Moreton and North Stradbroke Islands, so in late 1987, I teamed up with the late Barry Paul from the Kern Corporation and together we had a new 40ft cold moulded wooden game fishing boat built. She was called "Spirit of Brisbane" and was a "state of the art" fishing machine designed to further investigate the blue marlin fishery on the continental shelf off Brisbane and for a few years, Brad and I continued our continental shelf blue marlin adventures. I will never forget those days, big fish, sometimes big seas, but always an exciting challenge and always lots of fun. |
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Although I had done well in the TV business, I never really liked it and in late 1988, decided that I would leave the industry for good and concentrate on marlin fishing. That plan was thwarted by the man who ended up being my greatest career mentor, Seven News Director, Larry Somerton. He convinced me that I could do live reports on coastal conditions from on board "Spirit Of Brisbane" when I was returning from my day out charter fishing. This was the birth of Coastwatch and from there it took off. I joined 4KQ, The Courier and Sunday Mail and started Coastwatch Publications which produced the street directory of the waterways, "Brownies Beacon to Beacon Directory" and two Sally Jenyns' seafood cookbooks, "Fishing and Feasting" and the "Coastwatch Cookbook". In late 1989, the stock market crash of 1987 started to bite. As charters started to drop off, Coastwatch was developing. "Spirit of Brisbane" was sold in 1992 and my charter fishing days were over for a while.
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In 1994 Coastwatch was going so well that I managed to convince the management at 7 to allow me to start the half hour Coastwatch Show. For five and a half years myself and a team of cameramen and women and producers made a weekly half hour coastal information and entertainment program. The Coastwatch Show was coastal people who were good at what they did and plenty of good info with no hype. We made almost 300 episodes most of which won the time slot very well, which told us that our simple straight forward approach to helping people better understand and therefore better enjoy our great Qld coast, was what the audience wanted. Despite our long term success, in July 1999 the Coastwatch Show was axed due to budget cuts. I am proud of what we made and still get comments about particular stories we did.
From 1999 until September 2005, I did my Coastwatch reports on Seven News, on 4KQ, in The Sunday Mail and of course here on the website until health problems forced me to back off my workload and I departed Channel 7. In the 17 years I was there, I did almost 2,700 Coastwatch live cross reports in the news and 300 Coastwatch shows.
7 were really good to me over those years and gave me the opportunity to produce my own style of coastal television. When I advised them that I needed to back off work, they were very understanding and supportive and 7 and I still enjoy an alliance that I value greatly.
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My health problems are now behind me and I am am back on the water running a marlin fishing boat, a beautiful 44ft custom built Assegai called Megumi.
Running Megumi and doing my 4KQ Coastwatch reports, the Sunday Mail Coastwatch page and running this website is more than enough work for myself and my wife, business partner and best friend Shelly.
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