The Godfather: Peter Corris on Evan Whitton
Evan Whitton, who died this week aged 90, was editor of the National Times when I worked at the paper in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The winner of five Walkley Awards for investigative journalism and the Graham Perkins Journalist of the Year Award for his coverage of the Street Royal Commission, there was no good reason for him to be solicitous towards me as a raw recruit, but he was.
Knowing that Evan was interested in sport, I tentatively proposed articles about some of my sporting heroes. One piece he rejected, another he helped me to knock into shape. I was encouraged and wrote quite a few articles on different subjects over those years. He gave me what he said was ‘new journalist’ Gay Talese’s advice: ‘Look, listen and write it up with the techniques of fiction’; and that’s what I did.
I discovered that, as well as having a shared interest in boxing, Evan and I were fans of American hard-boiled fiction. When I presented him with a copy of my first Cliff Hardy novel he gave me his characteristic saturnine smile and said, ‘I hope it’s not pastiche.’ Well it was, but he didn’t comment and he was complimentary about later books where I had found my own voice.
It amused Evan to make a point of Anne Summers’s and my academic qualifications; he always referred to us as Dr Summers and Dr Corris. Many years later I got back at him; Evan had become a senior academic in Journalism at the University of Queensland. I gave a talk there; Evan asked a question and I answered, addressing him with heavy emphasis as Professor Whitton.
Evan and his wife Noela returned from Brisbane to Glebe in Sydney where Jean and I also lived at various times. We bumped into them at book events and suchlike and we had some lunches and the occasional drink.
One area of sport where our paths diverged was football. Evan had played rugby at a high level whereas I was only interested in Australian football. He surprised me by telling me that he had trained with Richmond, a VFL team.
‘How so?’ I said.
He told me that the editor of the Melbourne Truth, where he had worked, Solly Chandler, had sent him to meet Richmond coach Tom Hafey, a noted disciplinarian, to train with the club for a session and get a different perspective on the game.
‘How did you go?’ I asked.
‘I did all right,’ he said, but he remained devoted to rugby. Along with other journalists like Vic Carroll, Max Suich and Murray Sayle, Evan admired Chandler. When I mentioned in a column that Truth was regarded as a scandal sheet, he took me to task, saying that Chandler had courage others lacked and that Truth was the only paper to print ‘what was going on’. Evan won several of his Walkleys when with Truth.
Once, while chatting, Evan mentioned that he had convict ancestry. When I asked for details of the transportee he simply said, ’Some cutpurse’ – a perfect unromanticised answer. The man had the words.
Jean and I attended Evan’s 80th birthday party where luminaries of Australian journalism thronged – Max Suich, David Marr, Brian Toohey, Anne Summers, Marion Wilkinson, Andrew Clark, Patrick Cook and others. Although we continued to exchange emails on various topics, I last saw Evan when I gave him a copy of the only true crime book I wrote – Mad Dog Moxley: William Cyril Moxley and the Moorebank killings (New South 2011), which I dedicated to him. I was then working with Philip Nitschke on his autobiography (Damned If I Do, MUP 2013). Evan and I agreed that euthanasia was a sane and sensible option, but declared, even though old and heart-damaged as we were, not yet.
This was at the Toxteth Hotel in Glebe, a Cliff Hardy haunt. We shared a few glasses of red and some crisps. It was a privilege to have known him.
