Peter Gee to sign off ABC News Tasmania

Another news presenter is about to sign off, this time ABC News Tasmania’s Peter Gee after 38 years with the broadcaster.

Gee joined ABC in 1980 after training at Clarke Sinclair’s radio school in Melbourne. He auditioned as a sporting assistant for ABC Tasmania at Ripponlea.

“I was naturally incredibly nervous facing a TV camera for the first time in the very studio where Molly Meldrum hosted Countdown every Sunday night,” he recalled.

“Despite swivelling on my chair for the entire interview Dick (Mason, ABC Victoria Head of Sport) must have seen something in me and recommended me to the Tasmanian head of sport Don Closs.”

He went on to cover numerous events including everything from Tamworth sheepdog trials to Commonwealth Games, FIFA World Cup and Olympics. He spent 18 years in the Sports Department in Hobart then Melbourne and has been reading ABC News Tasmania since 1998.

“Hobart was where I’d begun my ABC career, so it was there I returned to take over the news desk.

“The Beaconsfield mine rescue is the biggest news story I’ve been involved in covering during my 20 years presenting the 7PM TV bulletin but it’s an international story involving a child soldier that has had the most impact on me as a reader.

“This young lad who was deaf and mute had escaped from the Central African army he’d been dragooned into only to be recaptured at the orphanage he’d grown up in where he’d gone seeking sanctuary.

“I’ll never forget the look of sheer terror in this poor boy’s eyes as he was tied to the back of a truck to be driven back to who knows what fate.”

“And when it comes to reading the autocue, I find a good way to actually make eye contact with the viewer is to try and look beyond the script scrolling in front of my eyes and into the lens of the camera,” he observes.

“After 38 years I’m about to become an ex-ABC employee.

“I’ve never wanted to be defined by my work but as the years rolled by I came to realise that the ABC and I had a symbiotic relationship — the ABC suited me, I suited the ABC.”

His final bulletin is Friday August 3rd.

You can read more at ABC online.