Vale: Peter Yeldham

Veteran Australian screenwriter and novelist Peter Yeldham OAM, who wrote All the Rivers Run and 1915, died late last month, aged 95.

Yeldham was a towering figure in radio, stage, film and television. He began writing 2GB radio scripts while still in his teens and completed his thirteenth novel at the age of 88.

His UK career included the films The Comedy Man, The Liquidator, Twenty Four Hours to Kill, Ten Little Indians, and The Age of Consent, along with television plays and episodes and works for the stage. His most successful stage play, Birds on the Wing, a huge hit in Berlin and Paris, was the top-grossing play in Europe in 1972. He returned to Australia in 1976.

Roger Simpson, Angela Wales and Geoffrey Atherden of the Australian Writers’ Guild recalled Yeldham was active during early industrial agreements.

“Stop-works against Crawford’s, Channel 10 and the ABC and marches in the street for Australian content quotas on television – the 70’s and 80’s were formative times for Australian writing and formative times for the Guild,” they recalled.

He adapted many classics of Australian literature, including Ride on Stranger, The Timeless Land, All the Rivers Run, Jessica plus originals, Captain James Cook, 1915, Naked Under Capricorn and Run from the Morning. And then in 1988 he began writing novels.

Until hearing got the better of him he frequently lunched with his AWG colleagues, “but one always sensed, like any compulsive, he was really dining out with his characters. Maybe deafness was his excuse to get back to the keyboard and a world where he heard every word,” they said.

“We will be enjoying his creations for a long time yet.”