A pivotal role on One News’ flagship 6pm bulletin - NZ television’s top-rating programme - enticed me back to TVNZ. Working alongside Tati Urale, we won best news at the national awards an unprecedented four years in a row. An entry I was especially proud of was a weekend one - the Anzac Day army helicopter crash. A great team effort. I led other quality teams - to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games. And then came the February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch. I was one of the first staffers sent to Christchurch and ended up there for 17 days in a row as we built a news operation from the rubble. I have so much respect for our Christchurch staff at the time, headed by Mike Fitzpatrick and Steve Bloxham. People they knew died, their office was in ruins and there was uncertainty with their own homes and family lives. I made numerous trips back to Christchurch to help with news coverage, including during the Rugby World Cup when I worked on the NZ-hosted event for more than three months. That encompassed co-ordinating and field producing daily news, as well as being the link before and during the tournament with the One Sport broadcasting team, TVNZ’s various news and current affairs programmes and the One News website. The most challenging year of my career as a journalist in NZ. One that brought together the experience, knowledge and contacts I’d built up. By 2012 I was ready for change and trying to figure out “where next”, helped by restructures under various management at TVNZ. Alongside the daily job as a senior producer no longer working solely on 6pm, I became TVNZ’s PSA union delegate. A tough role in times of low union membership. But it gave me an insight into management thinking during pay negotiations and, most importantly, I played a support role for people affected by redundancies. Ultimately, I took voluntary redundancy when another restructure was initiated and I was ready for the next big career move - having just turned 50.

My wife, Kathryn, got a great job back in her hometown as communications manager for Venture Taranaki. It was fulltime so we decided it provided the chance to move to New Plymouth and give our children a taste of the provincial upbringing we’d both experienced. So I became househusband/part-time journo. I dabbled with a bit of magazine writing but worked mostly for WITT as a tutor, developing its online diploma after it secured the exclusive rights under long-time journalism educator Jim Tucker. But as much as I cherished this time with my children I was also smitten with the TV bug. I never relinquished those links with TVNZ and by May 2007 I was commuting to Auckland for freelance shifts so much that I resigned from WITT. I did it with an inkling that a change in leadership meant a new challenge could be just ahead at One News.

I’d been tinkering with the idea of switching to TV journalism for much of 1996. I wrote to the news bosses at TVNZ and TV3. Ultimately it was an interview with One News’ Paul Cutler that saw me join TVNZ. I missed out on the Holmes show job but another door opened - in sport. I’ll never forget those first few months in telly. It was like learning a foreign language. But I was fortunate to work alongside an earlier mentor, sports editor Richard Becht, as his assistant. A “crash course” in producing included the new Breakfast programme and the weekly Sportsnight, with April Ieremia and Murray Deaker. I discovered I had a “voice” so learned the art of scripting stories. For someone who’d always loved writing, TV journalism opened up new ways to play with words. After about 16 months, I was promoted to sports editor - one of the best jobs I’ve had. It encompassed so much of what I’d experienced and enjoyed in my career - creativity, people management, ideas, planning, contacts and primarily being in charge of the high-rating sports segment in our flagship 6pm news bulletin. I worked with a top-class team, including Peter Williams, Mary Durham, Martin Tasker, Stephen Stuart, Mike McRoberts, Dave Di Somma, Michelle Pickles and Steve Marshall. To top it off, I was Becht’s deputy at the 2000 Sydney Olympics - my first experience of a global sports event as a TV news rights-holder. It was to be my swansong specialising in sport. I’d already discussed with Cutler moving to news after the Olympics - as the producer of One News Tonight. My career went full circle in the next four years, including working on the 6pm bulletin as lineup producer, news producer at the 2003 Rugby World Cup in Australia and ending as executive producer of the late news. By then we were a family of five after the birth of my daughter, Samara, in October 1997. And a new challenge awaited, something I’d long wanted to do since first becoming a dad.

There may be just a few times in your career when you get a chance to be part of creating something new. So when you get that opportunity you seize it. This was the merger of the Sunday Star and the Dominion Sunday Times into New Zealand’s first national broadsheet Sunday newspaper. I was appointed chief sub alongside production editor Chris Allen, under the editorship of Australian Michael Prain. With the help of a designer imported from Sydney, we worked hard for three weeks to come up with a fresh-looking paper for its launch. A lot of "mate"-ship. The odd lengthy debate, such as a drop cap on the first word of every intro, which was Prain’s idea. It worked, I think. And it was satisfying to see “reviews” of the first edition with one common theme: The paper “looked good”. Also had a short stint at the SST as acting news editor. By the end of my time there, I was needing a new job to get excited about. It had long been my ambition to be editor of a newspaper. I was 31 with two pre-school children after the birth of second son, Daniel, and 14-plus years of print experience. The new opportunity came along - but not in newspapers.

A day after our family of three returned to New Zealand, I had a job interview at New Idea magazine. I didn’t get the part-time role. Too experienced and you won’t stay long, said editor Melanie Jones and chief sub Denise Montgomery - two people I ended up working with further down the track. They were probably right. Before long I was working six days a week as a freelance reporter and subeditor with the North Shore Times Advertiser, suburban newspapers at Central Park in Penrose, the Sunday Star, Truth and the Sunday News. I also maintained London connections by writing a feature for News of the World on Mark “Bull” Allen, the vegetarian All Blacks prop. A story that generated a lot of interest among other media when the New Zealand rugby team toured the northern hemisphere at the end of 1993. By early ‘94, I was offered two fulltime jobs - one by the new editor of the Sunday News; the other a chance to join the new, merged player on the Sunday newspaper scene in a significant role.

Ticked off a career ambition - working for “Fleet Street” newspapers. Sent off 28 job applications when I arrived. A key contact already established in London was former Taranaki Herald reporter, flatmate and friend John Ferguson. He was editor of Video Retailer magazine. I got freelance subediting shifts with his magazine and, through his connections, reporting and subbing for Music Week and Euromoney magazines. And I got my first “hit” from those applications - sports subbing at The Sun. From there, it snowballed. By getting to know people at The Sun, I got Saturday shifts at News of the World and discovered there was a “Kiwi” on Today’s sports desk. Turned out I already knew Mark Russell. He’d worked at the Wairarapa Times-Age. With his help, I started doing shifts at Today. By my 26th birthday I was freelancing seven days a week - and often leaving Euromoney mid-late afternoon to do a nightshift at either The Sun or Today. After my wife and I took a short break to go to Egypt and Spain, Today offered me a fulltime contract, which I started in January 1992. I resigned from Today shortly after a big “life” development - the birth at Hampstead Royal Free of our first child, Jaime, in June 1993. While fulltime with Today, I’d kept doing Saturday shifts for NoW and maintained contact with The Sun, including hitting 132 not out for its cricket team against the Daily Express. While I was keen to stay and raise a family in London, understandably Kathryn yearned to be closer to family in New Zealand. After doing an extra freelance shift back where working on nationals started - The Sun - we set off with our three month old. I had no job, a mortgage to pay as soon as we arrived back in Auckland but the prospect of “something happening” in New Zealand’s Sunday newspaper market.

I started at the Star as a subeditor, who was keen to learn the Atex “new technology” and get back to designing and editing pages as quickly as possible. I finished as a sports reporter and occasional “fill-in” as sports editor on both the daily and Sunday, who could turn his hand to daily or Sunday page design and subbing when needed. Highlight was working for three months fulltime on the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games, laying out and subbing special Games pages before and during the sporting spectacle. This triggered a desire to continue to play a big part as a journalist in covering such events. Also made a valuable connection here. Richard Becht was the Sunday Star sports editor. I’d known Richard since my school days when he was sports editor of the Sunday News and I was a “stringer” for him in Wairarapa, sending stories on Saturday sports events such as outdoor bowls and cricket. This was the first time I actually worked alongside Richard, soaking up his immense knowledge, and meeting people such as Phil Gifford of “Loosehead Len” fame. Giddy heights for a boy from the Bush (as in Wairarapa-Bush, my beloved “home” rugby team). Another significant moment was my wife, Kathryn, joining the Star as a news reporter/feature writer after stints as chief reporter at the Howick & Pakuranga Times and working for Auckland mayor Dame Cath Tizard. We were both proud members of the so-called “Taranaki Mafia” within the Star newsroom. When we got the chance to take voluntary redundancy before the broadsheet Star turned tabloid on April Fool's Day, we grabbed it and embarked on our “overseas experience”.

A competitive environment where I learned so much about journalism and people management. Thanks in large part to news editor June Litman and chief reporter then editor Lance Girling-Butcher. June was known as the “Screaming Skull” but I connected with her soon after arriving at the Herald. I walked in one morning to her chortling about my story on the closing of the Criterion - a historic New Plymouth pub. Turns out she’d concocted the headline: ‘Time please ... and the clock went’. I’d written about the closing-time scramble for souvenirs, including the clock. I worked more directly with June when I switched to subbing. The after-work chats at her home, as she generously poured a couple of beers, were priceless. I treasure her reference - in her own unique handwriting. Now to Lance. How many chief reporters, when told your father’s had a stroke but looks like he’ll be ok, would then ring around his medical mates? Lance urged me to go home to Masterton straight away. I saw my dad just hours before he died. Before I left Taranaki I gave Lance a trophy inscribed Best Editor. My way of saying thanks for being such a great human being and journalist. Also met my future wife, Kathryn, while we were rival reporters in the Stratford branch office. Nearly 40 years on, we’re still together and have three grown-up kids we’re immensely proud of. My time in Taranaki helped shape me enormously - personally and professionally. The image attached is from the last day of what was then New Zealand’s oldest newspaper. As chief sub, I had the privilege of putting together the final front page - a career highlight. ‘Goodbye, it's no Bluff’? The picture has me feeding the production boss some Bluff oysters sent to us by former Times-Age colleague Greg Tourelle, by then the “father” of the Southland branch of the Journalists' Union. I think that headline got another chuckle out of June.

First job after journalism school, although it was already familiar territory. While still at high school, I’d worked for the Times-Age at weekends and during the holidays - and even had a weekly column called Calvert’s Cricket. Learned valuable lessons, including always check the spelling of people’s names. Wrote this huge feature on a Masterton snooker player. He mentioned a rival called Dene O’Kane (correct spelling). That name went to print as Dino Kane. That was pre-journo school. Post, a feature was covering the longest council meeting I’ve experienced - in Eketahuna. Started about 10am, finished about 7pm. And I worked till 5 the next morning on the big issues from that meeting. The result of that effort: The page 3 lead in Saturday's edition, plus several smaller stories. Almost crashed work car in last week at Times-Age trying to break my record of 24 minutes getting from Eketahuna to Masterton in white Chevette. Should I have confessed that?