By Luke Voogt
Ron Lock has rubbed shoulders with football greats, interviewed prime ministers and read news on the airwaves under more three-letter combinations than most could imagine.
The 72-year-old can still be found behind the micreophone at Vision Australia Radio, Belmont, alongside dozens of dedicated volunteers.
“These people are wonderful,” he told the Indy one morning at the station.
Ron resigned his last professional posting at 3GG in Gippsland to be closer to his home in Highton after the sudden death of wife Yvonne.
“It was eight years and two weeks ago,“ he said.
“I sneaked out of bed and started making her bacon and eggs.”
He returned with breakfast 15 minutes later and started talking to her, only to discover she had died in her sleep.
“I would have preferred me going first,” he said.
Ron credits his late wife with his “success in life“ including a radio career spanning almost half a century and dozens of stations.
The widow entered his life unexpectedly during dinner at an elderly couple’s Reservior home during his days studying metallurgy.
“Eve, as I came to affectionately call her, knocked on the partly-opened back door and entered with baby on hip, toddler at feet and boy trailing behind,” he said.
A few years later, Eve realised Ron was unhappy as a blast furnace operator at General Motors, even if he did not.
“She said, ‘If you want to change horses you better tell me’,” he said.
Soon after he told his boss, who replied:
“You’re going to be a grubby journalist? The pay is a third of what you’re earning here.”
But eventually his boss agreed and Ron set off to pursue his first radio job.
“I kissed Eve and the three children, picked up a map and thought, ‘Colac … I haven’t been to Colac in a while’.”
After a tour of local station, 3CS, the manager asked a surprised Ron when he would like to start.
“He said, ‘well that’s what you’re here for isn’t it?’” Ron said.
He told Eve over the phone who, though excited for him, said, “I don’t think this is a good station to work at if they do things like that.”
But the gig kick-started Ron’s career, during which he reported politics and sport, commentated football and read news, from Colac to Sydney and almost everywhere between.
He interviewed John Howard, worked beside football greats like Lou Richards and covered the mysterious disappearance of pilot Frederick Valentich over Bass Strait in 1978.
Eve stayed up recording him on 30 cassettes when he was on air for 121 hours straight at 2BE, Sydney, he said.
“I broke the then World Record on air only to discover the station’s paperwork was not correctly filled in!”
But he still had the cassettes at home, he said.
Ron now volunteers for Vision Australia Radio, which broadcasts readings of local publications, including the Indy, for the blind and vision-impaired.
He also works as a Triple 0 team leader in Melbourne but he has yet to rule out a return to professional radio.
“I’m still as fit as a Mallee Bull,” he said.
