Above: Andrew fare-welling and his wife, Cathy Quealy, who is leaving for a six week walk across Spain – The Camino de Santiago.

The life of a journalist is usually fast-paced, full of the unexpected and with that come the adrenaline rushes.

Andrew Kruger has lived a rich life involving all of this, boasting a career that’s taken him from Canberra to Rome and America and then back to his home country, Australia. But like all Australians, Andrew had to begin somewhere.

‘I went to Queensland University studying economics and government, which is political science. There was no journalism degree available. I was taken on by the Courier Mail newspaper as a graduate cadet. I did a year’s cadetship after I left uni, and that gave me the qualifications to be what’s known as a graded journalist. Grading started at D, and moved back through the alphabet to A which was the most senior grading for reporters. I got promoted often in my early years because I did work that was valued by news industry employers. I changed jobs when rival newspapers would offer me a promotion to a higher grading. This enabled me to skip the time-consuming process of waiting to be promoted at one newspaper.’

Andrew began his career at the Courier Mail in Brisbane.

Within the first two years of working in Brisbane, he realised that in order to get a promotion, he would have to remain in Brisbane for many years. He then volunteered to be posted as the second reporter in the Courier Mail Bureau in Canberra. This office was part of a combined bureau system headed by Melbourne Sun Bureau Chief, Laurie Oakes, for the Herald and Weekly Times newspaper group.

‘That office gave me a lot more experience in Canberra in a very competitive environment. Virtually every year, or second year, I was poached or offered a job by someone who was not only a competitor but offered me a higher grading. So things moved very quickly. I spent ten years in Canberra, the last five of which was for the Sydney Morning Herald, which at that time was privately owned by the Fairfax family.’

After twelve years of working in Australian newspapers, both in Queensland and the ACT, Andrew felt that he needed a change.

At the time he was working as Deputy Bureau Chief in the Sydney Morning Herald Canberra bureau while his wife was working for the Prime Minister. Malcolm Fraser had just won his third federal election and it was then that Andrew and his wife Cathy Quealy, felt that they should leave politics behind and make a change.

‘We decided to go back-packing through Europe, before heading to America. It was basically just to look for adventure, to start again if we had to, but basically we were just searching for adventure.’

But journalism follows Andrew wherever he goes. It’s wired within him, like a GPS tracker. Perhaps, it was just a matter of being in exactly the right place at the right time.

‘We were in Rome on the day that Pope John Paul II was shot, and nearly killed by a Turkish gunman.

‘So I was if you like, a witness to an historic event. Newspaper journalism was obviously a part of my DNA so I wanted to get the story out but I found that newspapers were too slow. There was too much lag time between the time a story broke and the time that it appeared in newspapers. So I rang radio stations from Rome and managed to get through to 3AW in Melbourne. That was how the story got out. This is what convinced me eventually, that I should work in radio, because it was the most immediate medium.

‘That’s what started my career in radio.’

From there, Andrew and his wife moved to New York in America. He worked as a freelance journalist under contracts for Australian Associated Press, Macquarie Radio and ABC Radio reporting back to Australia. Andrew describes his working experiences In New York as the ‘most interesting and the most varied’ of all the jobs he’s held.

‘I was involved in a wire service, a radio network and worked for newspapers and magazines. So that gave me the full spectrum, if you like.’

After spending seven years in New York, Andrew and his wife moved to San Francisco. Andrew found it more difficult to work at the same pace as a freelance journalist in San Francisco because the demand for news from San Francisco to Australia is less than the demand for news from places such as New York or Washington.

‘I had to scramble a lot more to get stories and to make ends meet.

‘But I was lucky in the sense that by that time my wife was Vice President of Harper Collins Publishers. San Francisco gave us the opportunity to experience a Californian lifestyle very similar to what we knew back home in Australia. It enabled us to travel and ski more in the Rockies and around Lake Tahoe. It also allowed me to travel across the country to explore Native American culture. Among the major events I covered was the deadly San Francisco earthquake of 1989 and the Los Angeles riots in 1992, which were triggered by the acquittal of police in the Rodney King beating case.

‘Then, our daughter was born (in San Francisco).

‘That was the hardest part, in actually trying to decide at which stage to come back to Australia. We always knew we would return because we never intended to become Americans. So when Calla turned five and needed to start school, we decided then, we should put our own careers, not on hold but certainly to change things, by coming back to Australia and trying to start again here. I returned in mid-1994 and I went to work for 2UE, a radio station in Sydney. Cathy followed with Calla in November after completing the sale of our house in San Francisco. While in Sydney I was offered the post of news director at 3AW in Melbourne. A year later I went to the ABC, and Radio Australia, and from there to SBS rRadio where I spent 15 years as an executive producer of a twice-daily news and current affairs program until mid- 2010.’

Andrew left SBS as a retiree. However, with journalism sewn into his heart he found himself once again pulled in by the force of the news. He was having coffee with someone he had formerly worked with at SBS. The next day, that person had coffee with another former employee from SBS – Dr. Colleen Murrell. Colleen at the time was the Unit Chair of Journalism at Deakin University, Burwood.

‘Colleen then called me,’ Andrew says. ‘She said ‘I hear you’re available. Would you like to come and teach journalism?’

‘And so I thought, yes, why not?

‘For me, even though I was retired, it was an opportunity to keep my interests active, in all areas of journalism. As it turns out, I’ve actually learned things along the way. I enjoy working with young people, listening to their ideas and seeing how the generations change in their approach to communication. It’s enabled me to keep up with all the modern trends in technology as well as attitudes. Attitudes have changed over time.’

After 42 years of being out in the field and being a news reporter, Andrew is content in teaching. At this point in time, he’s slowed down and reached the point where he feels like he’s ‘been there; done that’.

‘It’s a lot harder to get on the road and to spend sleepless nights travelling and going to places. The adrenaline rush is something you can’t replace with anything else. I have always ridden motorcycles and I get my main adrenaline rush out of riding twisty mountain roads now.

‘But being there reporting on something as its happening is probably the biggest rush you can have as a journalist.

‘I realise that I’m a lot slower today then I was then and it takes a lot longer to recover from an overseas trip.’

However, there are challenges in teaching. Andrew still finds challenges in his career with students who are disengaged from their learning.

‘The main challenge is motivating young people to take the subject seriously.

‘When I was studying, it was important, obviously to pass exams, but if I had been able to do a journalism degree I would’ve worked much harder to try to pass the journalism subjects because they were what interested me. Now I’ve come to the university hoping to pass on and share my skills and experience. I can do that to some extent.

‘Sometimes young people aren’t committed to the point where they are consuming media in their spare time. They’re missing out and I’m missing out on the interaction because they’re not engaged. I can’t engage them solely by talking to them. I have to have a two way exchange and there are very few students who can give me that.’

It’s a shame to hear something like this. It’s saddening to hear that there are experienced professionals who are more than willing to teach the next generation about the world, and that unfortunately, those who are lucky enough to be able to learn from them, are disengaged. These teachers have passions that they are bursting to share with us.

‘My heart and soul is in news reporting, breaking news and reporting news.

‘For me, journalism was about conveying news to people as quickly as and as accurately as I could.’

Andrew still has high hopes for the next generation of aspiring journalists and even has advice for those who don’t study journalism.

‘Never give up. Don’t take no for an answer from anyone. Keep being persistent. Be tenacious and be curious. Always ask questions. Try to find out why things are happening. Never take anything for granted and never take anything at face value.’