By Bruce Phillips

TOM Gannon stands at the top of his bowling mark. It’s a vital game and the Country Week opposition needs two to win. The tall, strongly-built, left hander starts his long run up but stops, bends down, and ties up a shoe lace. The tension builds as he returns to repeat the routine. This time he is almost to the crease when he pulls up again, takes out a handkerchief, and blows his nose. If spectators, team mates and the batsman weren’t on edge already they are now. They just want him to bowl. He runs in again and delivers, taking out all the stumps of the hapless batsman. 

As always things are done in his time and in his way.

Thomas James Gannon was born into a newspaper dynasty and destined to be a controversial, provocative, uncompromising, stubborn, blunt, polarising, and fearless character – with a mischievous sense of humour. His grandfather Malachy Gannon established the Korumburra Advocate in 1899 and brought the first printing press into Gippsland.  Around this time The Powlett Express was established at Dalyston and acquired by Malachy in 1909. 

Tom senior was a big colourful character – weighing about 18 stone (114kgs) – and a lifelong gambler who won and lost a fortune.  Apart from newspapers, he loved shooting, fishing, boxing, horse racing and the dogs. 

He was the key figure in the establishment of the Wonthaggi Speed Coursing Club and the creation of The Sports Paradise – long hand for greyhound racing. The Sports Paradise was a boon for a town with little entertainment and important for morale during the dark days of war. Big Tom was also an SP bookmaker – historically illegal though widely practised at the time. 

He was also associated with some serious villains in the gambling industry. On one occasion he gave a handgun to young Tom when he was despatched to Melbourne to collect a large sum of cash. Perhaps his fears were well founded as young Tom was followed half way back to Wonthaggi.

But all was to change on the night of 25 June 1947 when big Tom and son attended a fight night at the Union Theatre that the old man had enthusiastically promoted.   It was just a short walk along the back lane. On the bill were two of Big Tom’s favourites – the never-beaten “Red Donny” McRae and his brother Jack. Their father John was known to give his boys nips of whisky before the last round to ensure victory. After returning home, and according to his son’s public account, Big Tom collapsed and died “in the act of going to bed”.

In many ways he emulated his father, with one key difference: because of the old man’s financial extravagance he did not become a big gambler. “Winners never tell you how much they lose,” he would later tell his children. It would seem mother Vera was also stung by her husband’s profligacy, carefully checking the Express’s accounts and even making monthly trips back to Wonthaggi to do so after she moved to Melbourne in the early sixties.

In 1948 Tom married Wilma Shugg from Glen Forbes. She became a Catholic to facilitate the marriage. Wilma would become Tom’s lifelong partner and the backbone of the family. For the next 15 years the couple lived behind the Express office and raised six children: Bernadette, Thomas, Michael, Brian, Kevin and Kate. Amid the rattle and chaos of an old-time newspaper the children were brought up to be tough, resilient and stoic. They had to be. No one – not even family – was safe from having any misdemeanour reported. The one sure way to get something in his paper was to ask Tom to keep it out. His family became a lightning rod for the critics of his stories but it never stopped him. 

By modern standards some of Tom’s writing would raise eyebrows: for example in a 1950 headline referring to Italian soccer players as WOPS (though it was in inverted commas) or in a 1961 football report about Italians jabbering “in their native tongue”. It was “of its time” and Tom did have many friends in the flourishing Italian community. He was spurned by his old football club Inverloch over the team’s playing style and banned by the CWA for referring to them as “the blue rinse brigade”.  From his point of view none of it was personal – just business – and he did not hold grudges if some heat came the other way.

While Tom didn’t go out of his way to make friends, he ensured his style of journalism was creative, colourful, entertaining and never boring.  In 1955 sightings of a strange animal led to the creation of “The Wonthaggi Monster”. It might have been the long-extinct Tasmanian tiger (thylacine), an escaped circus animal, or a greyhound painted with stripes. Whatever it was, enough credible witnesses made Express readers seriously consider it might be real – and it sold papers.

Tom loved a scoop. One of his best was the breathless revelation that a married woman had entered the 1960 Miss Inverloch Bathing Beauty Contest.

He also wasn’t troubled weighing in on international affairs when he quoted some colourful identities claiming to have seen the conning towers of Russian subs off the Wonthaggi coast at the height of the Cold War. These turned out to be fishing boats from San Remo. Then there was the opening of the new Phillip Island bridge in 1969 when Tom arranged for “Moose” Boynes to stage a re-enactment of the infamous DeGroote ambush at the Sydney Harbour Bridge. “Moose” looked resplendent dressed as a pirate with a wooden sword aboard a pony so small big Moose’s legs touched the ground. 

Despite his wicked sense of humour Tom was not frightened to take on the rich, powerful, sacred and the wicked itself: he accused Father William O’Regan of preaching politics from the pulpit after the priest attacked local Labor figures and urged parishioners to support the fiercely anti-communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP). In the early sixties priests wielded incredible power and influence that often went unchecked and unchallenged. O’Regan was known to throw kids’ comic books in the fire, encouraged Catholic students at the Tech-High school to tear up the small Gideons bibles they were issued with, forbade marriage outside the Catholic church and supported the Vietnam war. He was vehemently opposed to the Miss Inverloch contest that Tom promoted to help the local economy. 

The showdown came when – during a sermon – O’Regan verbally attacked the highly respected local state primary teacher, councillor and Labor supporter Joe Chambers. At great personal cost Tom rose to his feet, fixed eyes on O’Regan, and said: “You have no right to say that.” 

The Powlett Express had become part of the Gannon family when mining began in Wonthaggi in 1909. The newspaper was to end within a year of the mines’ closure in 1968. John Gibson was one of Tom’s journalists around this time. “I was frightened of him and called him “sir” but he put me at ease insisting I call him ‘Tom’. “I think he knew the paper would eventually fold. The opposition Sentinel had better pictures and the butter-wrapping contract. He didn’t chase advertising but loved chasing stories. The town was at a crossroads with the mine closure.”

However, the paper’s demise came in spectacular style. On 23 May 1968 Tom ran a front-page story entitled “Express’s challenge” regarding “shocking teenage behaviour” near the Wonthaggi town hall the previous month. He said councillors had dismissed the report as an “exaggeration” and the local police sergeant Rod Hall “smarting under a departmental shakeup” had “glossed the matter over”.

Tom was just getting started: “If councillors and the sergeant care to act like ostriches that is a matter for regret. But when they attack the accuracy of the Express THAT is another matter. The Express stands by every word it printed. AND IT CHALLENGES COUNCILLORS AND POLICE TO DISPROVE ANY STATEMENT.”

Sergeant Hall was not amused and decided to sue for libel. Tom got legal advice that, even though the report might have been true, he would never beat a policeman in court. He was forced to express “any regret for any embarrassment or inconvenience which may have resulted from any reader treating the article as a reflection on Sergeant Hall’s ability and competence as a police officer.” 

In August 1969 Tom announced the closure of The Express, accepting an offer from the publishers of the rival Sentinel. The paper had been in the Gannon family for 50 years. At 44 Tom’s journalism career might have been over but, after periods working in other regional towns, he was fully employed by the Sentinel, which became known as the Sentinel Times in 1973 and is now known as the South Gippsland Sentinel Times.

Apart from his family, Tom’s greatest love was shooting and everything associated with it: the outdoors, the hunting craft, the mateship – and his dogs. He was a life member of the Wonthaggi Gun Club and a mentor to young shooters. He continued to write his “Outdoors” column well into retirement. In one of his last columns: “Shootin’ Ain’t Shootin’ without a dog and a mate” Tom spoke lovingly about his terminally-ill Irish setter being run over two days before she was due to be put down. Strangely he does not mention the dog’s name.

Unsurprisingly Tom was at loggerheads with the anti-gun, anti-duck shooter campaigners. However, it was said of him that he played by the rules, respecting bag limits and building nesting boxes for ducks. And Tom always had one thing in common with ducks: just as water ran easily off their backs, the incessant criticism seemed to run easily off his.

It is hard to imagine the same could be said of Wilma who quietly endured years of repercussion from Tom’s writings. She remained a devoted Catholic, was a highly respected member of the community and had the patience of a saint. But she loved him, stood by him and he knew how lucky he was.

Wilma died in 1996 and Tom – who continued to write his Outdoors column to the end – in 1999. He died of a heart attack doing what he enjoyed: shooting.  

Telling people what they need to know – not necessarily what they want to hear – is the essence of real journalism. Tom never changed. He was blunt - sometimes insensitive and offensive – but everyone knew what to expect from his style of reporting. Just like the hapless batsman, they could always see him coming.

The author is indebted to Kate Gannon McNish, Michael Gannon, Thomas Gannon, Jenny Gannon, the late Tom Beard, Frank Coldebella, Sam Gatto, Fin McRae, Laurene Jackson Sleeman, Daryl Sleeman, John Gibson, Aldo Sartori, Wayne Parks, Ian Chambers. Special thanks and acknowledgment to Brian Blake for his “Tom Gannon was a Wonthaggi legend”, SGST 20 April, 1999 and to Teresa Coldebella for her invaluable research.