Barry Jones
Barry Jones, Australian politician, author, and quiz champion,
Barry Jones entered the public spotlight as an Australian quiz champion. Bob Dyer, an expatriate American, and his wife Dolly, had run a radio quiz program called ‘Pick a Box’ since 1948. It was televised from 1957, and school-teacher Barry Jones became a contestant in 1960.
It was an enormously popular show, where the vast majority of contestants were knocked out after a few questions. My mother became a contestant on the radio show, and was so nervous that she could barely speak. Needless to say, she didn’t last too long. That all changed when Barry appeared. With a prodigious memory for historical facts, he appeared simply unbeatable. He became a fixture on the show for years! Viewers loved the banter between the highly personable Bob and the serious-minded Barry, who was never afraid to argue in defence of his answers. No matter how obscure the question, Barry knew the answer, until one night, with the television audience glued to their sets, Barry was declared beaten.
It was a question about the first British Governor-General of India, but Barry argued that his answer was correct. After an agonising wait, he was proven right, when he pointed out that the man they had named had actually held an inferior position. Barry continued on his winning ways, confounding the question setters, until 1968!
A long-term member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), educated in Arts and Law at University of Melbourne, in 1972 he entered the Parliament of Victoria as the Member of the Legislative Assembly for the seat of Melbourne. In 1977, he was elected to Federal Parliament as the member for the Victorian seat of Lalor.
Author of several books on history, in 1981 he co-edited ‘The Macmillan Dictionary of Biography’, which my wife and I bought hot off the press. It is such a handy reference book about most of society’s important figures. It remains one of our most-thumbed books. In 1982 he published the best-selling ‘Sleepers,Wake! Technology and the Future of Work’, dealing with the decline of Australian manufacturing industry, and the influence of science and technology on the future of work. That book was also a ‘must-read’.
During the term of the Hawke Government, he was Minister for Science from 1983 until 1990. He was present, as the main speaker, for the first Australian reception from the Landsat 5 earth-mapping satellite. I had been commissioned to cover the event. A technical hitch brought proceedings to a halt, so I decided to make myself a coffee in the otherwise deserted staff canteen. To my great delight, I was joined by none other than B.O. Jones!
As he made himself a cup of tea, he expressed his interest in photography, and asked if I had watched a documentary about the photo-collage work of David Hockney, which had aired the previous night. Indeed, I had, and we both enthused about it. Hockney would photograph large scenes by shooting dozens of images of details of the scene, having small prints made, and then assembling them into a collage representing the entire scene. This was a really revolutionary approach to photography, and the final images were quite startling.
During the next hour, Barry and I talked about a wide variety of subjects, and then I asked if I could shoot a couple of pictures of him. I felt humbled in the presence of this great mind. He has an impressive list of letters after his name… AC (Companion of the Order of Australia), as well as several fellowships, FAA, FACE, FAHA, FASSA, and FTSE, and is a great humanitarian.
Since that time, he has twice been elected National President of the ALP. At the time of writing (2020), Barry is still going strong at the age of 87, and has written several more books in the interim. I treasure the thought of our meeting.