Colourful bookmaker, wordsmith and publishing pioneer Peter Blake was patriarch of a media dynasty

COLOURFUL bookmaker, wordsmith and publishing pioneer Peter Blake (left), has died aged 84 at Mt Sinai Hospice in New York.

Journalist Peter Blake was the patriarch of a media dynasty that continues to this day.

COLOUFUL bookmaker, organic gardener, wordsmith and publishing pioneer — Peter Blake’s adventures took him from the heart of Sydney’s Kings Cross to New York City.

One of the co-founders of iconic 1960s Sydney newspaper, The Kings Cross Whisper, Blake was patriarch of a media dynasty that continues to this day.

His peaceful death at 84 this month in his adopted New York closed the chapter on a fine life devoted to family, journalism and the pursuit of happiness.

In her eulogy for her father, daughter Rebecca Korhammer remembered “a betting man who loved nothing more than an icy cold beer and a sweet peel and eat prawn”.

In later years, Blake’s greatest joy came from the grandchildren he’d laid odds of 100-1 against having and the love he felt for Rebecca’s two sons and daughter was transcendent.

Blake was born in Melbourne, Australia on St Patrick’s Day, 1932, which his daughter Rebecca describes as “a very telling sign for a man who would go on to become a record-holding beer guzzler of gargantuan proportions”.

Peter Blake, journalist

The eldest of four children to Win and Melbourne racing writer Bill Blake, Blake started his journalism career as a copyboy at The Age followed by a cadetship at the Sun News-Pictorial. He worked for the ABC in Brisbane and moved to Sydney in the 1950s.

A hard news sense, command of the language and extraordinary range of general knowledge quickly put him in the forefront as a sub-editor.

Over many years he worked for Sydney daily and Sunday papers. A companionable man, he made friends easily and was happy to travel at no notice to new destinations where his good humour and love for a new bar saw him establish a wide network of mates.

In the 1960s, he joined his younger brother Terry Blake’s band of local larrikins to help create The Kings Cross Whisper, a satirical newspaper which helped launch the careers of many young Sydney creatives, among them Barry “Dame Edna Evans” Humphries, awarded actor Max Cullen and his artist brother Cul Cullen, as well as attracting plenty of controversy by publishing nude photos.

Later he moved to Hong Kong where he was chief sub-editor at the (English-language) Star before a stint as a bookmaker at Fannie Bay was cut short by Cyclone Tracy, which destroyed the family home. Peter was a founder and the editor of the weekly Darwin Star in 1976 as a cheeky competitor to the Northern Territory News.

He moved soon afterwards to the United States to work on the celebrity US magazine The Star when Rupert Murdoch took over, before commencing at The New York Post.

Blake made a home at Roosevelt Island with wife Claire and daughter Rebecca, where his love of a juicy red tomato saw him establish an organic community garden in the 1970s and continue working it until shortly before his death.

The Blakes became a Sydney news clan: among them Peter’s brothers Terry and Patrick, while his sister Julie Flannery co-founded Media Monitors. Some of their children are also in the media and Peter’s nephew Sam de Brito was a noted columnist and author who died last year.

A devoted husband, father and grandfather, Blake was 84 when he passed away this month at Mt Sinai Hospice in New York. Peter is survived by Claire, Rebecca and grandchildren Ryan, Max and Summer.