He has stories of bushrangers and gunmen and dingoes taking babies.

Stories of elephants and long drives traversing the country.

Many of the stories are not his own, he’s just the mouthpiece that continues them on.

They’re stories from an outback pub in NSW, of gum trees that died for no reason, of men who could wrap whole hands around pints of beer like children do crayons.

They’re stories of a new television station in a Top End city, they’re stories from a small weekly newspaper.

And they’re stories from a lifetime of telling them, from a lifetime of listening.

Because that’s what he’s done his entire life.

IN 1924, Bruyn’s grandmother became the first licensed female publican in Australia.

His grandfather had owned the local pub in Armidale but passed away when Bruyn’s father John was just six months old.

At the time, the law prevented women from owning pubs, but the Bruyn matriarch dug in.

She was her husband’s heir, she would take over running the pub.

So she did. She took her case to the Supreme Court and won, leaving her to raise her family in the bush tavern.

Eighteen or so years later John headed off to university, set to study dentistry. Just a few weeks before graduating his course, he wrote to the dean.

He wanted out. He wanted to go back to working in the pub.

When Bruyn and his siblings came along, his father was still working behind the bar in the inn.

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Bruyn loved the stories of the characters at the bar.

He would listen as they’d tell of tales of adventures all around the world.

He learned how to hear past an accent, to just be intrigued by what yarns they were spinning.

Impressive people filed through the pub and Bruyn got to know names of many, some of whom would go on to help fund his university degree.

To this day it’s clear a name rarely escapes him — he’s able to recount dozens in just a few minutes, in just a few stories.

Bruyn’s mother Helena — or Lee, as she preferred — was the type to look after everyone.

Each week she’d cook a Sunday roast, each week she’d send the six kids off with doggy bags to the people around the town who would otherwise have gone without.

Bruyn was often tasked with visiting the town’s eccentric clockmaker, whose house was filled with chiming watches and clucking cuckoos.

He’d try to time the trip, riding across town on his bike, to see if he could avoid the cacophony of sound made on the hour.

These trips, this upbringing in a country pub, made him part of town sized family — something he didn’t realise at the time.

From the pub, Bruyn joined the army and was on an exercise near Bourke when he got a message from his father.

There was a cadetship at the Armidale Newspaper Company and would he like to apply?

IT was to be the start of a long career in journalism.

Bruyn applied for the job as soon as he returned and got an interview with editor Buzz Kennedy.

On the day, he was brought into a big dark office with an outrageously loud airconditioner humming away on the wall.

For about 40 minutes, Kennedy mumbled, finishing with a question: “what do you think of that?”

They were the only clear words Bruyn had heard in the entire meeting, and he responded in the only way he knew how.

“Mr Kennedy, I couldn’t hear a word you said, that bloody thing behind you just drowned you out.”

Bruyn got the job immediately, the only person who’d had the guts to tell the truth.

From that first cadetship, he worked in newspapers across the New England Tablelands, meeting thousands of people and covering stories from cattle rustlers to F-111 crashes.

Big city life was never meant for Bruyn who jumped at the chance to work at the Darwin Star in the Northern Territory when it came up, before moving over to the NT News.

He briefly worked in a government role but quickly found his way back to the Star where he became sports editor.

At one stage he disappeared down south for a short stint in Tasmania but Bruyn couldn’t be kept away from the Top End.

In 1982 he returned to make history, starting as a reporter with Darwin’s first commercial television news bulletin.

It was, in his words, terrifying.

He’d previously been turned away from the ABC, told he would never have a career in television.

Almost 40 years later, the public broadcaster has been clearly proved wrong.

BRUYN has many moments to be proud of working in the Channel 8 newsroom and later with 9 News Darwin.

Just days after the new bulletin started, he was covering the Azaria Chamberlain case, not long after that it was the Ayers Rock handover.

He travelled to north Western Australia to follow the Kimberly Killer case — a German tourist travelling through the outback shooting people.

In 2003 Channel 8 became Channel 9, and Bruyn was here, leading the team.

And in 2017, he steered the ship when news production was moved from Darwin to Brisbane, facing backlash from the public that there would be no more local coverage.

Those allegations still anger him — on any given night he can tell you exactly how many minutes of local news his small team produces compared to other larger networks.

His team is one that nurtures young talent — the station has been the springboard for many national careers.

Bruyn is the general manager but he knows everyone, cheerily chatting to sales staff as he walks through their office, calling journalists to let them know when they’re doing a good job.

And while she may not be stepping into his direct shoes, his daughter is following in his footsteps.

Proudly he tells stories of Kathleen (now Gazzola) starting at the station as a teenager before climbing through the ranks to become chief of staff and political reporter.

Bruyn knows news is hard, he knows there were times his job was hard on his family.

He recalls coming home one night, a rare evening he made it home before the news aired, to see his son burst into tears as he discovered his father was both on the TV and in the doorway at the same time.

Now, when Bruyn speaks of John it’s to tell tales of his work in a mining company, of his nanotechnology and economics degrees, of his organic supermarket cafe.

And when he talks about Kathleen, his eyes also shine bright.

She’s more dedicated to news “than he could ever be”.

One story that’s more quietly told, however, is that of his late wife, Sally.

The Leanyer School assistant principal died in 2013 at just 60, after a battle with melanoma.

But there are signs she’s not far from his memory — there’s an NT News poster dedicated to her in one corner of his office.

And when he carries that last box of mementos to his car, it’s clear it will go with him.

A PUBLICAN’S son, a reporter, a news director, a general manager — Andy Bruyn seems to have done it all.

But when Channel 9 Darwin closes the doors on its Garden Hills studio in its move to Mitchell St, Bruyn will have been gone a couple of months. He’s stepping down.

It’s not a retirement, he says, it’s just something to give him more time to pursue his other interests.

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He’ll remain on the board of NT Major Events and will continue with his other community work.

He will still be in Darwin, telling stories. He’s not one of those who stops working and needs to move east, he says.

“Why would you leave paradise, after all?”