Journalist, editor and author Les Carlyon farewelled at racecourse
On Carlyon’s coffin lay a yellow rose; a salute to Australia’s great race and the journalist who wrote it like no other could.
They said goodbye to Les Carlyon on a Tuesday at Flemington. On his coffin lay a single yellow rose; a salute to Australia’s great race and the journalist who wrote it like no other could.
In a dining room atop the Flemington grandstand, political and military leaders, historians and a generation of newspaper writers and broadcasters came to swap tales of a writer whose peeves included words out of place, reporters at their desks and eulogies too long or mawkish.
Carlyon’s family later gathered in the mounting yard below for a private farewell. This is where you’d find him, on the first Tuesday in November, cigarette in mouth, eyes trained on everything that would matter for the next day’s edition.
Carlyon could also be regularly found at the track in the pre-dawn hour, as strappers and trainers went about their work. Journalist Andrew Rule said Carlyon called it racing’s secret society.
“You loved it and no one has ever described it better,’’ Rule said. “You understood the horse people who shared your taste for the jockey’s breakfast; a smoke and a good look around.’’
Rule said Carlyon was a father, grandfather, critic, historian, mentor and mate, a teacher who never stopped learning and a perfectionist about everything that interested him. Best of all, Les, you were kind as well as clever. No ego, no spite. A rare quinella.’’
Broadcaster Neil Mitchell said Carlyon believed journalism was a craft, not a job.
Mitchell was a cadet reporter at The Age when he first met Carlyon, then finance editor. Carlyon was standing in the newsroom, brandishing a gelding knife, threatening any sub-editor who got so much as a decimal point wrong. He was also laughing.
“Newspapers for him weren’t about editors who went to management school and checked ideas with focus groups,’’ Mitchell said. “They weren’t about office-bound reporters who looked like booking clerks, sitting at their computer terminals. ‘Get out there,’ he would say. ‘Get out and describe what it smells like at the grand final.’ ’’
Many of the journalists Carlyon mentored returned to Flemington for Les’s last meet: broadcasters Ross Stevenson, Steve Price and Garry Linnell; TV presenters Virginia Trioli and Jennifer Byrne; crime writers John Silvester and Geoff Wilkinson; sportswriters Patrick Smith, Mike Sheahan and Greg Baum; and leading figures from the rival media houses Carlyon served, Herald and Weekly Times bosses Penny Fowler, Julian Clarke and Peter Blunden, former editor of The Age Mike Smith and The Australian’s Paul Kelly.
John Howard, a former prime minister who shared Carlyon’s fascination with World War I, sat with Governor-General Peter Cosgrove, historian Geoffrey Blainey and media mogul Kerry Stokes. Former Victorian premiers Jeff Kennett and Ted Baillieu joined Brendan Nelson, director of the Australian War Memorial. From the racing world, there was Victorian Racing Club chair Amanda Elliott and Racing Victoria general manager Greg Carpenter, retired chief steward Des Gleeson and race callers Greg Miles and Bryan Martin, who led the order of service.
Deb Callaghan, Carlyon’s publisher, literary agent and friend, said Carlyon’s finest career achievements were his twin volumes about Australia’s experience in WWI, Gallipoli and The Great War. Callaghan read from a single page Carlyon wrote 20 years ago setting out his plan to tell the story of Gallipoli. “I would like to write the thing from the ground and let it reach out from there.
“We don’t need any baloney about the birth of a nation or baptisms of fire. Told properly, the story gives off its own truths.’’
Carlyon died at 76 after a long illness. Among his last words to Denise, his wife of 54 years, he made one final pitch: “I think I have one good book left in me.’’
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