No cue cards, no running water and a nest of snakes: This was Brisbane’s first TV broadcast

Hugh Cornish was Queensland’s first TV personality, the face of QTQ-9, and one of the most influential figures in the state’s television history.

On Sunday, August 19, 1959, Cornish was the first person to appear on Queensland TV, broadcasting from the new station being built in bushland on Mount Coot-tha.

When Cornish arrived for work at the station, he was taken aback by how primitive the building was.

“He was the gentleman of TV.” Hugh Cornish was a 25-year-old rookie when he appeared on the airwaves, the first person on TV in Queensland.Credit: Nine

“There were no toilet facilities,” he recalled in his 1996 autobiography, Funny You Should Ask. “There was an outhouse for the girls and the fellows just had to ‘make do’.”

Cornish, who died at a Brisbane nursing home this week aged 90, wrote that wild horses – brumbies – used to thunder past the building at regular intervals. Wallabies, kangaroos and snakes frequented the area.

“Snakes loved the warmth of the transmitter and a mother copperhead hatched her 12 babies near one of the diode valves … Carpet snakes used to swing off the tower.”

Building the transmission mast and Studio B of QTQ-9, Mount Coot-tha, 1958. Credit: Nine

“If you didn’t shut the doors, you had animals crawling in,” confirms son Tim Cornish, who worked as a cameraman at the station in the 1980s. “It was like the Wild West up there at the start.”

The elder Cornish prepared for his close-up in a make-up room consisting of a shaving mirror, a chair and a bucket of water – there was no running water.

He was obliged to ad lib his lines. “There were no scriptwriters, no cue cards, and so I decided I would make my remarks as simple as possible,” he wrote.

The studio itself was only 10 square metres in size. At 6.39pm Cornish, in evening dress, addressed the camera and said: “Good evening, and welcome to television.”

Or something very much like it. Reports differ.

“Unfortunately, there is no recording of that first night,” says media commentator Brett Debritz. “He always said that he would be delighted to redo it.”

Born in Killarney in Queensland’s southern downs, Hugh Cornish was a 25-year-old radio announcer and pianist from 4BH whose only previous experience of a TV camera was his audition.

His first broadcast began with a few welcome speeches, an episode of the US western series Fury, and the sitcom Leave It to Beaver, with live commercials read by Sydney personality Brian Wright, who had been flown in for the gig.

The 1952 John Wayne movie The Quiet Man followed, then an Alfred Hitchcock Presents, after which Cornish read Queensland’s first TV news and weather bulletin. It lasted 14 minutes – footage from several news stories were not broadcast due to a technical hitch.

A music show from down south, Your Hit Parade, ended the night’s proceedings, and the station went off air at 11.09 with God Save the Queen.

After a brief celebration Cornish travelled home with his wife Joyce, whom he’d married the previous year.

“As we drove along Gilchrist Avenue beside Victoria Park, Joyce became quite ill … she was pregnant with our first child.”

Hugh Cornish (1934-2024) and his wife Joyce Cornish (1934-2013).Credit: Nine

At QTQ-9, Cornish would at one stage function as publicity officer, promotions manager, game show host, standby announcer, coordinator, program manager and assistant general manager – all simultaneously.

Eventually elevated to general manager, he would remain with the station for 26 years, until 1985, when he clashed with its brash new owner, Alan Bond, and resigned.

“Dad got on a riser and addressed the station and a lot of the staff were crying, including dad,” recalls Tim Cornish. “It was bloody awful.”

There are currently calls for Hugh Cornish and his contribution to television to be remembered at a state funeral.

“They invented television for Queensland audiences, because no one had done it before,” says Debritz. “They just had to make it up as they went along.”

Nine Entertainment is the owner of this masthead.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.