‘The epitome of suave, and achieved so much’

RICHARD ZACHARIAH March 20, 1945-April 9, 2025

Journalist Richard Zachariah, who died in early April aged 80, had many gifts, but will be remembered above all for making others feel good with his smile, wit and charm.

Like Peter Sellers’ character Chauncey Gardiner, Zachariah could lift the mood in a room just by “being there”.

“Dick was truly amazing,” recalls onetime colleague Russell Skelton. “He was the epitome of suave, and achieved so much.”

He was also “a tough dog to keep on the porch,” as Skelton says.

Newspaper reporter, author, broadcaster, racing man, Essendon supporter, and legendary lover, he was equally at home quaffing cocktails with the great and the good, horse riding on remote bush trails, holding court at the races, wrestling with steers in cattle yards and reading a biography of Leo Tolstoy on a country home verandah.

Richard Francis Harry Zachariah was born on March 20, 1945, in the Bethlehem Hospital in Kooyong Road, Caulfield South, in Melbourne. His father, Harry, was an outstanding slow-medium left-arm orthodox bowler, who played for Melbourne University and Victoria, and was only kept out of the Australian Test team by the likes of Bill (Tiger) O’Reilly and Clarrie Grimmett.

Richard’s mother, Joan, trained as a nurse at Melbourne’s Children’s Hospital before marrying Harry. In 1942, the latter became a teacher at Melbourne’s Brighton Grammar School and from the age of five Richard also attended as a student.

Three years later, he moved with his parents and three sisters, Sue, Jane and Amanda, to Hamilton in Victoria’s Western District, after Harry was appointed headmaster of Hamilton College.

They were formative years. Richard spent much of his holiday time with fellow students’ families on their properties, developing his love for horses and stock work, and a nascent interest in the history of the Western District.

Returning to Melbourne aged 15, he completed his schooling back at Brighton Grammar, where his father had been appointed deputy headmaster.

After matriculating, Richard secured a much sought after cadetship at The Age newspaper in 1964 under the editorship of Keith Sinclair.

Coincidentally, it was pretty much the start of Australia’s great 30-year newspaper boom.

Curiosity, winning ways, reporting skills, and a shrewd grasp of the paper’s power centres, stood Zachariah in good stead, and he was transferred to work at The Age bureau in Canberra’s Parliament House.

He was also blessed with being at The Age during the early years of its great renaissance under the editorship of Graeme Perkin, who led the paper until his untimely death in 1975.

But for Richard Zachariah, the call of a bigger world was overwhelming. In 1969, he joined Donald Hewett, also a former reporter on The Age, and travelled to England and the “swinging London” scene of the late 1960s.

While living in London, Richard worked in BBC current affairs and spent many nights socialising with figures like Barry Humphries and British movie heart-throb David (Blow Up) Hemmings.

There were also raucous parties at a Holland Park Mews house he shared with, among others, distinguished former Age and Guardian journalist Jackie Leishman, and Perth architect Zdenka Underwood.

One of Zachariah’s less remarked upon European exploits was just about single-handedly torpedoing a high-budget British made-for-TV cigarette advertisement set on the Italian island of Capri. As the ad’s putative “talent”, he became over-excited at a crucial stage of filming on a Capri nightclub dance floor.

Returning to Australia, he married Diane Webster, who hailed from a beef and dairy farming family near Maffra in Victoria’s Gippsland, and was appointed Melbourne correspondent for Rupert Murdoch’s short-lived Sunday Australian newspaper.

After The Sunday Australian folded in 1972, the couple moved to the Webster family property, where he worked for a time as a farm hand, enjoying regular horse rides into the magnificent Gippsland hinterland.

By the mid-1970s Zachariah, Don Hewett, Di Webster and former model Helen Homewood opened the Sale Country Kitchen, a high-end restaurant in what Zachariah called “the gourmet end of Sale”.

His local interests expanded to calling local Australian football games for Victorian country radio stations and reading the news for TV station GLV8, based in Traralgon.

As the 1970s merged into the 1980s, Richard spent more time in Sydney and became inseparable from fashion icon and broadcaster Maggie Tabberer. He moved to Sydney in 1985 and the two lived in a roomy, stylish, two-storey home in Hamden Avenue, Darling Point, with its regular background clink of cocktail glasses.

Maggie Tabberer and Zachariah.Credit: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

As legendary Sydney eastern suburbs real estate agent Billy Bridges, with a penchant for the argot, remarked: “You’re farting through silk here.”

By early 1986, Zachariah was hosting the Seven Network’s national morning news program Eleven AM. Two years later, he was promoted by former school colleague and then Seven owner Christopher Skase to read the revamped Seven Nightly News in Sydney with Ann Sanders.

In 1988, he and Maggie Tabberer embarked on a joint venture to host a highly successful lifestyle program The Home Show on the ABC, which ran for three years.

Zachariah at Channel 7 in the mid-1980sCredit: Craig Golding

At the height of his fame, it seemed that everyone – from governors-general to racecourse touts – wanted to meet Richard Zachariah. He enjoyed notoriety but was never seduced by it.

A journalist above all else, Richard had a remarkable capacity to relive various encounters with figures like Gough Whitlam, John Howard, Barry Humphries, Graham Kennedy and Donna Koran, and laugh uproariously – and equally – at the awkward moments and social triumphs.

After separating from Tabberer, he employed his passion, remarkable breeding knowledge and contacts in racing to write a regular column for The Sun-Herald and later The Sunday Telegraph.

The latter splashed with a “Zac’s Racy New Lady” headline, a reference to Zachariah squiring UK former model and author, Tessa Dahl, daughter of renowned British children’s author, Roald Dahl, around Royal Randwick racecourse.

Soon after, Richard briefly married Gold Coast publicist Louise Carroll, and the two lived in a spacious Point Piper apartment with its panoramic harbour views.

Zachariah and Tessa Dahl.Credit: Dallas Kilponen

After the break-up of his second marriage, Zachariah continued his racing columns, and became close to Sarah Hyde, a pharmaceutical company marketing executive, and the two lived in a spacious terrace house in Annandale, an inner-Sydney suburb.

Andrew Clark was a journalist for The Sunday Age and The Australian Financial Review.