Stephen Gard’s career as a broadcaster began at the age of four, when he climbed inside his family’s enormous AWA console radio to announce dance tunes through the speaker grille. Stephen’s first on-air shift was cut short when he spotted a Huntsman spider, but his fascination with radio continued.
Stephen spent much of his youth exploring the spectrum of the magic spark. At one end of the dial, he found the mysterious, repeated, piping notes radiated by the Non-Directional Beacon at Kingsford Smith Airport. In time, this led Stephen to a close encounter with Amateur Radio (VK2ESG). At the other end of the dial, he discovered the ABC Children’s Hour, which led to his becoming an Argonaut (Alopecia 17).
It was the music booming from that mighty speaker that kept young Stephen Gard enthralled. Not to mention the drama, the humour, the talks, the snappy gabble of the commercial disc jockey, the sober tones of the National Broadcaster. Just as intriguing were those faint and distant voices descending after dark with the ionosphere to haunt the static-busy spaces between stations.
Little wonder, then, that it was barely thirty-seven years later that Stephen eagerly approached his first close encounter with a live microphone in a broadcasting studio. The community station in Bowral had invited volunteers. Stephen Gard offered to present an hour of classical music and an hour of jazz every Sunday afternoon. His offer was accepted. His training course consisted of being shown which buttons to press by a presenter who was anxious to get away. After so auspicious a beginning, it is little wonder that, by the end of the following month, Stephen Gard had been appointed Station Co-ordinator of 2WKT-FM Bowral. The previous incumbent had been anxious to get away.
Stephen brought a wealth of broadcasting talent and savoir-faire to this Community station. There was his early apprenticeship with AWA. His mastery of Morse code. His love of most kinds of music. Youthful study at the piano with a despairing teacher had contributed some cultural finesse, as did several years playing guitar in a garage-band with rowdy friends. Stephen had written scripts for theatre and film, and composed incidental music for same. He had acted in several plays and reviews. He had been a primary school teacher, and married a colleague.
His stay at 2WKT was brief: just three years, but enough for Stephen Gard to have participated in every aspect of broadcasting. Presenting, programming, concert recording, editing, promo-writing, interviewing, sponsorship sales, recruitment and training. Also technical issues. On one occasion, a wind-storm having mis-aligned the station antenna and put 2WKT off-air, Stephen found himself climbing a 60-foot tower on Mount Gibraltar, a shifting-spanner gripped in his teeth like a piratical cutlass. He then climbed down and presented the breakfast session.
All this should have been quite enough broadcasting for anyone, yet barely three decades later, Stephen Gard contacted 2MBS-FM and volunteered to present a program of classical music.
His offer was accepted.
The early years and after
As a child, Stephen Gard took piano lessons; as a teenager he took up guitar and played in rock bands; as a young adult, he composed songs and incidental music for children’s theatre and short films. Stephen Gard also wrote plays and sketches which were performed at Sydney’s New Theatre, The Melbourne Theatre Company, and several amateur groups. He was a founding member of The Australian Writers’ Theatre.
For several years Stephen Gard was a primary school teacher, and during this time acquired a wife, and then two sons. Since 1986, he has been a freelance author and composer, writing fact, fiction, and verse for children for publishers like Rigby-Heinemann, Scholastic, and Macmillan; humour with the Kangaroo Press. Stephen has composed school songs, and items for school music festivals. Stephen Gard’s verse was included in the NSW School Magazine Bicentennial Collection. His short stories for children are regularly reprinted. In 2010, Stephen Gard launched his own publishing venture, BlueDawe Books, specialising in Australian biography and social history.
For three years, he managed the Southern Highlands community radio station.
Stephen Gard has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in music composition. In 1999, he won the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Composer Dialogue.
He has his own sound recording studio. His hobbies are electronics, still and video photography, bird-watching and woodwork.
Stephen Gard’s wife and children are still with him. The family has been joined by a grand-daughter. She is showing some talent for music and theatre. Stephen Gard keenly awaits developments.