'Curley' Annabel

‘Curly’ Annabel
Newspaper Editor & Tireless Promoter of the NSW South Coast

Walter Bruce ‘Curly’ Annabel (1907 – 1999) was the Proprietor and Editor of the Bega District News from 1946 to 1969.

He ‘operated his newspaper more as a public service than as a business. He pursued excellence well ahead of profit. He believed that personal popularity or pecuniary gain should always be second to public benefit. He believed the Rotary motto, ‘Service Above Self’ was a fundamental practical principle, not an airy ideal’.

Whilst editing the Bega District News, Curly won 17 NSW Country Newspaper Awards – four for Editorial leadership and 13 for ‘distinguished production’ of the paper. His efforts were recognized with Life Membership of the NSW Country Press Association and with the title ‘Elder Statesman of Country Press’…and, eventually in 1996, with an Order of Australia Medal.

In 1968, Curly led the first-ever group of country editors, as accredited war correspondents, on a tour of Vietnam. At Nui Dat they met with Prime Minister John Gorton.

Curly was a keen sportsman. He played Rugby Union for Manly from 1926 to 1939 and he was a champion swimmer who won, as an example, the Andrew ‘Boy’ Charlton Trophy in 1928 for being the best swimmer over 220 yards, 440 yards, 880 yards and 1,500 yards. (He only gave up swimming as a sport in 1967 when he found he was being beaten by his sons Bruce and Roderick, but then took up running each day around the Bega Recreation Ground…until, after wearing a track around the ground, he was asked to run elsewhere and eventually moved to an open space behind the Bega Primary School, where his daily runs resulted another track being formed!).

His greatest sporting love, though, was skiing. He was an exceptionally good cross-country skier and ski jumper, and he became a member of the NSW Ski Team in 1932. He was a member of the first Australian ski team to compete overseas in 1936, and he captained the Australian team in 1945.

Curly was passionate about Bega, the Bega community, and the NSW South Coast generally. He tirelessly promoted the area and was instrumental in founding a number of local clubs and introducing a number of major internationally-recognised events to the area.

Within six months of having moved to Bega in 1946, Curly had helped form a Bega Fine Arts and Crafts Society. He initially became its Publicity Officer and subsequently its President – a position he held for 13 years. Among his achievements in this capacity was securing a $500,000 Australian Bicentennial grant to enable an art gallery to be included in a new Bega’s civic centre building.

For 12 years from 1949 he served as President of the Tathra Surf Lifesaving Club. In 1961, when the Club had about 20 active members, it hosted the first of two State Title Surf Carnivals (the second was in the 1970s) that attracted over 2,000 competitors.

In 1954 he helped establish the Bega Rotary Club. In 1983 he became the Club’s first Paul Harris Fellow (the highest honour that Rotary can bestow).

Curly was instrumental in establishing a Bega Demonstration Dairy Farm, fought successfully in the early 1970s to have Bega milk accepted into the Canberra market, and was successful on two occasions in having Australian Gas Conferences held in Bega.

The 1954 NSW Country Press Association conference included the screening of a short film, ‘Small Town Editor’ about Houston Waring and his newspaper, the Littleton Independent. ‘Struck by the similarity between Bega and Littleton (Colorado, USA), and the roles of their newspaper editors, WBA contacted the US Information Service. In 1954 he wrote to Houston Waring, and a lifetime friendship began.’

In 1960, Curly visited Littleton and a Bega-Littleton Citizens Exchange, headed by Curly, developed from this. (The Exchange includes delegations from each town visiting the other town every five years to stay with host families, so personal contacts between the two towns occur at two-and-one-half yearly intervals. The Bega group trips usually coincide with Littleton’s Western Welcome Week, and the Littleton group normally visits Bega in autumn. In Littleton, Rio Grande Park was renamed Bega Park, and Bega acknowledges its sister city through Littleton Gardens and Littleton House, a former mayor's residence in Bega Street that became a hostel for girls attending local schools. Curly acted as something of a ‘house father’ to these girls.)

Pan-Am Airways then flew Houston Waring and his wife, Irene, to Australia in early 1961 so they could attend the Bega Show, and the first delegation from Bega to visit Littleton occurred in August that year. It received personal greetings from U.S. President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

In August 1979 Curly was made an official ‘Kentucky Colonel’ in recognition of his service to the international Sister-City movement.

The other major event with which Curly is associated is the George Bass Surf Boast Marathon, normally held every two years (the 2020 Marathon was called off mid-way because of the devastating bushfires along the NSW South Coast; the 2022 Marathon has been postponed until 2023 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.) Details of a plaque, presented to Curly Annabel around 1983 by the NSW State Surf Life Saving Association Far South Coast Branch, in appreciation of his outstanding contribution to the race, are at www.bit.ly/begahh32

Curly was married twice – first in 1948 to Edna McKee who had been Matron of Bega Private Hospital and, following her death 18 months later, in 1950 to Edna’s close friend Eletha McGrath who was Matron of Camden District Hospital at the time and had, from August 1945 to March 1948, been Matron of Bega District Hospital.

Source: Material held at Bega Pioneers’ Museum; Rod and Bruce Annabel.