User:Otherthinker/Peter Charlton

Peter Robert Charlton was born 3 March 1946 in Newcastle, New South Wales. His parents, Allan Victor Charlton and Mavis nee Hall had married in 1941.{{Cite document |title=Index of Marriages registered in New South Wales. |publisher = Government of New South Wales. Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. | at= 1941/16487 (Hamilton) }} His father was a train driver for New South Wales Government Railways. Allan and his older brother, Bob (Robert John Charlton), both enlisted in the Australian armed services; Bob died on the Sandakan-Ranau death march.{{cite news| title = Author, soldier, friend. (Obituary: Peter Carlton) | first = Ross | last = Eastgate | newspaper = The Courier-Mail | location = Brisbane, Queensland | date = 24 May 2007 | url = http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/author-soldier-friend/story-e6freow6-1111113598690 }}

Peter did his secondary schooling at Newcastle Boys High School. The headmaster of the day, F H Beard, "insisted the students study current affairs, although it was not on the curriculum. It is no coincidence that many students gravitated towards journalism." Within a few years of him were Ross Gittins, Ian Henderson and Peter Cave.{{cite news| title = Hendo brought vigour and balance to the job| first = Peter| last = Charlton| newspaper = Courier-Mail| publisher = Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd| location = Brisbane, Queensland| date = 22 August 2003| page = 18}}

Charlton was briefly a public servant before becoming a journalist. As an author, he specialised as a military historian. He also rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel as a reserve officer commanding a regular unit.

Charlton moved to Queensland in 1968 to start work as am economist with the Government of Queensland Treasury Department.{{cite news| title = Respected journalist and author dies at 61. | newspaper = The Courier-Mail | location = Brisbane, Queensland | date = 19 May 2007 | page = 2 }}

In 1969 he won a finance cadetship with The Telegraph, a Brisbane afternoon tabloid and was made finance editor in 1976.

Charlton was recruited to the Courier-Mail by then editor-in-chief Harry Gordon and in his quarter century career with that paper he was a leader writer, an associate editor, books editor, columnist, feature writer, economic analyst, Canberra correspondent and, finally, from 1996, the national affairs editor and based in Sydney for his last ten years.

After a short stint in the Citizens Military Force in Newcastle, he enlisted in the Army Reserve as a public relations officer in 1975. He was soon transferred to the Queensland University Regiment as an infantry officer.

He held command and staff appointments in Brisbane before being appointed second in command of the 49th Battalion, the Royal Queensland Regiment at Wacol. The status of that battalion changed from reserve to being a regular army unit when it was tasked with training members of the Ready Reserve and, as its commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Charlton was a reserve officer commanding a regular unit whilst being a full-time journalist at the Courier-Mail.

In 1978 he gained a Commonwealth Press Union Harry Brittain [http://www.cpu.org.uk/page-view.php?pagename=The_Harry_Brittain_Fellowship Memorial Scholarship] and he travelled to Oxford, extending his stay with a secondment to The Yorkshire Post. Whilst based in England, he researched his family history and visited European battlefields.

In 1981 he published his first book, [http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/25149690 The Thirty-Niners], a history of the Second Australian Imperial Force.

1983 saw the first of two editions of [http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/12881764 State of mind]. Subtitled why Queensland is different, it was an account of Queensland under Joh Bjelke-Petersen describing a state "with no heritage legislation, no formal sex education syllabus in schools and one of the highest rates of illegitimacy and venereal disease in Australia. Queensland was a place where 'the virulent right flourishes' and its attitude towards civil rights '... would not be out of place in South Africa or Poland'".{{cite news| title = Bound for bris vegas| first = Richard| last = Jinman| newspaper = [http://www.smh.com.au The Sydney Morning Herald] | publisher = John Fairfax Holdings Limited.| date = 24 November 2005| page = 56| at = The Sydney Magazine. }} In another context, Charlton was later to write: "When I came to live in Queensland in 1968, Brisbane was a big country town. It didn't really begin to change until the 1980s when the Commonwealth Games and Expo opened the local eyes to the possibility of change. In 1983, I published State of Mind -- Why Queensland is Different, a study of politics under Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. It had one huge omission: there should have been a chapter on sport, and the 'chip on the shoulder' attitudes of the locals."{{cite news| title = Chip on the shoulder still heavy| first = Peter| last = Charlton| newspaper = The Courier-Mail| publisher = News Ltd.| location = Brisbane, Queensland| date = 7 May 2004| page = 19 }}

Books by [http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-554366 Peter Charlton]

• The thirty-niners (1981)
• The unnecessary war : island campaigns of the South-West Pacific 1944-45 (1983)
• State of mind : why Queensland is different (with cartoons by Alan Moir) (1983; 2nd ed. 1987)
• Pozieres 1916 : Australians on the Somme (1986)
• Two flies up a wall : the Australian passion for gambling (1987)
• War against Japan 1941-1942 (1988)
• War against Japan, 1942-1945 (1989)
• South Queensland WWII, 1941-1945 (1991)
• United Service Club, Queensland : the first century, 1892-1992 (with Murray Adams) (1992)

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