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him free rein to further extend his reporting into photography. For the next few months he covered some of the same campaigns and battlesin New Guinea and the Pacific as his former ABC colleagues. Despite the toll on his physical and mental stamina, Hemery seemed happiest when he was busily engaged by a challenging reporting task – and he was something of a risk taker. In February, during a volcanic eruption on New Guinea, inland from Collingwood Bay, Hemery convinced an Air Force colonel to fly him over the volcano.

    17 February 1944 . . . through break in clouds could see plume pure white steam rising thousand feet. Swung in, and finally came down really low. Heavy rain forest had just been seared away by sea of mud, lava, which still boiling with puffs yellow brown smoke. Couldn’t see much down inside crater itself for smoke steam. Lava dust hanging thin horizontal streaks coupla thousand. As went down could notice heat, ship filled with fumes with strong acrid smell sulphur. 11
    On his return to Moresby, the ABC correspondent Fred Simpson asked Hemery if he would do a recording for the ABC. Hemery relished the irony of the request from his former employer: ‘Said I would for cash on the nail. Banged out script, tore down to Coconut Grove, and radiophoned it out of there. I’d love to hear what the ABC says when they hear it.’ 12
    In October 1944 Hemery enlisted in the RAAF and was commissioned as an officer working in public relations, which enabled him to continue to experiment with new recording technology, including the latest wire recorders. As a public relations officer for the RAAF, he flew in a Super Fortress on the last Allied bombing raid over Tokyo in 1945.
    A daughter, Lyndie, was born to Norma and Peter Hemery in 1945, while Hemery was still serving with the RAAF.
    After the war Hemery changed his name to Peter Barry and became a well-known radio reporter in Sydney with the commercial station, 2GB, where he continued to be a creative and imaginative field broadcaster. He began a program where listeners could phone in and ask questions – well before the advent of talkback radio, and he continued his flirtation with risk-taking.
    Hemery raced cars at Phillip Island in Victoria and discovered a passion for deep-water sailing – a plan to sail around the world with his son in 1962 was only aborted when a dredger in Geraldton Harbour in Western Australia crashed into his yacht and destroyed it. He had an interest in planes and flying, which had probably been a factor in his decision to join the RAAF, and he flew light planes after the war and made plans to fly in the 1969 England to Australia Air Race. In 1968, he was in the United States trialling his new plane for the long-distance race when, on 9 July, the plane stalled on take-off and crashed at Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Hemery was killed. He was 56 and left behind his wife Norma, son Peter, and daughter Lyndie.
Dudley Leggett
    Dudley Leggett had started out in the ABC as secretary to Charles Moses and had gone on to prove himself as a sporting broadcaster and supervisor of field broadcasts, and now also in the field as a war correspondent.
    He had undertaken the demanding assignment on the Kokoda Trail and at the Papuan beachheads, he had recorded many reports and interviews in New Guinea and had shouldered the unglamorous administrative burden of overseeing the field unit. He stayed on in Port Moresby untilDecember 1943, but before he left, he went back into hospital. He had been suffering from nausea and extreme headaches for several weeks and the doctors diagnosed physical debility and eye strain, aggravated by the effects of the malaria attacks of the previous twelve months. 13
    The following year, after a break at home with his family, Leggett returned to New Guinea with the Army, but he soon became very ill. He was brought back to Australia and diagnosed with torulosis or cryptococcosis, a fungal infection he contracted