Ron Iddon

Film & Television

In 1964 Ron joined the Rural Department of the ABC. For three years he worked in radio as an interviewer and presenter across five states, and made short television programs in their capital cities: Weather, To Market to Market and Gardening.

In 1967 he moved to Sydney to begin work on a new national half-hour series, A Big Country.

Film & Television

A Big Country

Between 1967 and 1982 Ron researched and narrated or directed over one hundred episodes of the program, which won the Logie several times.

He also planned and wrote shorter series on agriculture, migrants and feral animals, directing some of the episodes himself. He made a one-hour documentary in Japan, A Lesson to Us All, and filmed episodes in Tonga, Fiji, India and Sweden for the half-hour series Australians at Large.

He resigned from the ABC in 1982.

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Independent films

Soon after leaving the ABC he made two longer documentaries for television: Peppimenarti, about an Aboriginal settlement in the Northern Territory, made with Film Australia; and The Great Cattle Drive, privately funded, about droving in the Northern Territory and western Queensland.

Over the next nine years he made a further eighteen documentaries, funded privately or by SBS, all shown in prime time.

For Sorena Productions he wrote and produced over 150 minutes of documentary on Aboriginal life and history, funded by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. In Alice Springs he helped the late Bob Plasto with the post-production of his two-hour documentary on the town and its Aboriginal beliefs. When Australian Story began on the ABC, he wrote and directed a segment on the late Dame Mary Durack.

Awards

  • India and Jan Myers, from the ABC series Australians at Large: Asian Broadcasting Union Prize
  • A Big Country: winner of the Logie several times
  • Peppimenarti, his first film as a freelancer: nominated for Best Documentary by the Australian Film Institute

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Films still waiting to be made

Ron has researched documentaries that have not yet been made: on the Central Australian anthropologist Ted Strehlow, on the explorer and pastoralist Nat Buchanan, and a ten-part History of World Agriculture.