You know the Show has begun in earnest when the Tannoy gets cranked up and Peter Crawford’s familiar voice rings out over the streets of downtown Bangalow. Georgia Fox sat down with the veteran announcer to learn how it came to be. There have been stages in Peter Crawford’s career that have seen him calling 250 trots and 50-odd rodeos a year, on top of an agricultural show circuit stretching far and wide across New South Wales. Now at 82, Peter has whittled his commitments down to just a handful of local shows – Bangalow being one of the lucky few.
He’s not sure exactly when he began announcing the Bangalow Show, but believes it must be at least 40 years ago. While the town itself has grown and gone through some major transformations during that time, Peter’s view from the ring has remained pretty unchanged. “It is one of my favourite towns, and it always has been.”
Asked if he has a preferred event, he says he loves them all. “To me it’s the best little show that I’ve come across because they don’t just do a show, they do entertainment.” His wife Libby – also involved in agricultural shows through her love of horse riding – adds it’s the meeting of the diverse Byron Bay influence with the more traditional rural component that pulls the crowds. Peter agrees, “they go because they don’t know what they’re going to get, or what’s going to happen.”
While Libby is from the area, Peter was born in Moree and grew up in nearby Gunnedah. When the local radio station, 2MO, relocated to premises directly across the road from his childhood home, he began hanging out at the studio, his interest indulged by the evening announcer at the time, Neville Grey. He left school at 15, without aspirations of a career in radio on account of his ‘thin’ voice, instead working in the grocery section of the local department store.
That all changed after his voice broke quite dramatically during a family caravanning holiday in Ballina. Neville suggested he and his new voice apply for Bryson Taylor’s radio coaching program, and in 1957 at age 16, he caught the train down to Sydney to stay with his grandmother. Bryson Taylor’s training studios were located in the historic AWA (Amalgamated Wireless Australasia) building in York Street, which was also home to the biggest radio network in Australia at the time.
Amongst this thriving hub of broadcasting activity, Peter learnt how to write copy, read commercials and the news, and host a radio show, and was sent away at the end of the month’s course with instructions to buy the newspaper every day and practice reading stories out loud.
Upon his return to Gunnedah he went to see 2MO about a job, but was told he was still a little too young. Peter “didn’t disagree,” and continued working in the grocery department. A few months later, to his surprise while playing cricket in his side yard, the station manager popped his head over the hedge and told him to come in on Sunday and have a go on air.
Peter arrived at the station, only to have the manager announce he was leaving him to it and heading out. He had half an hour to work out the daunting array of turntables, reel-to-reel tapes and gongs to play at the introduction of the news. Three hours later the manager returned and said he and his wife had been listening over their lunch and she had told him to hire him.
He gave notice at the department store, and just three months shy of his 17th birthday, Peter’s career in radio began. He stayed at 2MO for nearly three years, and then began working around the country. “In those days announcers moved a lot. If someone offered you an extra five pound, you went.” During a stint in Newcastle his manager suggested a name change – not a fan of his birth name, Cecil Went.
By this stage Libby was on the scene, and he asked her to choose one, having never liked Cecil himself. She suggested Peter, which he has answered to ever since. When he later started at Sydney’s 2UW he decided to “go the whole hog” and again, asked Libby to choose a new surname. Peter Crawford was born – albeit to the confusion of Libby’s students. “Are you living in sin, Mrs Went?” she was asked at school after a picture of the couple was published in the paper using Peter’s stage name.
Peter began work at Lismore’s 2LM, where he became program manager for 10 years. Each year 2LM would broadcast live from the Lismore Show, and in 1980, during his third or fourth time there, he was approached by one of the organisers and asked if he could fill in immediately for the announcer who was “a little bit on the tippy side.” He knew little about the goings on apart from what he had witnessed both at the Show and through Libby’s involvement with horse competitions, and had to be talked through it.
He was soon contacted by the Kyogle Show, “and before I realised it, I was doing Lismore, Kyogle and Casino. It just grew from there.” In 1982 he left radio, although continued to provide voice overs for what is now WIN television, and embarked on a busy schedule of shows, and calling rodeos and the trots. After 30 years he stepped back from rodeos after being knocked down twice in 12 months. “A bull had an argument with me, and a horse had an argument with me. They both won. I thought I’m getting too old for this.” With the death of his cousin, Bruce Green, at the Tamworth Rodeo under similar circumstances in 2021, it seems to be a wise move.
As much as Peter loves working the local show circuit of Nimbin, Kyogle, Bangalow, Casino, Lismore, Alstonville, Bonalbo, Maclean and Grafton, he admits it’s tough being out in the arena on his feet for so many hours. “As long as I can do a show, I’ll do it,” he says. “I’m getting a bit slow with my hips. I find it very difficult to walk sometimes, but I’m never short of breath. I can talk all day,” he laughs.