Jim Downes has practised every branch of the writer's trade, except fiction.
Newspaper trained, he entered broadcast journalism via the Australian Broadcasting Commission's radio news service and wrote - and occasionally read - ABC News. He later became a radio interviewer and documentary program maker, and from this graduated to television, spending 16 years as Senior Reporter on ABC-TV's international current affairs program 'Four Corners' and working on assignments around the world.
After a brief secondment to the International Film Department of Radio Sweden, he lived and worked in Sweden as writer/director on a series of documentary films which had wide circulation in more than 100 countries. Jim Downes was for two years Presenter of the program 'Countrywide' on ABC national television. Working freelance since 1986, he has written three books, numerous magazine articles, television documentaries and corporate videos. His areas of special interest are transport and technology, science and the affairs and problems of rural Australia.
He is a conference Chairman, guest lecturer in Media Studies at tertiary level and a consultant in media training.
He lives rurally, in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.
| Publications | |
A Big Country |
Angus and Robertson/ABC, Sydney, 1988 |
| From Adelaide to Alice, lichtbild, Melbourne, 1996 | |
| From Coast to Coast, lichtbild, Melbourne, 1997 |
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