Les Charters, voice of sport and the Gunnedah Show

As the curtain falls on the very successful 2025 Gunnedah Show, it is timely to look back at the role played by the late Les Charters whose voice could be heard across the arena calling ring events and rodeos year after year.

Les was known as the ‘voice of sport’ in the North West and his show broadcasts were channelled to 2MO listeners at home.

He also broadcast live from the Royal Easter Show and called rodeo events at numerous Tambar Springs Rodeos, local swimming carnivals and many other voluntary jobs in the sporting broadcast field. Such was his passion for any type of sport or competition even his description of a wheelbarrow race from Curlewis to Gunnedah could be heard over the airwaves on 2MO.

It was rugby league, however, which was his greatest passion, with his calls of matches every Sunday afternoon bringing him a huge listening audience.

Born in Narrabri on June 25, 1919, his family moved to Newcastle when Les was two. He was educated at Newcastle Boys High School but returned to the north west, as a jackaroo for his eldest brother Ken on his property at Emerald Hill in the immediate post-Depression years. This was where he developed a lifelong love of the land and played cricket. His life’s path took him back to Newcastle, however, where he found work at Commonwealth Steel but enlisted when war broke out.

Married to his wife Joyce in December 1941, Les was about to be posted to Singapore, as the Japanese made their lightning advance through South-East Asia, but the skills he had gained in working in metal were needed so he went back to Commonwealth Steel and was a toolmaker for the rest of the war.

An older brother Aub was killed in an RAAF training accident during the war and after the war, Les responded to a family call to take Aub’s place in a newsagency partnership with another brother Rex in Bathurst

During his time there he played rugby league for the Bathurst Railway team. He had always loved sport, also playing soccer and cricket.

The couple moved to Epping after purchasing a milk run, which they ran for three years before responding to an advertisement for a milk run in Gunnedah. They bought the business and arrived in town with their three children Jenny, Chris and Rosemary, in 1955, only a few weeks before the huge flood which put a metre of water through the house they had secured in Bloomfield Street. The milk run became one of the largest in country NSW, but it did necessitate a 2am rise each day.

In an interview for the North West Magazine 19 years after his foray into the world of radio and sports presenter, Les recalled his ‘baptism of fire’ in his new career when he took on the role with three days’ notice in 1957.

Sid Emerton was then manager of Radio 2MO and he needed a sports presenter in a hurry when Basil Cowan moved on. Under Sid Emerton’s management Tom Calhoun, manager of Mirow & Sons Ford Agency had pioneered the broadcast description of rugby league matches in the Group 4 division (formerly Tamworth District League) in 1956.

It was another “first” for the oldest country radio station outside Newcastle in NSW. Tamworth’s Radio 2TM and other radio stations in the North West did not follow for some time later.

At the time Les started calling rugby league, he was Gunnedah’s only milk vendor and his first match as a radio caller was at Werris Creek for supposedly “just one game”.

Almost 20 years later, Les had called around 280 games including not only Group 4 matches but two matches where the New Zealand All Blacks rugby league teams played at Gunnedah and Quirindi.

He also called the New Zealand rugby league versus Northern Division fixture at Gunnedah and one of the biggest grand finals ever in 1965 when the local team, captained by Paul Pyers, comfortably defeated Narrabri at Kitchener Oval.

Les recalled in the interview that he had received a few ‘brickbats over the years but mostly bouquets’ with listeners telling him that they liked his broadcast of football even though they weren’t really fans because of the pleasant way he described the game and the amusing commentaries he often gave.

Les said that he had always tried to talk about football on the air the same as he would discuss it with friends in conversation.

He recalled an occasion when there was a ‘donnybrook’ between rival team members and spectators-supporters of both sides in another town and police refused to intervene and ensure safe conduct of the Gunnedah team from the ground. The police officer told the Gunnedah manger that the “players looked as if they could look after themselves on the field so they should be able to do so off it”. And the time a disgruntled player who threatened to ‘drop him’ in a café after a match broadcast where Les had suggested that he should have been sent off the previous Sunday.

But mostly Les had a “soft spot” for the fans and barrackers who had consistently supported their team and often gave the match caller “plenty of curry”.

Les remembered watching many emerging local football stars who went on to play in the big time, such as nationals John O’Neill, Ron Turner, and John Donnelly and players like Keith Harris, Ross Warner, Paul Hassab and others who had made names as top-class Sydney league players after migrating from the bush.

Over the years, Les also broadcast commentaries on soccer matches, a pro-am golf tournament and the state hardcourt tennis championships played in Gunnedah. He also called the Gunnedah and Coonabarabran Gifts, race meetings and other major events which came to the area.

Les was totally committed to his role, and at 2MO he would broadcast Friday night match previews, followed by Saturday reviews, Sunday football with a full wrap-up on Sunday night.

While radio put his sporting profile before the public, he led a richly varied life in other fields.

Les and Joyce sold part of the milk run and bought a property, Little Kibah, but there were more setbacks – the 1964 flood and three years of terrible drought. Les then bought a truck and became a gravel carter but was badly burnt when the truck caught fire.

He then went to work on Kibah, helping to develop the property’s irrigation system and over the next 10-15 years worked on the land and for farm machinery firms.

While he was often tied up with radio broadcasts, Les was a great family man and always found time to support his wife Joyce in her many activities in Gunnedah, including the Eisteddfod – but that is another story.

Les Charters died in March 2001, at the age of 81. His part-time career as a sports presenter had lasted 30 years.