Chance opened the door for Bert Hinchliffe to become a newspaper reporter and eventually the patriarch of a four-generation dynasty of editors in Australia and overseas.

Albert Thomas Hinchliffe (1901-1993), the son of a timber-getter and farmer, studied some tertiary subjects privately, and became known as a skilled shorthand writer even though he was not a reporter.

Rockhampton had two daily newspapers, the Morning Bulletin (est. 1861) and the Daily Record (originally the Northern Argus, 1863).

When the Premier of Queensland, E.G. Theodore, visited Rockhampton in 1921 to address a night-time meeting, the Daily Record reporter who was to cover the event fell ill. The editor called on Hinchliffe to fill the gap and his report so impressed him that next day he offered him a job. For the next 21 years he worked on one or other of the two dailies while they underwent changes: The Record (renamed the Evening News in 1922) was acquired by the Dunn family, owners of the Bulletin, in July 1929. The Dunns transferred Hinchliffe to the Bulletin as chief of staff in 1930.

At the Toowoomba Chronicle, Alan Dunn, sub-editor, had seemed destined to succeed his father, managing editor W.H.A. Dunn, but died on March 11, 1942. Seven months later, the Dunns transferred Hinchliffe to Toowoomba as sub-editor, next in seniority to associate editor Martin Luther Reading who he succeeded the following year. By the time he was officially appointed editor in 1951, he had filled the role for five years while Dunn was in Brisbane.

A brash daily formed by four former Brisbane journalists, the Darling Downs Star gave Hinchliffe’s editorial team “direct and severe competition” from July 1955, but later became a free paper and after his retirement 1969, merged with the Chronicle.

Hinchliffe was known for his integrity and ethics, strongly defending the principle of publishing all sides of a story. He told me his proudest achievement as editor was to establish a model system for training cadets and other young journalists. Among the journalists who came under his influence early in their careers were such editors as Evan Whitton (National Times), Pat Hinton (Melbourne Herald), and Greg Chamberlin and David Smith (both Courier-Mail).

Grandson Mark Hinchliffe, who edited the Queensland Times in the 1990s, remembers another side of his grandfather – as boxing coach. “Something must have rubbed off on my brother David and me,” says Mark, “because we were reasonably capable boxers at New Farm State School, despite being two of the skinniest kids in the playground.”

Mark remembers visiting ‘Pa” in his office, and how he would mouth the words of the stories as he read them, meticulously picking out the ambiguities, grammatical mistakes and errors of fact. "Then, some years later, I recall him going over my editorials with the same enthusiasm, still mouthing the words as he read – and still picking out the errors!”

When Bert retired in 1969, his only son Bruce, won the editorship from a national field of 20 applicants. Born at Rockhampton in 1935, Bruce Daniel Hinchliffe was warned by his father that journalism was a difficult road to follow. Disregarding this advice, Bruce became a cadet journalist at the Chronicle in 1952, his first week’s pay packet containing £5 ($10); at the time his father was being paid £21 11s ($43.10) as editor.

In 1964, Hinchliffe won a Commonwealth Press Union scholarship to join a Thomson Foundation journalism course in Cardiff, Wales. On his return, he served as chief of staff of the Chronicle, leaving in 1966 to spemd seven months on the Hong Kong Star before joining the Courier-Mail, Brisbane, where he worked until August 1968. He rejoined the Chronicle and applied for the editor’s position when his father decided to retire on August 30, 1969. Hinchliffe said the Chronicle was not “a thunderer” during his editorship, but he was proud of how strongly it campaigned in the mid-1990s for the banning of pit bull terriers after one mauled to death a Toowoomba woman.



The third-generation Hinchliffe editor, Mark, was born in Toowoomba on April 4, 1957, and was educated mostly at strate schools in Toowoomba, before studying English literature and economics at University of Queensland, “foolishly tossing it in” during his final semester”. Casual photographic and reporting work led to a journalism cadetship at the Chronicle in late 1978. Two years later he spent a year in England writing freelance articles for travel and music publications.

On returning to Australia he worked as a sports sub-editor at the Telegraph in its final days, in the office of a federal MP, and as a casual sub-editor at the Toowoomba Chronicle and Ipswich’s Queensland Times before landing a permanent subbing position at the latter. He served as day sub, reporter and relief chief sub until June 1986 when he was appointed chief of staff. He became the editor of the Queensland Times on February 7, 1992. Hinchliffe left the Queensland Times’ editorship in August 1999 to join the Courier-Mail as a sub-editor before becoming motoring editor for ten years from August 2002. He is now a freelance motorbike and travel writer for several magazines, as well as his blog, motorbikewriter.com.

A fourth-generation Hinchliffe editor emerged early in 2013 when Joe Hinchliffe was named editor of the first English online news sites in Chile, The Santiago Times. Born in 1987, Joseph Sexton Hinchliffe was a son of Mark’s elder brother, David. Armed with an Arts degree from UQ – including a year’s study in Vancouver – he visited Chile to teach English at a private institute, his Spanish not being good enough for him to work as a journalist. In late 2011, he became one of a succession of interns at the Times, coinciding with the height of the Chilean student movement. “It was really exciting stuff,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands of young people marching in the streets with bands and costumes; political debates raged at parties and on street corners; an air of profound change and awakening, and also a sense of surprise – nobody saw it coming.”

Hinchliffe was offered paid employment and soon progressed to the editorship with the independently owned publisher. “It turns a profit via contracts with private companies and government agencies who want a social media and online presence. Our journalists divide their time between managing these accounts and writing news for the Santiago Times. But under no circumstances is the journalistic integrity of the paper called into question,” he says.

As many as 20 intern reporters – mostly expats on four-month stints – may be working on the paper on any given day.