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Vale Tim Bowden AM

05 September 2024

Broadcaster, journalist, oral historian and author Tim Bowden – who died on Sunday aged 87 – had a long and storied relationship with the Australian War Memorial.

Tim Bowden and David Brill at the launch of Action! Film & War in Launceston, 2024.

Tim Bowden and David Brill at the launch of Action! Film & War in Launceston, 2024.

Photographer: Carmencita Palermo, Courtesy of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery

Bowden grew up in Hobart, Tasmania and after graduating from university headed to the UK where he worked as a producer and radio interviewer for the BBC. After three years, he returned to Tasmania to join the ABC, going on to work for the broadcaster for the majority of his journalistic career. During the 1960s he was a foreign correspondent based in Singapore. He went on to cover the Vietnam War, contributed to well-known ABC radio and television programs including PM, This Day Tonight and Backchat, and established the social history unit at Radio National.  

Collection Item C1209321

Accession Number: P05958.001

Tim Bowden (right) and his US Marine Corp body guard in Vietnam, 1966.

Photographer: Serge Broussard, P05958.001

Collection Item C2735926

Accession Number: AWM2020.493.1.38

Tim Bowden, Neil Davis and Bill Pinwill in Singapore, 1966. AWM2020.493.1.38

His fingerprints are present throughout the Memorial’s collection. He conducted over 120 oral histories in the Memorial’s collection – some as an interviewer for the Keith Murdoch Sound Archive, others from his own research, including projects such as of Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon and Changi Photographer (instrumental in bringing the photographs and images of George Aspinall to light).  He was vital in bringing fellow Tasmanian journalist Neil Davis’s personal objects and collection into the Memorials care after Davis was killed in 1985, and donated the research, recordings and photographs that went into the writing of his biography of Davis’s One Crowded Hour.

Tim Bowden donating his research for One Crowded Hour to the Memorial in 1993.  Hans Reppin.  PAIU1993/008.12

Tim Bowden donating his research for One Crowded Hour to the Memorial in 1993.

Photographer: Hans Reppin 

Tim Bowden was also a great supporter of the work of the Memorial. He was invited to formally open the exhibition Focus: Photography & War in 2006 and earlier this year was guest speaker in Launceston for Action: Film & War with David Brill. Always ready with a sly one liner or topical anecdote, he was an erudite and compassionate writer, researcher and interviewer. 

Tim at the launch of Focus: Photography and War at the Memorial, 2006.  Steve Burton  PAIU2006.143.03

Tim at the launch of Focus: Photography and War at the Memorial, 2006.

Photographer: Steve Burton

Many of the collections he donated and worked on can be found on the Memorials website and you can listen to a selection of the oral histories he recorded.  

Watch the Interview with Tim Bowden (Frontline out takes)
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Accession Number: F10540

Last updated: 5 September 2024

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