Dawn Kenyon was on Channel 7’s screens on the very first day the station broadcast in Sydney.
Dawn Kenyon was Australia’s first children’s television producer and one of the first women on Australian television. Despite this auspicious role in television’s early days, Dawn always preferred working in the background to being in the limelight, admitting decades later that “most of my friends have no idea that I was ever connected with television”.
She also produced shows for the remote Queensland community and promoted these with hand-painted posters.Young Dawn learned piano from an early age with the Sisters of St Joseph in the Convent next door. She quickly became an accomplished pianist, providing music for her mother’s shows. With no high school in Mount Isa at the time, Dawn’s continuing education involved 72-hour-long train journeys between Mount Isa and the family’s home town of Toowoomba.
In Adelaide, Dawn was introduced by comedian and wartime entertainer Jimmy Tonkin to broadcaster Eric Pearce, then 5KA station manager. After the meeting, Eric told Jim: “I am so impressed with that young lady I’m going to offer her a job. I don’t know where to put her, but I have to find a place for her.” And he did, with Dawn working as a scriptwriter and record librarian, as well as occasional station accompanist, for two years.
Soon after the wedding, which attracted Sydney media attention, they set sail for Britain. Fred returned to work at Marconi’s Chelmsford headquarters, while the British Broadcasting Corporation pursued Dawn for an on-camera job thanks to her valuable television experience, which was rare in those early days of broadcasting.But she declined the offer, choosing instead to be a wife and soon becoming a mother to their first child, Steven, born in 1960.
Outside family, Dawn volunteered with the Merry Makers. This unique troupe, most of whom live with an intellectual or physical disability, meet each week to rehearse and perform through dance. This tapped into Dawn’s passion to help others connect through the power of music and she remained a volunteer with the organisation for 25 years.
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