User:Otherthinker/Peter Charlton

Peter Charlton (3 March 1946—17 May 2007) was an Australian journalist, soldier and military historian.

Early Life and Education
Peter Robert Charlton was born 3 March 1946 in Newcastle, New South Wales. His parents, Allan Victor Charlton and Mavis nee Hall had married in 1941. His father was a train driver for New South Wales Government Railways. Allan and his older brother, Bob (Robert John Charlton), both enlisted in the Australian armed services; Bob died on the Sandakan-Ranau death march.

Peter did his secondary schooling at Newcastle Boys High School. The headmaster of the day, F H Beard, "insisted the students study current affairs, although it was not on the curriculum. It is no coincidence that many students gravitated towards journalism." Within a few years of him were Ross Gittins, Ian Henderson and Peter Cave.

Career
Charlton was briefly a public servant before becoming a journalist. As an author, he specialised as a military historian. He also rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel as a reserve officer commanding a regular unit.

Journalist
Charlton moved to Queensland in 1968 to start work as am economist with the Government of Queensland Treasury Department.

In 1969 he won a finance cadetship with The Telegraph, a Brisbane afternoon tabloid and was made finance editor in 1976.

Charlton was recruited to the Courier-Mail by then editor-in-chief Harry Gordon and in his quarter century career with that paper he was a leader writer, an associate editor, books editor, columnist, feature writer, economic analyst, Canberra correspondent and, finally, from 1996, the national affairs editor and based in Sydney for his last ten years.

Soldier
After a short stint in the Citizens Military Force in Newcastle, he enlisted in the Army Reserve as a public relations officer in 1975. He was soon transferred to the Queensland University Regiment as an infantry officer.

He held command and staff appointments in Brisbane before being appointed second in command of the 49th Battalion, the Royal Queensland Regiment at Wacol. The status of that battalion changed from reserve to being a regular army unit when it was tasked with training members of the Ready Reserve and, as its commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Charlton was a reserve officer commanding a regular unit whilst being a full-time journalist at the Courier-Mail.

Author, Military Historian
In 1978 he gained a Commonwealth Press Union Harry Brittain Memorial Scholarship and he travelled to Oxford, extending his stay with a secondment to The Yorkshire Post. Whilst based in England, he researched his family history and visited European battlefields.

In 1981 he published his first book, The Thirty-Niners, a history of the Second Australian Imperial Force.

1983 saw the first of two editions of State of mind. Subtitled why Queensland is different, it was an account of Queensland under Joh Bjelke-Petersen describing a state "with no heritage legislation, no formal sex education syllabus in schools and one of the highest rates of illegitimacy and venereal disease in Australia. Queensland was a place where 'the virulent right flourishes' and its attitude towards civil rights '... would not be out of place in South Africa or Poland'". In another context, Charlton was later to write: "When I came to live in Queensland in 1968, Brisbane was a big country town. It didn't really begin to change until the 1980s when the Commonwealth Games and Expo opened the local eyes to the possibility of change. In 1983, I published State of Mind -- Why Queensland is Different, a study of politics under Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. It had one huge omission: there should have been a chapter on sport, and the 'chip on the shoulder' attitudes of the locals."

Publications
Books by Peter Charlton
 * The thirty-niners (1981)
 * The unnecessary war : island campaigns of the South-West Pacific 1944-45 (1983)
 * State of mind : why Queensland is different (with cartoons by Alan Moir) (1983; 2nd ed. 1987)
 * Pozieres 1916 : Australians on the Somme (1986)
 * Two flies up a wall : the Australian passion for gambling (1987)
 * War against Japan 1941-1942 (1988)
 * War against Japan, 1942-1945 (1989)
 * South Queensland WWII, 1941-1945 (1991)
 * United Service Club, Queensland : the first century, 1892-1992 (with Murray Adams) (1992)