Channel Nine's Peter Hitchener: making news for more than two decades

Peter Hitchener could have commanded a gala event to celebrate his recent 75th birthday, but it speaks to the humble heart of this much-loved newsreader that his wish was to mark the occasion simply, just a cake shared with his Channel Nine family.

After almost a year of working in an iso-bubble, a firewall to protect him from COVID-19, “Hitch”, as he is lovingly known, couldn’t wait to be back in the newsroom, relishing every opportunity to catch up with his team.

“I missed them all terribly. The newsroom was separated into teams,” he says. “I wasn’t allowed into the newsroom at all during the lockdowns. I was only allowed to go from my dressing room, to the make-up room and the studio.

“It worked well because we all stayed healthy but I’m a people person and it was very strange to come to work and not have contact with anyone.”

Now that life has returned to something resembling normal, Hitchener is sipping a long black in the studios of Channel Nine, shadowed by towering buildings and the industrial architecture that drapes Melbourne’s Docklands precinct.

It’s not lost on the iconic newsreader, who’s been coming into our homes every weeknight since 1998, that he’s a long way from Texas, the remote Queensland border town where he grew up.

“We are a very long way from Texas!” he laughs. “As I was growing up in the outback, I never imagined I’d doing something like this. I think I’m incredibly lucky; I love my job, I just adore it and it’s a real gift to find the thing you love to do in life.”

Hitchener was raised on a cattle and sheep farm that ran alongside the Dumaresq river. He has fond memories of his quintessential Australian outback childhood, “of floods, fire and all of the drama that came with living in the bush”.

“My sister and I loved it when the creeks flooded because we couldn’t go to school,” he recalls. “We’d have a few weeks at home while the water subsided. We thought it was terrific.”

By the tender age of 12, he’d outgrown the town’s one-teacher primary school and was off to boarding school in Brisbane. Unwittingly, he’d already developed a love and respect for the news.

“I grew up listening to the news, it was a big presence in our lives. There was no television back then and the newspapers were only delivered a couple of times a week but the ABC radio was on all the time because it really was an essential service to keep track of what was going on. I can’t really remember a time when the news wasn’t part of my life.”

While still at school, his talents for capturing an audience’s attention caught the eye of the National Institute of Dramatic Art, to which he was offered a coveted acting scholarship, but he rejected the offer, instead taking a job in the newsroom of radio 4BH Brisbane, and found his calling.

“I was home,” he says.

Now very much a Melbourne institution, at 75, he shows no signs of slowing down.

“I never think about age, and how long I keep going is really up to the audience. I’m not sure if the company has a ruling about chubby geriatrics,” he quips with his notoriously self-deprecating sense of humour. “It really is about the audience and if the ratings are terrible, I’ll be gone, but I have no plans to retire.

“One of the first people I met when I came to work in Melbourne in 1974 was Sir Eric Pearce, who I adored. I’m not sure how old he would’ve been then, but he seemed quite old with his distinguished hair and that wonderful voice – I’m probably older now than he was then!

“Age is such a state of mind; I don’t feel any different to how I did when I first began. I honestly think you only get ‘old’ if you don’t continue to engage and embrace life – that’s what makes you old.”

Perhaps one of the best tools Hitchener has found for keeping young is social media. He has embraced Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat in a way that would put his younger colleagues to shame, with more than 60,000 followers enjoying his thoughtful and positive posts, which reflect the zest for life and love of Melbourne for which he is known.

“Hitch is such a positive force in our newsroom, he’s a great mentor for colleagues young and old,” says Hugh Nailon, Nine’s Melbourne news director. “He is the embodiment of a living legend; so much so we named our newsroom after him. We actually have a plaque which simply acknowledges he is ‘the nicest man in television’.

“You don’t remain at the top of your game for four decades merely by being a good bloke. Behind the friendly demeanour is a fierce competitiveness and commitment to professionalism that drives his success and we’re enormously proud that he presents our hard work every night.”

NINE NEWS \ Nightly at 6pm.