The Loss of a Champion

Robert Graham Engisch (1944-2011)

Northern Tasmania and The Examiner have lost one of their champions with the death of Robert Graham (Bob) Engisch, a long time senior journalist with the newspaper. He died on September 3 at the age of 67.

Bob was the son of Nell and the late Bert Engisch, a former doctor at Scottsdale, and brother of Elizabeth and Helen. In 1947 the family moved to Launceston and members still live at the family home in Lanoma St. He attended Launceston Church Grammar School from kindergarten until finishing Year 12 in 1961.

On leaving school Bob went to the North-Eastern Advertiser at Scottsdale as its sole journalist before joining The Examiner.

He married Helen Lancaster in 1965. After working in London, he returned to The Examiner and became its senior reporter in the late 60s, a role that inevitably included keeping the pressure on the Launceston City and St Leonards councils and local politicians.

Bob was also responsible for producing the paper’s annual supplements (Tas 69, Tas 70, etc). Bob set out, wrote and subbed the lot. Examiner man Julian Burgess recalls that, when he went out to the composing room to check progress, the compositors would sing to him “There’ll always be an Engisch” because they could always rely on him to do a professional job.

Bob was a stalwart of the Australian Journalists’ Association, serving as northern Tasmanian secretary and was instrumental in their adoption of new technology in the industry in the 1970s.

In this period he was a well-known voice for the interests of northern Tasmania.

In 1978 he joined the State Government as a press secretary, working with local Bass Labor Minister Michael Barnard. After the Government fell in 1982 he pursued a freelance photojournalism career in Hobart, specialising in tourism, working closely with Federal Hotels and Wrest Point casino.

Bob had a long association with Tasmanian Country and also wrote for The Australian.

His McGregor Street, Battery Point home became a forum for political and tourism discourse for more than 25 years, a role that gave rise to his label “The Battery Point Society for the Preservation of the Finer Things in Life”. In reality, of course, it was a Friday afternoon long lunch, attended by a motley crew of politicians, journalists and tourism types.

Bob’s freelancing career was marked by his early adoption of the Apple Mac. In 1985 he bought his first Mac, which had a whole 128Ks of grunt and was augmented by a single floppy disk drive and the first modem we had ever seen, a device so slow you could almost see each letter being transmitted.

Bob stayed loyal to Apple Macs while the rest of us were seduced by PCs and now we’re back in the fold.

Bob leaves a great legacy to Tasmania, a legacy of his words, his pictures and his personality.

He leaves son David, daughter Alison, their partners Kylie and Stuart, and grandchildren Oliver, Phoebe and Emma. His former wife Helen died in 2004.

Written for and published in The Examiner, September 20