I sat down to an enjoyable afternoon with Peter Russell-Clarke, whom I’ve known for nearly 30 years. Peter is 82 and was born on 19th September, 1935. He has been married to Janet for 58 years, and they have two children and three grandchildren. They live on beautiful farmland about 70km from Melbourne, surrounded by beautiful art and sculptures, many created by Peter.
He started his cartooning career at the age of 14 and commenced work as a professional commercial cartoonist. This evolved into drawing advertisements for many of the major companies in Australia at the time, such as Ford, Shell, Dulux and ICI. For quite a few of these companies, Peter also drew comic strips for their company magazines. At one stage, Peter worked with Vane Lindsay as he did the layout for The Shell Times and Peter drew cartoons. He also drew a strip called Rodney and Ron for Dulux and another called Hendrik and Harry as an education tool for new immigrants for the Department of Immigration.
As a self-employed commercial cartoonist, Peter was always looking for new work. In 1969, he assumed drawing duties on Ben Bowyang for The Herald and drew it for almost ten years. Peter also succeeded cartoonist John Frith, drawing editorial cartoons for The Herald. Following this, he contin-ued to draw and write for Truth before working closely with the new Observer newspaper in Melbourne, among many others around Australia.