Once a cadet reporter on the Cairns Post , Colin Dangaard went on to become a prominent showbiz journalist in America who branched out into selling saddles and associated horse riding gear in a big way . He is shown here on a rearing horse with his dog, Ringo , joining in the fun .
By Peter Simon
I first met Colin when I moved down from Darwin's Northern Territory News in l962 to work as a reporter on the Cairns Post . In those days , he rode a motorbike and his family had a cattle station at Coen on Cape York Peninsula .
At the time, under the heading THE DEAR DEPARTED , there was a list of the many scribes who had worked on The Post over the years- with comments like Bang!, which indicated they had been fired .
There were also doctored cuttings from the syndicated American Chic Young Dagwood comic strip made to show the Cairns Post editor, Reg Sutton, strangling a reporter , identified as a "Pommie bastard ."
The said illegitimate was Phil Wilson , who had worked on the paper.He left because he was fed up with the way it treated news, and used to sling off at The Post on air when he went to a commercial radio station and compiled news bulletins .
Young Colin Dangaard , who had the urge to write romance short stories on the side , left the paper and turned up in New Zealand , where he worked for the Rotorua Post, based in Taupo.
From there, he made contact , before heading for Fiji, with a reference from the New Zealand prime minister , Keith Holyoake , and arranged for me to take up a job on the Rotorua Post .
Over the years , he sent me letters about his travels ,which included a yacht trip fom South Africa to America , where he worked on the Miami Herald, one of the first computer produced papers.
America, he wrote, was an amazing place. Car thieves were so well organised there you could order a replacement front panel for a Cadillac and the crooks would go out and steal the panel or the entire car for you.
He became a syndicated columnist covering Hollywood and showbiz and interviewed the stars on television. Australian journalist Peter Blake , who worked in New York, described Dangaard as "really big time."
At one stage Dangaard lived at Malibu and Larry Hagman, J.R.Ewing in the Dallas television series , was his nextdoor neighbour .
While back in Australia in the late l970s , on assignment for Rupert Murdoch , covering the making of the film The Man From Snowy River , Colin saw Australian made saddles on the set and made the brilliant deduction that they would be popular in America. According to the online Legend of Colin Dangaard:
“A light went on in my head. I felt that movie was going to be a hit, so I went up to Brisbane and placed my first saddle order with Syd Hill and Sons. Len Hill laughed and said I was crazy, that so many people had tried just that, and they all failed. And so too would I.
" Len had seen me on television, interviewing movie stars, and suggested I should stay right there! But I had faith in the success of the movie, and I planned to release the saddles along with the release of the movie. I had also grown tired of the false world that is Hollywood.”
Colin was right. The movie would become the most widely viewed horse movie in history, right behind BLACK BEAUTY. Colin had a new career that was instantly successful, within a year generating millions of dollars in sales of Australian saddles – the first new saddle successfully introduced to America in 300 years.
The thriving business included selling silver-studded , fancy, hand-tooled leather saddles and whips to rich customers.
The following play on Time magazine shows Colin Dangaard billed as the Wizard of the Aussie Saddle . It surfaced after the traumatic four year illness of his wife , her last moments emotionally described . The saddle business was neglected during that period . Picking himself up , Colin , now in his 80s , threw himself back into riding the range on his Aussie saddles .
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(Dangaard, Saddles, Cairns ).
