Joan Seppings (nee Webster) OAM

Joan (Seppings) Webster, OAM, Storyteller

Video: https://www.facebook.com/whitehorsemanninghamlibraries/videos/1302942993129106/





Joan Webster, OAM, has shared stories from our local history for many years.

"I first came to Doncaster when it was just turning from orchards
into suburbs in 1959. There was no water, no electricity. 
So I started my campaign — writing letters to Council, to have water,
the gutters cleaned, to have proper street signs. The editor of the local newspaper came around and said, ‘You can write. You can take photos. How about you be our correspondent?'" 
The marvellous Joan Webster OAM is one of ten local #Storymakers we thank during Australian Heritage Week 2017. She shares her story in this video and in a special edition booklet available at our libraries or at http://www.wml.vic.gov.au/Thank_the_Story_Makers

Fruits of their labours : orchard empire to urban affluence : a folk history of Doncaster

Webster, Joan Katherine 2012, Fruits of their labours : orchard empire to urban affluence : a folk history of Doncaster, Freelance Features, Castlemaine, Vic

Need permission to put excerpts/ full text on website.

Joan publishes pictures and extracts from her book on Facebook

Joan Seppings/ Webster - Document Collection - DTHS Archives

  • DTHS Archive Boxes. Received 2017 from Manningham Library:
    • DD20 = Doncaster East Bus Service Survey 1965; Bus service questionnaires 1964-5; Part 2 of Bus Survey Files
    • DD21-A = Document Box Labelled: Joan (Seppings) Webster.... Community Service Files 1963-2017 Section 1 Needs Scanning
    • DD21-B Document Box Labelled: Joan (Seppings) Webster.... Community Service Files 1963-2017 Section 2 Needs Scanning
    • DD21-C Document Box Labelled: Joan (Seppings) Webster.... Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe Community Controversies - Selected Community Service Contribution: Safety and Development 1964-1995. Needs Scanning
    • DD21-D Document Box Labelled: Joan (Seppings) Webster.... Misc Documents & Press Clippings. Scanned (Stephen Digby July2022) 
      • See Extracted booklet: "Koonung-Mullum Forestway not freeway ! (1989)"
      • See Extracted Text: "DD21-D Joan (Seppings) Webster. Misc Documents & Press Clippings"
    • DD21-E Digital Files supplied on USB in Folder:  Selected Files Doncaster Community Service 1959-1978

  • DTHS Bound Blue Folios of Newspaper Clippings and other writing.  Received 2023 from Manningham Library (see entry in Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/38626909):
    • DN2023-05-28B-01 Folio Index to Doncaster Folios 1965-1993 (LQ print. Hard to OCR)
    • DN2023-05-28B-02 Folio Newspaper Articles Byways YesterYear (Scanned 2023) (HelperSteD needs to name all images/ use google to OCR/ copy OCR to website as temporary placeholder/ copy OCR to google docs for a Helper to proofread against original scan) 
    • DN2023-05-28B-03 Folio Doncaster East Yarra News Oct1965-Dec1971  (Needs Scanning)
    • DN2023-05-28B-04 Folio Doncaster Mirror 1972-1975 News (Needs Scanning)
    • DN2023-05-28B-05 Folio Doncaster Mirror Highlights of the Week 1972-1980  (Needs Scanning)
    • DN2023-05-28B-06 History Folio Misc Doncaster Features 1966-1978 (Scanned June2023) (HelperSteD needs to name all images/ use google to OCR/ copy OCR to website as temporary placeholder/ copy OCR to google docs for a Helper to proofread against original scan) 

About Joan Webster OAM

Joan Webster OAM (bn. 1929) has probably done more than any other private individual to raise public awareness of bushfire safety and help make people and their homes safer during bushfires. These letters from readers of her bushfire safety books, extracted and selected from many more, are testament to their appreciation and affection.
Two decades of campaigning to have authorities promote bushfire safety information for the public had been frustrating. In the mid-1960s she urged her local municipal Council to send copies of the only existing Victorian Country Fire Authority bushfire safety information for the public, a small booklet "Summer Peril", to residents of its bush-clad ward Warrandyte: but nothing was done. In the late 1960s she campaigned to the Australian Counter Disaster College at Mt Macedon, urging less bias on preparedness for hypothetical nuclear attacks and more for the real annual attacks of bushfire: but received no reply.
Still in the 1980s very little bushfire safety information was published by authorities: Victoria has a small booklet Summer Peril, aimed at those on the land; NSW had only a one-sheet, A4 flier. Two days before the catastrophic 1983 Ash Wednesday fires of February 1983, when 76 people and more than 300,000 animals died and more than 3,000 buildings were destroyed in Victoria and South Australia, Joan Webster hand-delivered a letter to Victorian Premier John Cain, urging him to put out more bushfire safety information, as a disaster seemed imminent. He would not see her.
Two weeks later, she knew she would have to do it herself. Urged by her daughter Katherine Seppings, who at the time lived in a very vulnerable location on a small, tumble-town farm in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges ‘to write a book on bushfire safety....for people like her’, she began work on The Complete Australian Bushfire Book because she because she ‘couldn’t bear it that people had suffered needlessly, simply for lack of knowledge’. It took her three and a half years. Researching, checking every word, idea and innovation with every authority involved; without any grant or sponsorship, all the while battling financial hardship and multiple serious health issues.
Joan had been a campaigner since girlhood. Learning bushfire safety preparedness as a Girl Guide, she put out her first fire when aged 11; was presented at Government House Victoria aged 13, for services to the Girl Guide Movement; as a budding journalist in her early 30s she liaised each summer with Warrandyte CFA to report on bushfires and safety. As a journalist from the early 1960s through to 2014 she crusaded on many issues and had a reputation for ‘getting things done’. And she continued campaigning and ‘getting things done’ until her late 80s.
In 1990 Joan received the Australian Fire Protection Association Community Safety Award and in 2010 the Order of Australia Medal.
Her work is acclaimed by Australian & overseas fire authorities and credited by these and householders alike to have helped save lives and homes; fire and emergency authorities
and government departments throughout Australia use her books as a resource; the Country Fire Authority, Victoria and Country Fire Service, South Australia, have used The Complete Bushfire Safety Book for training their officers.
The ground-breaking The Complete Australian Bushfire Book, published in 1986 by Thomas Nelson, caused a revolution in bushfire safety when first published in 1986. Dubbed ‘the Bible’ of bushfire safety, it was acknowledged the most comprehensive and authoritative book on the subject: the definitive work. Short-listed for the BHP Pursuit of Excellence Award 1987, ini989 it was updated in and republished by Viking O’Neil and in 2000 updated again for a 3rd edition, and published by Random House as The Complete Bushfire Safety Book
The ready reference Essential Bushfire Safety Tips (Random House 2001; CSIRO 2008, 2012), sets out every known safety and danger fact in dot point one-liners for quick information location and easy reading. The Country Fire Authority, Victoria officially endorsed it as ‘Truly an outstanding achievement and a book that certainly could help save lives within the community’.
A large proportion of familiar standard bushfire safety recommendations in official publications originated with Joan Webster. These include: the family bushfire safety plan, actions lists of what to do at various stages of bushfire threat, the personal Survival Kit, how to shelter safely, the need for a ‘Plan B’, special needs of children and the frail, care of pets, travelling and holiday safety, the potential dangers of community refuges, safety for precious possessions and protective window shutters.
Her ground-breaking analysis of the stay-go dilemma following helped shape official
policy. And in 1988 her campaign for better bushfire safety for schools resulted in a new
and unprecedented initiative unique to Australia. Codes of Practice for Victorian schools
in fire hazard areas were formulated and published, and the first specially constructed
school bushfire shelters in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges.
Joan Webster’s first profession was nursing. She has written for print, radio, stage and television media; in fiction, non-fiction, poetry and song lyrics, as a children’s writer, TV dramatist, folk historian, political biographer, receiving wide reviewer and reader acclaim.
In the mid-1950s she was well known as a song writer and satirist: writing talks, comedy sketches and lyrics for stage, radio and television. During this period, her lyrics for at least 100 songs were performed in theatre, on radio and television, and were frequent prize winners of ABC radio’s These Are Our Songs. A number were commercially recorded. In the 1970s, her talent for satire diverted to newspaper and radio features. ABC radio’s prestigious program Scope dubbed her ‘Melbourne’s resident iconoclast’.
She has received three awards for journalism, and has one fiction, five non-fiction books, and a poetry chapbook published, with won several awards for poetry. In 2017 two poems from Summoning the Whirlwind (MPU 2016), were set to music by internationally renowned composer, conductor, pianist and harpsichordist, Roger Heagney OAM.

Source:  DD21-D Joan (Seppings) Webster. Misc Documents & Press Clippings.  Author Unknown. Among Documents relating to 1971 Award.

The Modern Pioneers 

Needs proofreading. 

In 1959 a young couple bought a housing block for £800 in East Doncaster on what had been W. Sydney Williams’ orchard. The earth flowed in waves, where parallel ridges of mounded earth, like bare gums, showed where rows of lemon trees had recently been extracted. One lone small fruit tree clung tenaciously to give witness to the past life of its land; white heath grew around. The clay roads, footpaths and gutters were formed but not sealed, there was no water laid on, no sewerage, no gas, no electricity, no bus service along nearby Blackburn Road, and no phone. But it had a view southwards over bushland bordering the Koonung Creek to take in orchard blossom in Blackburn North; the contours of Box Hill could be seen to the south west; and to the south east, the lights of Mitcham. In the east, the blue silhouette of the Dandenongs stood out sharply and in the north-west distance could be glimpsed the monolith of Mount Macedon. Bellbirds tinkled. It was perfect.
The old Elder farm house still stood opposite the nearby Beverley Hills Primary School, on levelled orchard land that became the Rosella Street shops. In its opening year, 1959, the young man had become its sixth grade teacher, and to be able to walk to work was an added inducement.
Many parts of the shire were worse off, with no formed streets at all - houses sprouting like mushrooms in virtual paddocks. Their experiences in the next, developmental, decade mirror those of their contemporaries.
In September 1959, theirs was first house to go up in the subdivision bounded by Leeds, Maxia/Baratta Streets, Blackburn Road and Boronia Grove developed by real estate agent T. M. Burke. The brave little fruit tree died the week the new suburbanites moved in.
This was only fourteen years after the end of World War 2. Returning soldiers getting married and wanting homes, a shortage of building supplies and qualified builders, had led the State Building Directorate to set a house size limit of fourteen squares. One of the most popular features of the Age newspaper was The Age Small Homes Service, high priest of which was architect Neil Clerehan. Young couples poured over its house plans and ideas, all of which were within the fourteen square limit. Run in conjunction with the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, , the service’s Modem Homes Folder contained twenty four house plans: three one-bedroom, fifteen two-bedroom and six three-bedroom designs. This couple’s house was of ten squares ‘able to be extended’. Costing £2,750 pounds (brick veneer would have cost £3,000).
Starting small and extending was encouraged by a pervading advertising slogan: ‘Don’t move, improve!’. And so the modest ‘boxes’ of Doncaster’s modem pioneers became the core of more spacious homes, as had Friedensruh 's original cottage.
The young ‘housewife’, as married women were patronizingly called in that era, had been published in poetry children’s stories and, with her husband, won awards and acclaim as ‘Australia’s first husband-and-wife song writing team Joan and Edgar Seppings, writing comedy, songs and satire, for stage and television and recordings. Now all she wanted to do was start a home and family.
The lack of local facilities set her off on a course that would take her from poet and
satirist to letter-writing campaigner to crusading journalist, to acclaimed author honoured by the queen ‘for service to the community
The absence of electricity in the street sparked her first campaign. Gas had been connected in early 1959, the then Gas & Fuel Corporation, in competition with electricity, keen to have its supply in the burgeoning new estates. Doncaster and Templestowe Electric Supply had quoted £40 per pole for 13 poles to extend electricity to their block from the last connected house in Devon Drive: £520. She persuaded council’s Rate Department to disclose contact details for the thirty intervening lot owners and wrote suggesting that putting in £17 each would ensure an extended supply that would increase the value of their land while facilitating building of her own house. By this time a house had started across the road and Herta Kasner joined in the campaign. It took ten months, by which time both houses were finished - every inch built by hand tools. The power was connected the day the house was completed. Two years later, Doncaster and Templestowe Electric Supply refunded the money.
Next was pestering subdividers and the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (M.M.B.W) for reticulated water. That was extended much quicker - before building started.
Streets in the area had no signs. She wrote to council requesting one: ‘... so that visitors could find them.’ Shire Secretary Jack Thomson replied:
‘The council does not have a sign-writer on its staff.’
Within six weeks a sign guided visitors to their appropriate hosts; street lighting took longer. A lengthy battle to have the telephone extended succeeded in 1962 following a joint effort with residents of St Clems Road and Councillor Gerry Grimwade (whose wife Brenda became first director of Doncare).
The early Doncaster pioneers had a name for inventiveness; the ‘modem pioneers’ also worked out how to help themselves and their neighbours. Until 1967, when East Doncaster’s private streets were properly constructed, the flooded, rutted, dusty roads were a constant problem for residents. Road gradients were often very poorly aligned, so that culverts on one side of bends could be more than half a metre higher than on that on the other. When it rained, the higher culvert could not drain, and water flowed over the road. Deep, unmade gutters had only makeshift crossings from road to house, usually planks put across by the resident. Boronia Grove and its immediate neighbour streets were part of this general pattern. Impassable to the growing group of pram-pushing young mothers forced to hire taxis when they could not get through to the hourly Blackburn Road bus.
Weekend working bees were common communal chore: clearing culverts and gutters, pooling money to buy screenings, spreading it on the road surface, erecting homemade signs to stop trucks driving using them, and ‘DRIVE SLOWLY’ signs to cut down dust. As more people moved in and more cars mtted the road surface, more working bees were needed. Constants in the small group of Boronia Grove self-helpers were neighbours Ron Kitchingman (later twice Mayor), Rolf Dewell and John Turner.
In 1962, helped by Ron Booth of Maxia Road (then called Maxim Road), they organized a more ambitious scheme to improve their three adjoining streets. Council had a Temporary Road Construction Plan available to residents: the grading and metal
screening of their roads by council workmen and appliances at residents’ expense. Each household contributed £4 ‘or less’.
The nearest Police Station was in Blackburn. Shooters roamed the Koonung Creek bush and empty paddocks, killing birds, destroying trees and accosting people. Joan drew up a petition to council for ‘NO SHOOTING’ signs, public telephones, and police patrols. Within two months council wrote back that it had instructed the Ranger to patrol the area, the engineer to erect signs, and had ‘drawn the attention of the Police to the matter’. Activism was effective.
It was the social convention of the time that wives did not ‘put themselves forward’ with ideas, letters to authorities or negotiations with officials. Convention required that they ‘let the man appear to have thought of it’ and allow him any public credit. So it transpired that when Joan devised a scheme, composed a petition or wrote a letter to council, Edgar’s signature appeared below. Thus are historical records often illusion, and public images mismade.
It was not until 1964, when she was asked by Cr Russell Hardidge to persuade her husband, because of his ability to ‘see what needed to be done and get them done’ through ‘his’ somewhat offbeat letter writing, and organizing of people, to stand for council, and she had to admit that ‘Well, actually, it was me’, that she realized what confusion this social requirement could cause. From then on, she signed her own letters. Nevertheless, though now asked ardently to stand herself, and be the first woman councillor after Angela Booth (see First Woman Councillor), she believed she could better contribute to the community in other ways.
A road hazard instigated her first campaign under her own name. The intersection of Doncaster and Blackburn Roads was, she believed, a death trap. Buildings obscured vision and badly placed traffic lines guided drivers onto the wrong side of the road. In April 1964, she wrote to council, asking for a roundabout:
‘The prudent driver can only hover in hope, surreptitiously edging forward with one hand over the horn one foot over the brake, and a desperate faith in the value of safety belts' ... Even lights wouldn’t help with the lines as they are. If a roundabout is out of the revenue’s limits, maybe council could spare some petty cash for a pot of paint and eraser.’
Council was sympathetic, but had no powers. It passed the request to the Traffic Commission of the Country Roads Board, which still had charge of Doncaster’s main roads. White lines were painted, but it was not enough. The death of two small children there in a collision finally moved the Commission to realign the intersection and install traffic lights.
Early in 1964, the Beverley Hills State Primary school had constructed a sports’ oval. Its retaining wall on the southern boundary created big problems for mothers pushing prams to the Rosella Street shops, and children walking to school. On their safe short cut via the former gently sloping land of Maxia Park, they were now confronted with a cliff. The children would have to walk on the footpathless busy Blackburn Road. Joan tried to
1 The compulsory wearing of safety belts in motor vehicles was not made law by the Victorian State Parliament until 1980. The legislation came after many years of controversy, during which they had been available, and installed voluntarily by many car owners.
persuade first council, and then the Education Department, to buy a then vacant block of land to the west of the park and construct through it a road to join Maxia Road to Rosella Street. When this failed, she set about thinking of a way over the ‘cliff for the mothers and children living that side of the school. Her first idea of a ramp was discarded when she realized it would be a strain for a woman pushing a pram. So she designed steps, each tread deep enough to rest a large pram on it before being hoisted to the next. Parents in the area rallied to help.
Among them building contractor J. Salamon and carpenter Paul Staggart who advised on quantities of timber, screenings and concrete. Calculating the cost as 4/6 each from forty six ‘creek-side’ families, Joan organized the job. Thirty-six men worked on it 1,080 hours over six working bees.
Effluent drained into the Maxia Road park from a nearby drainage pit and through this, children walked. She asked council to divert a drainage pit, drain the swampy area and construct ‘an all-weather path’. Council instructed the shire engineer to ‘pipe the section of watercourse under the pathway and also to clear the watercourse.’ As for the pathway, the residents were given permission to construct it themselves.
This done, Joan wrote on behalf of the residents:
‘With the approach of summer days, we have begun to think of relaxing in the fruits of our
labours. Our labours in Maxia Road Park. But unfortunately, there is nowhere to relax ...’
The park needed seats, play equipment, and trees. ‘What is a park without seats?’ she wrote, asking for a ‘proper park bench.’ Council requested the shire engineer to ‘buy two concrete seats and place them in the Maxia Road reserve’.
Action was needed to widen Cassowary Street outside the school, and to have CHILDREN CROSSING signs out up in Rosella Street at the bend outside the small side gate opposite the shops. The curve on Rosella Street: had blind spots. Children hurrying across from the school’s side gate to buy lunches at the corner store could not be seen by approaching cars.
At school drop-off and pick-up times, cars travelling west along Cassowary Street from Blackburn Road met cars travelling towards them, and could not pass because outside the school, teachers’ and other cars were parked in the street. Wily mothers warily watched through their windscreens, not leaving Blackburn Road or entering from Rosella Street, until the way was clear. This caused backups behind them. If, once in the ‘strait’, some driver misjudged, it was radiator to radiator and may the most belligerent Mum force the other backwards down the street. On rainy days it was worse. Children darted out between parked cars to their Mum’s car, trucks delivering to the Rosella Street shops getting into the act.
Joan presented motions to the Mothers’ Club to have the school nature strip converted to parking. These would be passed, but action adjourned. Opponents of the idea did not want to lose the nature strip. They would rather experience the bedlam of after-school pick-up time.
So she started acting on her own. One Sunday she went to Cassowary Street with a tape measure, measured the nature strip alongside the school, the road, and a parked car, took measurements of the Rosella Street bend, drew diagrams, telephoned (from the public phone booth) the Traffic Commission and councillors Les Cameron and Russell Hardidge, asking for a meeting with her at the site, obtained their advice that widening
was feasible and would have council support and went home to write a letter. Framed as a motion for the Mothers Club in the form of a submission to the Traffic Commission pointing out the safety issues, the garnered facts, and request for action - all ready for the Mothers Club secretary to sign once passed by the next meeting.
The motion and proposed letter were passed overwhelmingly by the mothers. But the president would not accept this and the secretary would not sign. Next day, she typed a copy of the letter, took it to the secretary’s home, persuaded her as to the correctness of ratifying it with her signature, and hurried off to stamp and post it before the surprised secretary could change her mind and give chase to retrieve it.
In just over a month, the local papers ran the news item ‘Warning Signs to Protect Children’, ‘Road Signs in Rosella Street’. Not long after, the school’s nature strip was replaced with a parallel parking bay; children were picked safely up from the footpath; cars passed each other freely up and down Cassowary Street.
Joan had become a committee member of a number of community organizations, of which she was promptly made their publicity officer. It was at this time that she became aware of the power of the press. Writing to the local newspapers about the achievements and concerns of the organizations opened up a new avenue for campaigns for other community needs. ‘I began to find the newspapers useful ...’she wrote in her journal.
She branched into taking photos and to writing on other subjects that she felt would be of interest to the community, about which she thought it should know, or that something should be done.
In the mid-1960s, birds still heard and seen in the bush by the Koonung Creek included the spotted thrush, grey thrush, spotted pardalote, bell magpie, pied currawong, rosella, king parrot, grass parrot, mudlark, fantail, bellbird, white-naped honeyeater, red and yellow wattlebirds, eastern spinebill, silver-eye, willy wagtail, blue wren, robin, butcher bird, pallid and bronze-wing cuckoo, black-faced cuckoo-shrike, zebra and finch, ground lark, kookaburra, ibis, and the occasional azure kingfisher. Ducks swam in and bred by the creek. But the bush itself was a trackless tangle, infested with blackberries and used for dumping rubbish. A few residents of its nearby streets saw its potential for a beautiful bush walk. In particular, Joan and Edgar, and neighbours Fran and Dick Baxter.
Dick was a Scout Master. When, to Joan’s requests for a clean-up, council replied that it did not have the manpower, Dick and his scouts did it with working bees. By 1965 Joan had persuaded council to transform an effluent-streaked easement that ran to the bush between two Boronia Groves houses, into a concreted access track to the bush walk. In 1968, the group obtained support from the Tree Preservation Society, which surveyed the native flora and fauna, drew up and implemented plans for nature walks.
Land at the western end of the proposed nature walk was flat and open and extended to Leeds Street. Ideal for picnics and passive recreation, but potholed and almost impassable. By 1968 Joan had persuaded council to buy this from the MMBW (Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works), grade and beautify it. No sooner was this achieved, than some councillors discovered it had been zoned Public Purposes instead of Public Open Space, which meant that motels and petrol stations could be built on it - and as it adjoined the (then) future freeway, not a fanciful prospect. Others proposed instead of a tree-studded park, the construction of two football ovals. Urging council against this, Joan encouraged them to realize the nature walk need ‘not to stop there’. Council, she
add instant graciousness all along its border all the way to Camberwell. A fitting frame for a city with the most beautiful natural topography in Melbourne. As cars speed by on the snaking future freeway, passengers will glance Doncasterwards and marvel (as we do now of some older suburbs) at the forethought of a council which, though beset with complex problems of sudden expansion, considered the psychological needs of its people by creating a gentle green buffer from the pace of the world. ’
Persuasive words prevailed. Council passed a resolution that the area not be used exclusively at any one time by any ones sport or other organization, but was to be designated Passive Recreation. This campaign paved the way for the administrative thinking that led to the ten kilometres long Koonung Creek Linear Park.
Buses servicing Doncaster and East Doncaster ran only hourly, seldom to time, lacked ventilation and were dangerously overcrowded. Some carried three times their capacity. In peak times, passengers were hanging out the doors, with even children forced to ride on the step. The Templestowe school bus notoriously packed one hundred and two children into a thirty-two-seater. Timetables were impossible to obtain.
‘Totally inadequate,’ slated the East Doncaster Progress Association, and formed a committee. In April, 1964, Edgar was appointed Convenor of a Public Transport Survey. Joan set to work. She devised questionnaires to gauge community complains and needs. Edgar foot-slogged, letterboxing five hundred households. The rest of the committee evaporated. Joan phoned, photographed, wrote, collated, analyzed, authored and presented to the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board, a thirty thousand word report.
‘Even with cattle there is a legal limit to the loading on any given truck. They have more protection in this way than M&MTB bus travellers. And these, being transported in the open air, at least have the benefit of good air flow,’ said the prologue.
‘Bus service improvements are not justified,’ replied the MMTB: ‘This is the age of the motor car’.
‘It is also the age of the second mortgage, hire purchase, and sprawl development at great distance from amenities. Therefore it should also be the age of convenient public transport,’ was the rejoinder.
The report asked that the number of standing passengers be limited to half that of the seating. City-bound Warrandyte and Donvale buses ran hourly in tandem along Doncaster Road should have their timetables staggered so that one ran each half hour.
Melbourne daily newspapers took up the cause. The Tramways union joined in, linking driver dissatisfaction to that of passengers. The survey was ‘a positive blow in bringing forward public transport problems in rapidly expanding areas,’ said Secretary Clarrie O’Shea
In March 1965, Minister of Transport Mr Meagher forwarded the response of MMTB Chairman Major General Risson:
‘My Board has made every endeavour to meet the most pressing transport needs of the area, and with alterations made or pending since the survey was made, is now doing so.’
In June, 1965, Doncaster would get a new fleet of thirty-two ‘of the finest city buses in Australia’; overcrowding would be relieved by additional trips; extra buses would serve Templestowe High School, peak hour on Doncaster Road, and a twelve-minute morning peak service from East Doncaster to Blackburn station; bus routes would be an extended; and timetables be posted in bus shelters and issued to shopkeepers. Doncaster Road timetables would be rearranged so that buses ran ‘an even 30 minute service’.
It had taken a year.
Joan still campaigned under the social conditioning that said matters are given more attention if they appear to come from a man. News reports, and correspondence attributed her ideas words, and work to her husband.
In late January 1965 she found that following Public Works Department operations at East Doncaster Primary School, outdoor drinking taps had not been replaced and that where it had uprooted great trees, large holes gaped dangerously.
East Yarra News editor Eric Wicks had just come back from holidays, with no news and no ideas - and there was this story and a pile of photos on his desk. He ran the stories: Open drain Through Schoolground and Seven Taps for 340 Pupils.
She received a phone call that would turn her life: ‘You know everything that is going on. You have contacts in council and in organizations. You take good photographs (she had just won a photographic contest with that paper) and you can write. How would you like to be a paid news correspondent?’ Two cents a published line and $5 a photo. That was the beginning of a career in journalism.
Eric Wickes was a stereotypical editor. He wore an eye shade, sleeves held up with metal cuffs, and he drank like a fish. But he knew journalism. And with unrelenting guidance, turned the creative poet and satirist into a sharp-writing reporter. Her stories progressed to important issues and within a few years won the first of a number of journalistic awards. In 1971 she moved to Standard Newspapers’ Doncaster Mirror and full journalistic status.
She was neither dynamo nor super woman. Hampered by frequent bouts of ill health, and so lacking in confidence that before telephoning a councillor or other authority, had to take a dose of sal volatile2 to settle her nervousness. Determination and perseverance made up for these constraints. She had to bring to notice what people needed to know and get done what needed to be done. She wrote, photographed, badgered.
Sought-after for community functions, she ‘wore two hats’: as ratepayer and as reporter/photographer, dressed in her ball gown or luncheon-best, juggling notebook and pencil and camera. Footsteps on the gravel drive at 17 Boronia Grove on weekends frequently turned out to be shire councillors and organization committee members coming to tell of their concerns and their news, and wanting her ‘way with words’ to put it in the paper.
She wrote prolific news reports, and a ‘personal comment’ column, exposed local municipal and business malpractice, ran crusades for community health and safety. She
2 An old-fashioned reviver and nerve settler with an ammonium carbonate base.
collected oral histories from elderly descendants of Doncaster pioneers, wrote extensively on the folk history of the shire, instigated the Historical Society and helped in the formation of the municipal Civil Defence for Bushfire. (See Out of the Ashes).
Her news reporting had a reputation for ‘getting things done’. Prominent among these were the ‘Depot Storm Splits City,’ ‘Strap sale Evil’, ‘Road Test a Licence to Kill’.
In February 1968, council had advertised to borrow $200,000 (approximately $10 million today) over forty years to purchase twenty two acres on which to build an engineering works’ depot on prime residential land. Cr Doug White was troubled about the financial repercussions for ratepayers. He turned to Joan for help. No building had started, but some lots had already been purchased by hopeful homebuilders, ratepayers who lived elsewhere. None of these future households knew anything about it. This was the aspect that bothered Joan.
She suggested a news item should be run on it, but the new editor (Eric Wickes had moved on) was dismissive: the shire had no depot; it needed one; forget any campaign.
Photographs of the existing depot were vital to persuade the editor to run with it. But the depot was high on a cliff and nestled behind trees. Doug White took her to a higher hill. They climbed, the camera clicked, the pictures proved the scheme’s supporters wrong, the stories rolled. Her series of news reports triggered a municipal referendum which successfully reversed council’s decisions. (See Depot Storm Splits City).
About to go into hospital for a major operation, she was reading the newspaper in bed when she came across a mail order advertisement offering local parents a surreptitious form of child abuse. Split-tailed leather straps. Offered with instructions on how to inflict the strap but avoid detection. Too ill to go out to do interviews, she wrote off an order for his strap, picked up her bedside phone, persuaded a Post Office official in the interests of child safety to give the man’s address, informed the police and wrote the story the day before going into hospital. The perpetrator was successfully prosecuted.
Local driving instructor Keith Wall had come to her, troubled that driving license candidates could go through a red light during their test and still gain the licence. For seven years she and Keith persisted with this campaign, he providing her with vital documentation. Her articles were tabled in Parliament by local MLA Morris Williams and the laws changed.
Readers wrote ‘'Could she be persuaded to stand for Parliaments ‘May God lead Joan Seppings Webster to do great things for Australia!' Another pledged $100 towards the cost of reprinting an article so that it could be ‘put into the letterboxes of all Australians’.
The many causes about which she wrote in over thirty years of freelance journalism were never to her ‘just a good story’. They mattered to her. Most were followed up by private campaigning to parliamentarians and authorities - with copies of her articles, with letters, phone calls and in person.
Joan and Edgar divorced in 1974. This brought up a name dilemma. To continue using a married name when no longer married (then very much the custom) seemed to her illogical. But this was her well-known byline. Nevertheless, she went back to her own name, at first joining the two.
Left with two children to raise with no financial support, bills to pay and the house to buy back, she took on more and more work. Within two years her health broke down. She continued to do interviews from bed by phone, typewriter on lap, but a collapse followed by serious eye and heart problems and easy exhaustion curtailed hard-hitting
journalism. She made use of her extensive local history research and began the series ‘Byways of Local History’ and ‘Yesteryear’, of which this book is their reincarnation.
In 1972, because of her accurate and sensitive reporting of Warrandyte bushfires, she became the only reporter to have been invited by Warrandyte CFA brigade to travel with them on their units to the fire front. Bushfire preparedness and safety was just one amongst the many subjects on which Joan crusaded in her newspaper columns and lobbying. When back in 1964 she had helped in the formation of the shire’s Civil Defence for Bushfire, little she did realize what this aspect of her campaigning would lead to.
In February 1983, two days before the disastrous Ash Wednesday bushfires, Joan hand delivered a letter to Premier John Cain, urging him to put out more bushfire safety information, as a disaster seemed imminent. He would not see her.
When the bushfires happened, with seventy six dead and over two thousand homes destroyed, Joan’s elder daughter Katherine, by now an artist and photographer, who lived in an extremely bushfire-vulnerable area, urged her to write the information herself: a book on bushfire safety, ‘for people like her’. And she would illustrate it.
Joan’s health was still very poor. Eye problems hindered research and writing. One local history column a week was all she could manage. ‘I can’t!’ she told Katherine. But she couldn’t bear it that people had suffered for want of knowledge. She knew she had to try. She began work on The Complete Australian Bushfire Boole. Though in and out of hospital for operations and always in pain, she researched, wrote and liaised with authorities over three and a half years, thought up bushfire safety ideas that have become standard official recommendations. The book caused a revolution in bushfire safety for the public when published late in 1986.
Authorities acclaimed it the most thorough and comprehensive work ever written on the subject and it became the definitive work. Bushfire authorities used it in the training of their officers. Reader wrote that their houses and lives had been saved by the knowledge and understanding it gave them. In 1990 she was awarded the Australian Fire Protection Association Community Service Award. In 2010, aged 80 and still writing, giving talks and campaigning, she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia: ‘For service to the community by raising awareness of bushfire safety'. And for her bushfire safety innovations. A great deal of the official standard advice given since by authorities were originally devised by Joan.
That same year, her Boronia Grove house was demolished and replaced by a row of units. Just as in 1959 it had replaced the orchardists’ rows of fruit trees. She knew then how it must have felt for those early settlers: as if they, their homes, their endeavours, had never been.
3 Since 2000 titled The Complete Bushfire Safety Book

Source:  DD21-D Joan (Seppings) Webster. Misc Documents & Press Clippings.  Author Unknown. Among Documents lebelled "Appendix".



Index to Folios: DONCASTER EAST YARRA NEWS; DONCASTER MIRROR 
News Articles and Feature Columns by Joan Seppings/ Joan Seppings Webster/ Joan Webster (1965-1993) 

Contents: INTRODUCTION; ABOUT JOAN [SEPPINGS] WEBSTER; AWARDS AND O1HER BIG STORIES; CATALOGUES OF FREQUENT SUBJECTS 

[Throughout Doncaster East Varna News & Doncaster Mirror) : THEATRE CRITIQUES; LOCAL HISTORICAL ARTICLES [inclusive- 1966-1993]; BUSHFIRE ARTICLES; DEPOT-REFERENDUM; TOWN PLAN CONTROVERSY; PUBLIC TRANSPORT CAMPAIGN; DRIVING LICENCE CAMPAIGN; FAMILYLAW; SOCIAL WELFARE 

INDEX OF DONCASTER EAST YARRA NEWS: NEWS ARTICIES 1965-1971 (Pl-31); INDEX OF FEATURE COLUMN-'AS I SEE IT' (1967-1971). 

INDEX OF DONCASTER MIRROR NEWS ARTICIES 1972-1975 (Pl-7); FEATURE COLUMN 'HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK' 1972-1980 (P1 -15); FEATURE COLUMN 'BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY' (1981-1986)

INDEX OF DONCASTER NEWS FEATURE COLUMN YESTERYEAR 1991-1993; HISTORY FOLIO 1966-1978 (P1-3); Various historical articles from EAST YARRA NEWS and DONCASTER MIRROR

INTRODUCTION 
The 1960-70s were turning-point decades for Doncaster Templestowe. In this time, the municipality changed from a static orcharding community to one of multifaceted suburbia.

The new residents of the early 1960s were very much 'modern pioneers' 
having to cope without, and campaign for, facilities their later neighbours take for granted. 

The reporting and topical comments of local journalist Joan (Seppings] 
Webster provide a reference point for the researchers of the future. There was not much that went on in the developing community that she did not cover nor comment upon. 

It was an era when councillors would get out of bed in the middle of the night to attend a ratepayer's distress call about a blocked drain, and when residents would band together in working bees to clear the gutters in unmade streets; a time of great community spirit in the formation of Scout groups and tennis clubs, kindergartens and elderly citizens' clubs. A time of enormous and selfless ratepayer and councillor energy and pride in the formation of 'their city'; of packed public meetings to communally discuss and decide a 'Town Plan' -[which, sadly, later died of smothering and neglect beneath a growing pile ofapathy and economic interest. 

Councillors would drop in at Joan's home to discuss their projects and 
their next speech, with: 'You write it and I'll say it. You know best what to put'. For about a decade, her writing was a power behind the throne. Readers would telephone the editor, demanding Joan write their story, because: 'You're not afraid to say it'. 

Though she always worked only part-time as a contributor or casual 
journalist, often her work filled the newspaper. Residents would telephone her home day or night, weekday or weekend, with their personal or community problem, knowing she would not turn them away and would try to get something done. 

Events that may be only partially covered in these folios [which were 
reported on as part of a newspaper team] will at least give an indication to the researcher as to where they may be found more fully in the archives of that newspaper. 

[The archives of the Doncaster Mirror and all other Standard Newspapers' publications are stored in the State Library La Trobe Newspaper Collection.] 
_________________________________

About Joan
The name Joan Seppings [and later Joan Seppings Webster] was for nearly 25 years [1960-84] a household word in Doncaster Templestowe and in Box Hill for her hard-hitting news stories and weekly personal columns 'AS I SEE IT' and 'DONCASTER DIARY' for Leader Newspapers [1965-71); and 'HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK' for Doncaster Mirror and the Box Hill Standard [1972-80]. 
The subjects of her feature columns varied from investigative crusades into local government and business malpractice, community safety and health, theatre critiques, humour and folk history. 

From 1978 until 1984 when Standard Newspapers was taken over by the Leader Newspaper Group [which had itself been taken over by the Herald], ill health caused her to change to writing the quieter 
'BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY' for Doncaster Mirror. For this she was able to make good use of interviews with old residents begun in 1967. Joan returned to Leader Newspapers' 'Doncaster News' as Joan Webster with the folk history column 'YESTERYEAR' [1991-1993]. 

In 1971, she wrote a humorous column 'Seppings Stones" for the national magazine Weekender. 

Joan is a triple award winning freelance journalist, widely published in newspapers and magazines throughout Australia, an internationally acclaimed author, and listed in International Authors and writers Who's Who. In 1971 she won the BEST NEWS STORY OF THE YEAR award 
[Melbourne and Geelong suburban newspapers] for Leader Newspapers, and was twice runner up for this award for Standard Newspapers in 1972 and 1979. 

Her news reporting had a reputation for ·getting things done'. One news series triggered a municipal referendum which successfully reversed a council decision to build an engineering works' depot on prime residential land, the Saxonwood estate north of the East Doncaster primary school. 
Others: *uncovered a Kew-based housepainting racket, tabled in parliament; resulted in the confiscation of a Balwyn-based mail order split-tailed leather straps for beating children; brought to light dangerous flaws in the car drivers' licence testing system, resulting in important legal changes. 
Bushfires was another of the subjects on which Joan crusaded in her newspaper columns and before that in letters to editors. In 1972, because of her acurate and sensitive reporting of Warrandyte bushfires, she became the only reporter to have been invited by Warrandyte Bush Fire Brigade to travel with them on their units to the fire front. 
A review of her The Complete Australian Bushfire Book, in the Victorian Country Fire Authority's journal The Fireman in 1986 commented: 'It was in her role as a reporter for the local papers that Joan was of great assistance to the Brigades and the Civil Defence organisations in getting the message across to the people of the area 
that they need to be constantly aware of the factors involved in their safety and survival during the fire season.' 

Her first profession was as a nursing sister, having trained at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and with post-graduate experience in children's, psychiatric and community nursing. She has written in one 
form or another as long as she can remember. 

In almost 40 years ofprofessional writing, Joan has been a published poet, lyricist with songs recorded commercially, children's author, investigative journalist, colummist for two newspapers and a magazine, publicist, broadcaster, television and theatrical writer of drama and satirical comedy, folk historian and nursing historian and the author ofthree published books. 

From 1965-1971, Joan broadcast for the Australian Broadcasting Commission's prestigious Sunday program 'Scope' , speakers for which were selected from a list of top Australian and overseas satirical writers. Joan was billed as 'Melbourne's resident iconoclast'. 

Her first published book was a children's novel for reluctant readers, 'GATE CRASHED' [MacMillan 1976] 

'THE COMPLETE AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRE BOOK' [Nelson 1986, Viking O'Neil 1989), is the definitive work on bushfire protection for the public, accepted as a nomination for the BHP Pursuit of Excellence award, reviewed by a United Nations journal, acknowledged as a classic 
and internationally acclaimed. 

In 1990 Joan Webster was invited to address the International Congress on fire safety held by the South African Fire Services Institute, being the first woman to do so, and was made an Honorary Member of three fire brigades. 

In 1991 she was awarded the COMMUNTIY SERVICE AWARD by the Australian Fire Protection Association, for 'outstanding services to fire prevention and protection', being nominated by the Country Fire Authority. 

'IN AND ABOUT PARLIAMENT', the memoirs of the Hon Sir George Reid, former senior statesman and Attorney General, member of the Bolte Government for 26 years, and former MLA for Nunawading, Box Hill and Doncaster, was co-authored by Joan for Sir George, and privately 
published in a limited edition in 1991. 

Joan is the mother of Katherine Seppings, an artist and author and instigator and illustrator of THE COMPLETE AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRE BOOK, and of Claire Seppings [Mrs John Irving), a social worker and a naturopathic student, both of whom now live in Castlemaine, and the 
grandmother of Annie Irving, born 1989. Katherine and Claire Seppings both attended Beverley Hills Primary School.
_________________________________

Joan [Seppings) Webster was born Joan Katherine Webster in 1929 in Williamstown [Victoria], the fourth generation on all sides of her Scottish, Irish, Comish family to live there. She grew up in 
Victorian country towns - Geelong, Colac, Numurkah and Shepparton, returning to Williamstown to live at age 13 attending six different schools up to sixth grade at Primary School. Hers was a very 
sheltered life, due much to frequent bouts of serious ill health, which hampered her activities since early childhood. 

Married in 1954 to school teacher Edgar Seppings [divorced 1976] who taught at [amongst others] Beverley Hills and East Doncaster Primary Schools, for 21 years she was heavily involved in assisting with preparation of classwork and other primary school activities. 

In the mid-late 1950s as Joan and Edgar Seppings they were well known and much acclaimed by theatre critics as a satirical comedy and songwriting team, for stage and television and with songs 
released on record.

When Joan and Edgar Seppings began building her home in East Doncaster in 1959 on land subdived from W. Sydney Williams' orchard by the Koonung Creek, the ridges from which fruit trees had just been uprooted and burnt needed to be flattened;there was no water laid on, no gas, no electricity connected, and no phone. These were facilities for which, as a pioneer of post-orchard suburbia, she campaigned as a resident. Hers was the first house to go up in the unmade street. Joan's first campaign was to collect the sum of 17 pounds from each allotment owner between her house site and the nearest electrical power pole [in Devon Drive] to pay to have the power extended. The house at 17 Boronia Grove was built by hand saw the power was connected the day it was completed. 

Public transport was meagre. They had no car and nine months old Katherine. As a member of the East Doncaster Progress Association in 1964, Joan, helped by her husband, devised, organised, collated a local public transport survey and authored a 30,000 word report to the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board which improved bus transport. She was the instigator of the Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society in 1967 and a committee member for many years; a 
committee member of the St. John's Cottages Association; committee member of the East Doncaster Kindergarten; Vice-president of the Mother's Club of the Beverley Hills Primary School, for which she privately designed and successfully lobbied for the widening, of Cassowary Street outside the school for the safety of children and personally created the safe-access steps to the school in Maxia Park by both designing the pram-width steps and then collecting four shillings and sixpence from parents in the area for stones and concrete and organising them into working bees. The park seat, 
playground equipment and footpath in Maxia Park got there through her cajoling of council. Land for the Koonung Creek bushland walk and what is now the Boronia Grove sports oval was bought by Council from the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, and the right of way from Boronia Grove to this park constructed by Council, at Joan's urging. From the mid 1960s she campaigned, often alone or with just a few supporters, to save this unique suburban bushland creek valley walk, and at the end of 1993 was still an active member of the Save the Koonung Forestway organisation. 

What led Joan into journallsm was actions such as these on community needs combined with writing letters on them to the local press. Eventually Editor Eric Wicks of Leader newspapers' The Doncaster East Yarra News [one of Doncaster's then three local papers}, just returned from his Christmas holiday with no news to run, found on his desk two stories and four pictures: 'Open drain Through Schoolground' and 'Seven Taps for 340 Pupils' from local stirrer Joan Seppings. Eric 
Wicks - sleeves clipped up and eye shade cocked, ran the paper by himself. He told her: 'You know everything that is going on. You have contacts in council and in organisations. You take good photographs [she had Just won a photographic contest with that paper] and you can write. How would you like to be paid news correspondent?' So Joan started, at three cents a published line and $5 a photograph. Often she attended functions as a ratepayer or representative of an organisation and as reporter photographer, dressed in her ball gown or luncheon-best, juggling notebook and pencil and camera. 
From 1965-1976 Joan gradually became a prolific news reporter and press photographer published widely in national journals and also in daily newsapers. 

In 1975 when she had to support her children alone Joan went back to hospital work and for a year worked both as nursing sister evenings and weekends and journalist by day until in 1976 her health broke down severely ... heart trouble, severe gastric ulcer, disabling Sjogren's Syndrome ' dry-eye' with corneal ulcers, sometimes not being able to read for weeks; in and out of hospital for various operations; she was developing arthritis and spinal degeneration Even her powers of concentration had left her. The little writing she did often had to be done in bed. This state continued for over 10 years.' 

During this time she supported her two girls from the meagre income from a so-called · Widow's' pension and the one newspaper column she could manage to write: Byways of Local History'. Two years later, still greatly debilitated and scarcely able to write [or read] because of the 'dry-eye', Joan turned to propagating plants and selling them at a market stall. 

Then came the dreadful bushfires of Ash Wednesday 1983. She could not bear it that people had suffered so needlessly, all for lack of knowledge and understanding of what to do. So when Katherine, [then illustrating books for Thomas Nelson, publishers] urged her to write this information in a book, she set herself that task. 

The three and a half years of researching and writing The Complete Australian Bushfire Book were of great physical and financial hardship. Because of developing spinal spondylitis in the neck, 
she could only type by sitting on a tiny chair so her neck didn't bend. Exhaustion was constant. She often wrote from bed, with the typewriter balanced on a kitchen chopping board. In 1985 she began 
the practice of meditation and chanting, with the Siddha Yoga Foundation and immediately her former powers of concentration returned and other aspects of health gradually improved. 

Since her retirement from journalism, Joan has concentrated on writing children's nonsense rhymes, continued with her studies of pioneer analylitical psychologist Carl Jung, and in 1994 began a new 
profession as DREAM COUNSELLOR, conducting classes at the Donvale Living and Leaming Centre to teach the skills for personal growth through dreamwork. 

_________________________________

All articles in this file are Copyright Joan Katherine Webster. (DTHS: Donation of originals and right to publish granted to DTHS in May 2023)  
Articles in this file were published in the Doncaster Eut Yarra News [a Leader Associated 
Newspapers' publication], and were written by Joan Katherine Webster whose by-line at the time was Joan Seppings. 
Articles in this file were published in the 'Doncaster Mirror', many in the 'Whitehorse Standard', "The Eastern Suburbs Standard' and some through the whole chain of the group Standard Newspapers, with the by-line, Joan Seppings and Joan Seppings Webster. 

Awards and Other Big Stories
  • 'MAOSIM IS A RELIGION IN CHINA' [East Yarra News -{Leader}]: June 8, 1971 Winner: Best News Story ofthe Year award, Victoria. 1971: Interview with young local man Stephen Knapp, who went to China with the Australian Ping Pong team the year China first opened its doors to Westemers. In this I was the first to report on acupuncture, and other aspects which journalists for daily papers missed, 
  • 'HAVEN OF HIGH HOPES' [Standard Newspapers] May9, 1972. Runnerup Best News Story of the Year award, Victoria, 1972: The story of a student experimental one-to-one help for profoundly retarded children at St. 
  • Nicholas' Hospital [the old Children's hospital] Carlton 
  • "PENGUINS - AS THEY SHOULD NOT BE SEEN' [Standard Newspapers] Best News Story of the Year Award, Victoria, 1979: About penguins bashed to death on Phillip Island, where I, at that time had a beach-side on-site caravan. It was not a local story. I can't understand why it was chosen to enter above some of my other stories. 

Source: DN????????????  DD?????????? Location: Seppings Webster Collection Archive Box.  Bound Book containing Contents pages and introductory articles.  Then followed by INDEXes i.e. lists of story dates and titles.  No author attribution on above articles. Assumed to be Joan Seppings/Webster.

Vale: Joan Webster

Joan Webster OAM , who passed away on 19 February 2024 has probably done more for the bushfire safety  of the public than any other private individual.

In 1990 she was awarded the Australian Fire Protection Association Community Safety Award and in 2010 the Order of Australia Medal.

Her work on bushfire safety for the public has been acclaimed internationally by fire authorities and householders alike, credited with having been instrumental in saving lives and homes.  Fire and emergency authorities and government departments throughout Australia use her books as a resource and for training their officers.

Householders reported time and again that her bushfire safety books and Facebook page were the only sources of  accurate, reliable, scientifically based information.

During the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires was instrumental in the saving of many lives and countless homes. The NSW town of Kangaroo Valley, almost surrounded by high mountains of the NSW Southern Highlands, with many outlying properties nestled in the surrounding state forest, attributed to her much of the success of its home defence plan, the Community Bushfire Planning Committee writing: ‘Your books, and talking to you, definitely saved lives and property. You have contributed so much, not only to the Valley but to the nation.’

When on January 4, 2020 the massive 'Currowan' fire swept down the hills, residents were ready. House after house stood intact among the blackened trunks of burnt trees that was all that was left of the forest. Everyone who put the plan into action safely saved their house. No one was killed or even required medical attention.

Her dedication over the years brought many other such examples: ‘An expression of gratitude for all you have done to help people deal with fire danger. Your efforts have saved many lives already and your publications have become classics that will continue to help us while the threat of death by fire escalates. With so many "bad" things happening in the world, I congratulate you for your contribution to the "good" side.’; ‘I am alive today because I read your Essential Bushfire Safety Tips’; readers have stopped her in the street, saying ‘You’re my hero’. On radio talkback, a caller enthused Joan is God!

Her trailblazing book The Complete Australian Bushfire Book, written before bushfire authorities had started promulgating advice, caused a revolution in bushfire safety when first published in 1986. Triggered by the tragedies of the Ash Wednesday bushfires, because she ‘could not bear it that people and animals had suffered needlessly for lack of knowledge’, and though hindered by poor health and sparse finances, she set herself the task of providing it. 

Many now-standard official recommendations were devised by Joan Webster, first published in her book and used by authorities for the brochures they then began to publish. Safety measure such as the idea of having a bushfire safety plan and the need for a Plan B; the step-by-step actions lists of what to do at various stages of bushfire threat; the personal Survival Kit; protective shutters for windows; the need for a Plan B; the concept of shelter as a safety option; ember protection screens for air conditioners; special needs of children and the frail; care of pets; travelling and holiday safety; the potential dangers of community refuges and safety for precious possessions.

Her ground-breaking analysis of the stay-go dilemma helped shape official policy. And in 1988 her campaign for better bushfire safety for schools resulted in an unprecedented initiative unique to Australia. Codes of Practice for Victorian schools in fire hazard areas were formulated and put into practice, and the first specially constructed school bushfire shelters in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges.

In  1990 she was the  first woman to address the International Congress of the South African Fire  Services Institute on fire safety. 

Her Complete Australian Bushfire Book, later titled The Complete Bushfire Safety Book, was followed in 2001 by the ready reference Essential Bushfire Safety Tips, both of which are still selling.

In 2015 she had begun a Facebook page Bushfire Safety Awareness, each summer  devoting hours each day posting articles on little-known aspects of bushfire safety and answering the questions of her increasing number of followers. By Black Summer 2019-2020 her ‘followers’ had risen to 24,000.

By then aged 90, Ms Webster disregarded her age and health realities to post articles on this each day all through that season, answer hundreds of questions and write detailed and comprehensive personalised property reports requested by the public. 

Though struggling financially on a pension, she never charged for any of the hundreds of bushfire safety consultation and she gave, foregoing well paid feature writing opportunities in order to have the energy to do so

Until this time, Ms Webster could take herself for walks using a mobility walker, drive to do her own shopping and have a reasonable social life. However, the marathon effort of service to the community over that summer overtired her and exacerbated her medical condition and since then she had to be taken in a wheelchair.

Joan had been a campaigner since girlhood. At age 14 she was presented at Government House Victoria for services to the Girl Guide Movement. 

Building her married home in 1959 in the newly developing outer easter suburb of Doncaster East, where she lived for 37 years stimulated her latent activism. Actions on community needs combined with writing letters on these to the local press, led Joan into journalism: first as a news correspondent paid 2 cents a published line. Gradually she became a  prolific  news reporter, feature writer and topical commentator winning several awards.

The many causes about which she wrote in over 30 years of newspaper journalism were never to her `just a good story'.  They mattered to her.  Most were followed up by  campaigning  privately to parliamentarians and authorities: with copies of  her articles, with letters, phone calls and in person. She developed a reputation for  ‘getting  things done’.

Her self-instigated investigations achieved results. as the arrest of the perpetrator of a mail order business for split-tailed leather straps for child abuse; another on the killing of penguins on Phillip Island by vandals driving over them that led to the Summerland housing estate being converted to a penguin sanctuary; her exposure of dangerous flaws in the car drivers' license testing system that directly brought about important legal changes.

Her  self-instigated investigations achieved results such as:
• A series of articles exposing dangerous flaws in the car drivers’ licence testing system directly brought about important legal changes.
• An award winning feature on the killing of penguins on Phillip Island by vandals driving over them led to its Summerland housing estate being converted to a penguin sanctuary.
• And an investigation, while bedridden awaiting serious surgery, of a mail order business for split-tailed leather straps for child abuse led to .he arrest of the perpetrator 

Readers wrote: 'What a pity there are not more like her unafraid to speak out’; ‘Could she be persuaded to stand for parliament?’ ‘May God guide Joan Webster to do great work for Australia’. 

She continued campaigning and ‘getting  things done’ until her 90s, successfully lobbying bushfire authorities to correct their sometimes dangerously erroneous safety advice.

Joan Webster grew up in numerous Victorian  country  towns, attending six different schools up to sixth grade at Primary School. A series of serious ill health in early childhood left her with a low level of sustainable energy, which hindered her activities all her life.

Though best known for her work on the bushfire safety, this was only in the last half of her life. 

Her first profession was nursing, training at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and working as a nursing sister for many years: at one stage simultaneously as a newspaper journalist.  

Her writing genres are eclectic: fiction and non-fiction; investigative journalism, news photographer, comedy, satire, poetry, song lyrics, drama, children’s stories and nonsense rhymes, women’s history, mythology, folk history, published in print and performed on radio, stage and television, receiving critical acclaim from readers and reviewers.

First published as a poet, winning several awards, and writer of children's stories, she won several awards for poetry. A number of her poems were later set to music in 2017 by eminent classical composer Roger Heagney.

As a young woman in the mid-1950s she was well known as song writer and satirist: writing talks, comedy sketches and lyrics for stage, radio and television from the mid-1950s into the 1970s. With her then husband Edgar Seppings they wrote 16 highly acclaimed satirical reviews for stage and won prizes for songs. 

Together they wrote half the comedy sketches and all the songs for ABC TV's first satirical reviews 1958-59 which starred Barry Humphries. During this period, Joan’s lyrics for at least 100 songs were performed in theatre, on radio and television, and number were commercially recorded. From 1972 she wrote for the television drama Homicide and comedy sketches for The Mavis Brampston Show. In all she had seven books published, including poetry, Australian folk history, political biography and a novel for teenage reluctant readers.
 
In the 1960s-70s, as writer/broadcaster for the ABC's prestigious Sunday satirical program `Scope', she was billed as ‘Melbourne's resident iconoclast’.
 
Her married name Joan Seppings was for nearly  20 years [1965-84] a household word in Doncaster-Templestowe (now Manningham) and in Box Hill for her hard-hitting news stories and  weekly personal  columns `As I See It' and `Doncaster Diary' for  Leader  Newspapers [1965-71]; and  `Highlight Of The Week' for the Doncaster Mirror  and the  Box  Hill Standard [1972-80].  The subjects of her feature columns  varied from investigative crusades  into local government and business malpractice,   community  safety and health, theatre critiques, humour and folk history.   

In 1967 she wrote the first article on Doncaster-Templestowe history published in a national magazine, Walkabout, instigated the formation of the Doncaster-Templestowe Historical  Society and was a committee member for many years and in 1981, when ill health caused her to change from hard-hitting writing to local history, began the series ‘Byways Of Local History' and ‘Yesteryear’ which ran for eight years.

She had no formal training in journalism, writing skills or any bushfire field.

In 1997 she moved to Castlemaine, where for 12 years she conducted classes in effective writing.

Her interests included music, playing the piano, gardening, animals, women’s history, mythology, meditation and dreamwork, in which she practiced in the 1990s as analyst counsellor, conducting classes to teach the skills for personal growth through dreamwork.  
 
A fervent feminist, she believed women would never the time attain equal social status while they continued to subjugate their identity to that of a man by taking his name on marriage

Married in 1954 to school teacher and composer Edgar Seppings and divorced in 1976, she had two children, Katherine E Seppings and Claire Seppings and grand-daughters Annie Irving and Maya Pearson.

Source:  Obituary provided by Claire Seppings 5/3/2024





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