It was unsurprising that Therése Denny, Kay Kinane, Catherine King and Joyce Belfrage all pursued vocations as public broadcasters. Growing up within socially and politically engaged families, they were raised and educated to be nation-builders, imbued with a desire to participate in cultural, social and political discourse. From an early age they were ingrained with a veneration of knowledge and were pushed to unleash their intellect and their civic activism. They studied, worked and volunteered to serve the public good. They were impressed by the power of public broadcasting, with its democratic public service remit and its capacity to reach and resonate with the nation. It became the perfect vehicle for their activism. Although Therése, Kay, Catherine and Joyce consistently worked against systems of discrimination and encouraged gender equality throughout their careers, they did not identify as feminists. ‘Feminism’ presented an unsettling conundrum to many at the ABC in the postwar era. Conveniently, the cohort's emphatic personification of the good female citizen proved reassuring to bureaucrats nervous about promoting ambitious women to positions of authority. Therése, Kay, Catherine and Joyce enacted their own modified version of feminism; it was their adoption of citizenship as the key framework through which they embodied their social activism that consolidated the ABC's trust in their loyalty to public broadcasting cultures.

A Cuckoo in the ABC's Nest

When Catherine King bid her listeners a final farewell in 1966, she made a point to pay tribute to those who helped her fulfill her vocation as a public broadcaster. At the same time she acknowledged her own role as an obstreperous creature that challenged her parent organization: