Celebrating 70 years

Over a career spanning four decades, Nuim Khiayath’s distinctive voice and journalistic skills have made him a household name across Indonesia.

Nuim Khaiyath joined Radio Australia in the late 1960s after working for the BBC in London. After three years he returned to London but discovered he couldn’t get Australia out of his system and came back at the invitation of Radio Australia in 1972. He has been with us ever since.

Nuim began broadcasting when Radio Australia was at the pinnacle of its popularity in Indonesia. In the early 1970s Indonesia was tightly controlled by the ‘New Order’, and radio and television stations were not allowed to broadcast their own news bulletins. Nuim says it’s no surprise the service used received up to 200,000 letters a year from listeners in that period. ‘They were ravenous when it came to news, especially about the events in Indonesia which the government believed they would be better not knowing about, and also the entertainment which we provided for them.’

Nuim says the audience letters were mainly full of praise for the Indonesian service, along with requests for postcards and programs. However, presenters also received the occasional marriage proposal or requests for permission to name new babies after them! ‘One incident which is still fresh in my memory involved a mother who wanted to name her son after me, but her husband was a great admirer of my colleague, Alan Morris – a true blue dinkum Aussie. A compromise was reached when the son was named after both of us.’

One of Nuim’s favourite parts of the job has always been live broadcasts, particularly outside broadcasts (OBs). He presented the service’s first ever OB at the launch of the first Australian weather satellite at Woomera and went on to do many more. When Australia’s then prime minister, Harold Holt, disappeared while swimming at Cheviot Bay in Victoria in 1967, Nuim filed reports from a helicopter scanning the ocean where the leader had disappeared.

Nuim was also the first Indonesian language broadcaster to provide commentary of a World Cup football match, when he covered qualifying matches involving Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Iraq. As the ABC’s then Jakarta representative, Joe Coman, reported: ‘It was heartening to see up to 40 people in a marketplace in Jakarta congregating around a transistor radio listening to Nuim’s ball by ball commentary.’

Nuim’s well-honed live broadcast skills are still put to good use. These days he does five ‘interactive’ programs each week with Indonesian partner radio stations. According to one of the biggest radio stations in Indonesia, Delta FM Jakarta, Nuim is one of the three most popular voices on their network!

Over his time at Radio Australia Nuim has done everything from hosting popular music programs and sports coverage to interviewing prominent leaders and covering major events in Indonesia. He was the head of the Indonesian service from 1997 to 2007 and still plays an important role in the service as a broadcaster, program maker and mentor to younger staff members. He also holds a special place in the lives of generations of Indonesian listeners, as was clearly illustrated on a recent trip to Jakarta.

‘A Jakarta publisher earlier this year brought out a book based on the scripts of one of my popular programs, “Perspektif”. The book is now in its second printing. When one of our partner stations, Lite FM, launched the book in April, it had to limit the number of listeners who wished to attend the event to 150,’ Nuim says. ‘The planned one-hour program was extended to three hours thanks to listeners who kept ringing and also those in attendance who wanted to know more about me, and more importantly, about Radio Australia.’