Darcy Farrell

1932 – 2022

“Iconic West Australian Newsman”

Legendary West Australian news man Darcy Farrell.

Image with thanks to Ken McKay, WA TV History.

Originally from Wanganui in New Zealand, Leslie Darcy Farrell was the founding News Director at Western Australia’s first television station, TVW7.

He was highly respected and admired – particularly by his colleagues in the news media. A tribute in The West Australian newspaper on 8th September 2022 was headlined, “The Iconic WA Newsman”.

The West Australian newspaper featured this tribute to Darcy on 08 September 2002.

Image with thanks to Ken McKay, WA TV History.

After some experience calling the horse races at Wanganui Racecourse, Darcy began his newspaper career at the age of seventeen as a cadet with New Zealand’s oldest paper, The Wanganui Chronicle.

He moved to Melbourne when he was 21, working for The Melbourne Sun, before spending time travelling in Africa, and then working in newspapers on London’s Fleet Street. In 1957 he sailed to Singapore and worked for The Straits Times, before returning to Australia and WA Newspapers in Perth.

When WA Newspapers was granted the first television broadcasting licence for Perth, Darcy was appointed as the first News Editor. At his funeral, fellow journalist Errol Considine described him as “the undisputed pioneer and king of television news in Western Australia at TVW7 from 1959 until 1976”.

Darcy was one of the journalists stationed at Muchea Tracking Station for the flight of Friendship 7 – the first American manned orbital mission – in early 1962, hence his inclusion here.

He also reported on all the other Mercury missions, and interviewed a number of key players, including some of the visiting astronauts. He took a keen interest in the US space program, and ensured that TVW7’s coverage of key space missions – including Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 – was the best in the business.

Darcy had clear memories of covering the Mercury missions. Of this work, he wrote –

“We had plenty of very good footage including a program I did with Deke Slayton, the Chief Astronaut, who told our WA audience everything they didn’t know about Mercury and what it would lead to.” [1]

{Deke Slayton was Capcom at Muchea for the second US manned orbital flight, MA-7, with Scott Carpenter, in May 1962.)

[Regarding Muchea Station Director Lewis Wainwright] –

“He was a top man, but the Department [of Supply] wanted credit for everything and its minister made statements without mentioning Lewis.

However, the departmental public servants didn’t attempt to take the focus off Gordon Cooper. They didn’t really understand the science Cooper and people like Lewis were espousing.” [2]

And, a little later,

“I reminded a few journos of the marvellous work of Dr O’Brien, whose experiments were taken to the moon by Armstrong. You might wish to revisit that subject. He was a very special space scientist whose work was ground-breaking and the first by an Aussie.” [3]

[Indeed, the plan is to create a page in memory of pioneering Australian physicist Dr. Brian O’Brien (1934 – 2020). – CM.]

Darcy Farrell (right) and colleague Ross Cusack in the TVW7 Studio 2 Control Room.

Photo courtesy Channel 7 Perth archives. With thanks to Janine Vidot, Seven Perth.

In 2021, Darcy generously wrote for this website a fascinating account of his involvement in covering John Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission.

Darcy was gracious and enthusiastic in his retelling of these key events in Western Australia’s space history.

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Footnotes to sources not already credited above:

1. e-mail to Colin Mackellar, 25 March 2021
2. e-mail 04 April 2021.
3. e-mail 14 October 2021.