A glance over an old left shoulder: Harry Stein remembers

Harry Stein grew up in Melbourne in the 1920s and 1930s and was soon part of its jazz, entertainment and radical politics scene. At eighteen he worked his passage to the UK in the orchestra of an overseas liner, and there saw the menace of fascism close at hand.
In 1946 he and Graeme Bell convened the worlds first jazz festival in Melbourne and in the 1960s he covered the NSW and Canberra press galleries. Harry returned to Canberra in 1972 as Tom Uren's press secretary. In his later years he wrote, occasionally played drums, curated art exhibitions and gave solo performances of his children's stories.