Young Dawn learned piano from an early age with the Sisters of St Joseph in the Convent next door. She quickly became an accomplished pianist, providing music for her mother’s shows. With no high school in Mount Isa at the time, Dawn’s continuing education involved 72-hour-long train journeys between Mount Isa and the family’s home town of Toowoomba.
In 1950, renowned Australian organist, choirmaster, and ABC classical music broadcaster Arthur Floyd described Dawn in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail as “the long-distance champion” of the annual Brisbane summer music school, when she travelled almost 4700km to participate.
After high school at Toowoomba’s Fairholme Presbyterian Girls’ College and Somerville House in Brisbane, Dawn moved to Adelaide to complete her Associate of Music, Australia at the University of Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium. She boarded with her former Fairholme College headmistress, Jean Tassie, one of Australia’s pioneering feminist educators, with whom her mother Wealthy had developed a close friendship.
In Adelaide, Dawn was introduced by comedian and wartime entertainer Jimmy Tonkin to broadcaster Eric Pearce, then 5KA station manager. After the meeting, Eric told Jim: “I am so impressed with that young lady I’m going to offer her a job. I don’t know where to put her, but I have to find a place for her.” And he did, with Dawn working as a scriptwriter and record librarian, as well as occasional station accompanist, for two years.
In 1955 she sailed for the United Kingdom and after a tour through Europe, Dawn travelled to North America where she found work with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. Accepting a random offer to drive from the east to America’s west coast to deliver a Chevrolet Bel Air produced an unforgettable month for Dawn and her Canadian friend Audrey. They shared a fearless spirit to embrace opportunity and talked about those four adventurous weeks for decades.
Dawn Kenyon, first lady of children’s TV.
Dawn always said she had been lucky in her life. It was on the ship returning to Australia that this was clear when, after a brief conversation with a virtual stranger about her future, she was given a letter of introduction that led to an offer to take up the position of children’s programs coordinating producer for ATN7.
Almost 10 years before the ABC started Play School, Dawn’s Captain Fortune show became many young Australians’ first taste of television. Management was eager to trial its own version of Romper Room, a children’s TV program popular in the US at the time, and decided to include a 15-minute segment within the 90-minute Captain Fortune show.
Dawn became “Miss Dawn” and reluctantly but ably stepped in front of the camera. Sadly, there is no video recording of these true live-to-air shows.
It was at the Mobbs Lane Studios that Dawn met her future husband Fred Kenyon, a British Marconi television engineer, who came to Australia in 1956 to set up equipment for broadcasting the Melbourne Olympic Games and the roll-out of television stations around the country. He had fallen for the beautiful Dawn from afar and contrived a double date through a colleague. They fell in love and were engaged within 10 days.
The Australian Women’s Weekly in October 1957 reported ATN7 was “in a whirl” with “a difficult job” to replace Dawn after her impending marriage, which took place in St Phillip’s Anglican Church, Sydney, in December 1957.
Soon after the wedding, which attracted Sydney media attention, they set sail for Britain. Fred returned to work at Marconi’s Chelmsford headquarters, while the British Broadcasting Corporation pursued Dawn for an on-camera job thanks to her valuable television experience, which was rare in those early days of broadcasting.
Fred and Dawn Kenyon’s wedding, December 14, 1957.
But she declined the offer, choosing instead to be a wife and soon becoming a mother to their first child, Steven, born in 1960. The young family returned to Australia in 1961, where Fred began working for AWA and later Channel 10. Peter was born in 1963 and Anne in 1965.
She continued sharing her skills in music and education, teaching piano and musicianship at Barker College in Hornsby for 16 years and joining the choir of Wahroonga’s St John’s Uniting Church where she sang for almost 50 years.
In 1993 Dawn and Fred moved to London after News Limited enticed Fred from retirement to lead the development of the world’s first encrypted, end-to-end digital TV broadcast system. They lived in Knightsbridge with Harrods as their corner store.
Dawn Kenyon, first lady of children’s TV.
Returning to Sydney, they settled back into life close to family and enjoyed being grandparents. Fred received the Medal of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday 2018 Honours List for services to television. He died in 2020.
Outside family, Dawn volunteered with the Merry Makers. This unique troupe, most of whom live with an intellectual or physical disability, meet each week to rehearse and perform through dance. This tapped into Dawn’s passion to help others connect through the power of music and she remained a volunteer with the organisation for 25 years.
Leading Australian television producer and journalist Anita Jacoby got to know Dawn at Merry Maker rehearsals when she was producing a 60 Minutes story on the group and shared a commonly held opinion in the community that “Dawn was always a shining light.” Learning of Dawn’s death, journalist Jeff McMullen wrote to daughter Anne: “Your warm-hearted mother was so often the first to greet us, introduce us to new families, and lead us deeper into that magic of the Merry Makers.”
‘Dawnma’, as many knew her, continued to support the Merry Makers every Saturday until her 89th birthday. She died in Wahroonga earlier this year, a week from her 92nd birthday.
Dawn is survived by two of her three children, Peter and Anne, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Steven, her eldest son, died in 2016.
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