Bronwyn Jones (1944-2003): (known professionally as Bronwyn Binns). (Film).(Obituary)(Biography)

EVEN AN OUTSIDER at Bronwyn Jones' memorial service in St George's Anglican Church, Malvern, would have realised she must have been an extraordinary woman. The eulogy by Andrew Curnow, the Bishop-elect of Bendigo, described Bronwyn's twenty-year battle with cancer, a battle she fought so she could see her daughter Elizabeth become an adult. Elizabeth herself, a still, poised figure in the pulpit, spoke of "an amazing mother", who would "paint double-sided watercolour copies of Beatrix Potter characters for my birthday cake each year," and "taught me to read". Later, when Elizabeth started buying books for herself, "Mum always despaired as to where we could put all of them, but somehow could never bring herself to tell me off when I bought some more." Most moving of all she read from a letter of farewell, written by Bronwyn when Elizabeth was twelve and her mother was about to undergo an extremely dangerous bone marrow transplant.

But anyone glancing around the packed church would have realised this was more than a personal bereavement, and that there were wider resonances to Bronwyn Jones' life. Among the mourners were producers and crew members from the Melbourne film and television community. Bronwyn's professional name, mentioned only once during the service, was Bronwyn Binns: creator of Against the Wind, the most artistically and commercially successful television series ever produced in Australia.

Born Bronwyn Fackerell in Waverley, Sydney, she trained first as an art teacher. After a car accident in which the horse she was riding was killed and Bronwyn was left with a broken pelvis, she gave away art school and began to find work in the film industry. She worked in various capacities in production houses in Sydney, and then became an assistant editor. Subsequently she was the first woman to edit a feature film in Australia. This was not quite the distinction it should have been; the film was the unbelievably awful Journey out of Darkness. Bronwyn certainly displayed exceptional skill, but her talents were mainly directed at cutting around Ed Devereaux's black-tracker makeup--which ended above his collar--as well as removing shots of tribal Aborigines wearing thongs. Years later when I told her that Journey out of Darkness was in danger of becoming a lost film because its negative had deteriorated, Bronwyn blanched, and in a weak voice asked if there was any way the film could be just allowed to disappear.

After marrying the production manager Tom Binns, Bronwyn moved to Melbourne and began to work at Seniors--which was later absorbed into Crawford Productions. It was at this time she met Ian Jones. Contemporaries remember …