From youth radio to acclaimed children’s author: Kristin Darell on the power of stories

Five years before 96.9FM became the home of Nova Sydney, the licence was up for grabs … and Hitz FM was one of the frontrunners.

The legendary youth community station had already transformed Melbourne’s radio landscape. Now, it wanted to do the same in Sydney. But it had some competition on its hands, with FBi and Gadigal among the stations vying for the same licence.

It was 1996, and at that time, Hitz FM Station Manager Anthony Gerghetta felt that Sydney radio was being run by 40-year-old men who still thought they were the coolest people on the planet.

Or – as he put it more succinctly – “Old men who go home to watch their Countdown videos.”

Kristin Darell (pictured above with Anthony) was the News Director at Sydney’s Hitz FM. It was Kristin who set up the newsroom there, in her first official job as a journalist.

The radio role was a volunteer one, and a career path Kristin was seriously considering before life took a different turn.

Decades on, Kristin is now a mum of two and acclaimed children’s author.

As well as having worked as a TV news and sports journalist over nearly three decades, Kristin is the author of the Football Fever series of books with Football Australia and the Taronga Zoo Presents series.

After studying for a journalism degree, Kristin chose to do her college graduation piece as a five-minute radio program about the genetic work with chimpanzees at Taronga Zoo.

It was via work experience at Australian News Channel (later Sky News Australia) that Kristin was offered a TV job before she’d even finished her studies.

“I remember being so excited to hear the weather reports I had written read out by John Gatfield, Katrina Lee or Juanita Phillips,” she tells Radio Today.

Kristin went on to work at TV stations including Prime in Canberra, which included stints on local radio as the weekend newsreader.

“As reporters, we also regularly did reports for the local radio stations when events were happening,” she says.

“I remember very clearly covering a horrendous car accident on the highway between Canberra and Goulburn I’d come across on a drive back to Sydney. I’d stopped and told my newsroom I was there.”

“I ended up there for about three hours doing regular radio reports.”

Kristin was primarily responsible for court and crime reporting, but as with any local news station, she got to cover many other fascinating stories.

“I met endangered white tiger cubs, covered clashes at the Myanmar embassy in Canberra, and I even got to interview Jackie Chan.”

She would go on to cover the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where she witnessed first hand Steven Bradbury and Alisa Camplin winning gold for Australia.

Kristin also produced live rolling covering coverage of Schapelle Corby’s Bali drug trial.

It was during a stint at the Seven Network that Kristin came to realise her time in news was drawing to a close and her passion lay down a different path … creative writing.

While continuing to work in the media, she began volunteering and at various writing organisations.

“I was also writing a great deal more and had achieved publication for numerous fiction and non-fiction works in anthologies for children and adults,” she says.

In 2020, Kristin was offered the role of Program Manager for the Australian Children’s Laureate Foundation (ACLF), a position she still holds today.

Since 2022, Kristin has had six junior fiction novels published, with two more due out in November this year and another two slated for 2026.

Kristin is dedicated to fostering a love of reading and writing among children in Australia. She’s a big believer that ALL kids can be readers.

“I am passionate about ensuring all kids get to experience the power of stories,” says Kristin. “I utilise all my experience as a journalist, copywriter and author in my role with the ACLF.”

Katherine Firkin is another radio journalist to achieve success as an author.

The former 3AW reporter covered some of Victoria’s most notorious criminal affairs, including the death and funeral of underworld figure Carl Williams.

Her debut novel – Sticks and Stones – was inspired by the many criminal trials she has covered.

But make no mistake, writing books isn’t necessarily as lucrative as it might appear.

As Katherine shared on the Authorised podcast “I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets when I tell you writing a novel does not make you a millionaire. You don’t get a book published and then go “Great! I’m putting my feet up.’”

In her most recent book The Girl Remains – a chilling cold case thriller set in a small coastal town – one of the characters shares the same surname as legendary newsreader and Katherine’s former 3AW colleague, Tony Tardio.

Coincidence? Nope.

Laughing, Katherine says “I sent him a copy of my book when it first came out, and I didn’t say anything. I thought, if he just writes back and says ‘What a fantastic novel,’ then he hasn’t read it. But he actually did read it, to his credit.”

“I wanted an Italian name, and I wanted something that felt real to me.”

“I just like the name Tardio,” Katherine smiles. “I think it’s kind of cool.”

Former Smooth FM Melbourne Breakfast newsreader Jennifer Hansen went ‘back to school’ between media gigs, taking up the Professional Writing and Editing course at RMIT University, and going on to complete her first novel and two screenplays.

It just goes to show that radio can help lay the foundation to take us on all kinds of different and sometimes unexpected creative paths.

 *Main photo credit: The Australian’s Milan Scepanovic