Caroline Jones

Caroline Jones AO (1938–2022), journalist and broadcaster, joined the ABC in 1963 and five years later became Australia's first female current affairs reporter when she began working on This Day Tonight. In 1972 she became the first woman presenter on Four Corners – an appointment which made headlines and prompted offensive, patronising commentary on matters including her looks, marital status and tastes in interior decoration. She remained with Four Corners for nine years during which she was also a presenter on ABC radio's City Extra. From 1987 to 1994 she presented The Search for Meaning on Radio National, conducting many of the insightful and tactful interviews for which she became renowned and which resulted in the publication of four volumes of transcripts. For twenty years from 1996 she presented the weekly biographical television show Australian Story. A foundation member of the Australia Council for the Arts, she was a Reconciliation Ambassador for the Aboriginal Council for Reconciliation from 1998. Her book An Authentic Life: Finding Meaning and Spirituality in Everyday Life (1998) was an Australian bestseller; and in 2009 she published Through a Glass Darkly, a powerful chronicle of her experience of the death of her father. She was a patron of the national mentoring and networking initiative, Women in Media, and many prominent Australian female journalists cite Jones as a role model and inspiration. Jones was named an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1988, won the Walkley Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in 2013, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Sydney in 2017.

This portrait is the result of several sittings Jones had with Salvatore Zofrea at his Sydney studio in January 2009. The weather being very hot, and knowing Zofrea's love of painting flesh 'in the tradition of Goya and Caravaggio', Jones said she 'attempted a pre-emptive strategy'. Knowing also his love of colour, 'I turned up in very bright orange clothes, hoping he would be seduced by the colour instead of the flesh', she said. 'Luckily, it worked'. She described the experience of having her portrait painted as unusual, but also 'rare and precious'.

Gift of the artist 2009
© Salvatore Zofrea/Copyright Agency, 2024