Soon after I joined The Canberra Times 54 years ago, as a copyboy, I was taken aside by a senior journalist and allocated a discreet, clandestine and confidential task which created an unlikely alliance with a considerable impact on my career.

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Frank Cranston, a New Zealander who was a former and future chief of staff, was defence and aviation correspondent, who from time-to-time reported hot gossip from ASIO mates and was bylined "From a special correspondent". He was ferociously right-wing and, though I was a Vietnam protester and soon-to-be draft-dodger, an unlikely ally of mine (indeed a colleague, Bruce Juddery, once christened our friendship the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact).

Frank's devoted wife made a brown-paper bag of sandwiches for his lunch every day. Sometimes they were Vegemite. Sometimes peanut butter. Sometimes tuna. My task - there were predecessors, but not always reliable ones - was to eat the sandwiches and to remember to tell Frank before he departed about 7pm what had been between the slices. It was important. His suspicious wife would be sure to ask him.

I was not being a party to the concealment of infidelity as such. There was enough of that at the newspaper, some of which a copyboy could hardly overlook. Frank adored his wife but was terrified of her. He did not like her sandwiches, and in any event often had a working lunch at some lobbyist's expense or went for a stroll and a snack. But he dared not tell his wife that.

One pay-off from this occurred in 1973 while early in the morning I was working on a feature. Frank's phone rang, but Frank was not in. I answered it, but before I could introduce myself, a voice said, "Frank, I haven't got time to talk, but you should know that [Attorney-General Lionel] Murphy raided Canberra ASIO last night, and he is now on a plane heading for Melbourne, where he is going to raid it. He's had the Commonwealth Police seal it up. Must go, but I will ring you later".

Now this was sensational information, but it was not mine. Frank waltzed in after about 10 minutes, and I told him the message. We talked about it. He said that he did not think the story would hold without anyone knowing during the day. But we had some information others did not have. He would tip off the Melbourne Herald to the raid going on at St Kilda, without telling them about the earlier Canberra raid. They would owe The Canberra Times, and him, one.

Murphy had not even arrived at ASIO when he saw a phalanx of Melbourne Herald photographers gathered around the gates. It was his first inkling that his raid, made at Commonwealth Police urging, could be a serious political mistake.

There were two sides to this story, and thanks to Murphy's office, with whom I was good friends (with Frank being anathema), we were especially well informed on both. But we did it cooperatively. Along the way I learnt quite a few tricks of the trade, including arts of concealing the provenance of sensitive information otherwise difficult to get out.

I had been at that stage a cadet journalist only for a few months, taking up the job only when the warrant for my arrest under the National Service Act had been withdrawn. My first appointment was as police roundsman, Frank thinking it a great joke that police who knew me well from demonstrations would now have to be answering my polite questions.

The commissioner, Roy Wilson, rang Frank to complain that it was unfair that they had to endure my walking around reading notices in the police station when they had been used to arresting me on sight. Frank told him to get used to it, and to be ready for a lot of hell if anyone treated me other than professionally. As it happened I made enduring friendships, based on mutual trust, among police - the better, as I rose up the ranks, for the fact that the contacts were doing the same.

I spent time in the press gallery, during the Whitlam years, working alongside David Solomon, who was chief political correspondent and later press secretary for Gough Whitlam, and who impressed upon me the need to read documents and understand legal and political processes.

Tony O'Leary, later press secretary to John Howard was also there. I was given several bits of good advice from Alan Reid, a veteran journalist and political mischief maker, who seemed to like me. He once told me that I should always remember that one could work in the zoo without........

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