Wednesday Breakfast

Owen Stickels

Raised on the land at Baranduda, Owen became a professional actor, speaker and broadcaster.

He was introduced to radio at RRB Butterworth in Malaysia in 1973 while flying the Mirage with No. 3 Squadron. A jazz drummer, he – predictably – ran a jazz programme. After leaving the RAAF he moved to Adelaide to become a full-time musician, but, to his surprise, became a professional actor. That wasn’t planned at all. He’s had parts in 41 films, 41 television commercials and recorded more than 1,000 voiceovers for both radio and television.

After responding to an ad in The Advertiser in 1984, Owen was employed as a general announcer with ABC Radio in Adelaide (pictured). He loved it.
“Why?”
“Radio is personal,” he explained. “One-on-one! It’s just you, your microphone, and just that one person listening.”
“But … you might be talking to thousands of people.”
“True,” he said, “but you talk to them one at a time. That listener is an individual scrambling eggs for breakfast, walking around the pondage lake, or sitting on a tractor, ploughing.”

Arriving in Mount Beauty in 2001, Owen ran Alpine Radio’s first jazz programme, and wrote and recorded scores of ads. He specialised in writing ‘two-handers’ … ads with two actors performing a radio play in 26 seconds.
Now, on Alpine FM, Owen presents Breakfast every week day from 6.00am and on Thursday evening, ‘Stick’s Jazz’ from 8.00pm until 10.