Rob Astbury (1948 – 9 November 2017) was an Australian radio and television sports journalist and real estate agent.

Biography

Astbury was born in

Avoca, Victoria Avoca is a town in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia, north west of Ballarat. It is one of two main towns in the Pyrenees Shire, the other being Beaufort to the south. Geography The town stands in the gently undulating basin of the ...

. During a media career spanning 21 years, he won ten VFL/

AFL AFL may refer to: Sports * American Football League (AFL), a name shared by several separate and unrelated professional American football leagues: ** American Football League (1926) (a.k.a. "AFL I"), first rival of the National Football Leagu ...

awards, two national

Penguin Award The Penguin Award is an annual award given for excellence in broadcasting by the Television Society of Australia. It was founded in 1954. The award trophy depicts an ear listening to a television tube, but strongly resembles a penguin, hence the ...

s and was twice nominated for the

Logie Awards The Logie Awards (officially the TV Week Logie Awards; colloquially known as The Logies) is an annual gathering to celebrate Australian television, sponsored and organised by the magazine ''TV Week''. The first ceremony was held in 1959 as the ...

for the Best News Story of the year. After an early career in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a metro ...

radio, Astbury made a successful jump to television—firstly for the Channel 0/10 network, then for the

Nine Network The Nine Network (stylised 9Network, commonly known as Channel Nine or simply Nine) is an Australian commercial free-to-air television network. It is owned by parent company Nine Entertainment and is one of five main free-to-air television netw ...

, after accepting a personal job offer from owner

Kerry Packer Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer (17 December 1937 – 26 December 2005) was an Australian media tycoon, and was considered one of Australia's most powerful media proprietors of the twentieth century. The Packer family company owned a controlling ...

. During his television career, Astbury was Australia's highest-paid sports correspondent. In 2005, Astbury revealed he was HIV positive, although medical tests showed he was a rare

long-term nonprogressor Long-term nonprogressors (LTNPs), sometimes also called elite controllers, are individuals infected with HIV, who maintain a CD4 count greater than 500 without antiretroviral therapy with a detectable viral load. Many of these patients have been ...

(or "elite controller"), whose body can suppress the virus for a long period without antiretroviral drugs. In 2006, celebrity agent Anthony Zammit published ''King and I: My Life With Graham Kennedy'', a biography that detailed Astbury's relationship with entertainer

Graham Kennedy Graham Cyril Kennedy AO (15 February 1934 – 25 May 2005) was an Australian entertainer, comedian and variety performer, as well as a personality and star of radio, theatre, television and film. He often performed in the style of vaudevilli ...

. After retiring from television, Astbury worked as a real estate agent at

Broadbeach Broadbeach is a suburb in the City of Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. In the , Broadbeach had a population of 5,514 people. Geography Development in the area today mostly incorporates low rise structures, consisting of single bedroom hous ...

on the Gold Coast, Queensland, between 1995 and 2000. For the next decade, he ran a property development company in Thailand. During the

2004 Boxing Day tsunami An earthquake and a tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami and, by the scientific community, the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, occurred at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+7) on 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Suma ...

while Astbury was holidaying in Phuket, he reported on the devastation for the political website ''

Crikey Crikey is an Australian electronic magazine comprising a website and email newsletter available to subscribers. Crikey was described by the former Federal Opposition Leader Mark Latham as the "most popular website in Parliament House" in '' T ...

''. Returning to the Gold Coast in 2010, Astbury worked with the Ray White Real Estate agency in Broadbeach. On 9 November 2017, a colleague found him dead in his home after he did not turn up to work and could not be contacted.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Astbury, Rob 1948 births 2017 deaths Australian sports journalists Australian television presenters Australian LGBT journalists AIDS-related deaths in Australia Journalists from Victoria (state)