We were privileged to have John film stories for Pacific Pulse in Papua New Guinea and Australia. John travelled to Port Moresby in 2010 to film stories with Pacific Pulse presenter Tania Nugent after they first worked together on Brisbane’s Dreaming Festival in 2009.Tania says, “Like many who worked with John would probably say, he was my JB. After working with John I was spoilt forever, because he was the benchmark that I wanted every cameraman to match up to. Just ask my colleagues Clement and Bernadette. Bernadette would say, ‘You can’t have John, he’s booked for something else.’ (Of course). ‘Well, I want someone like him,’ I would say.

“John’s eye we all know about. We can see that preserved in the incredible images he shot. But his open heart and intellect was what made him so special. As we hung out on shoots and I gabbed on endlessly about the story, he listened, and I would return from the story and look at the rushes and find diamonds upon diamonds of shots that told the story better than any script I could ever write. He made me look good and editing the pieces he shot was like a dream.  He invisibly produced and directed my stories. His shots drove the way I edited the pieces. His shots brought heart and soul to them.

“Everyone connected with John, from the Governor General and politicians right down to the destitute forgotten ones. I vividly remember children clamouring all over him after a shoot in a squatter settlement in Port Moresby. Broken kids who instinctively recognised an angel.

“My greatest sorrow goes out to his wife Pip who has lost her soul mate. Words can’t express how I feel when I think about Pip.  John was mainly madly in love with Pip. He would talk about her all the time. And that’s the part of this that makes me sadder than I can I remember. They are soul mates. And when I think of her now, I cannot write anymore.”

Tania praised John’s work in Papua New Guinea with Pacific Pulse colleague and co-presenter Clement Paligaru on his Radio Australia program this morning.

John wasn’t just a brilliant cameraman, he was a talented photographer and writer, as evidenced by this blog he wrote about HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea, inspired by one of the many powerful stories he filmed in Port Moresby with Tania for Pacific Pulse.

This photo was taken while John was filming part of the story at the 9-Mile Cemetery in Port Moresby.

John’s camera work always shined.  But John wasn’t just extraordinarily talented with a camera – he also brought great humanity and intelligence to his work.  That insight and understanding of the stories informed his camera work and offered an extra dimension to the stories he covered.

Dan Cole has also filmed for Pacific Pulse and wrote this article for a university assignment about John and his journalist wife, Pip Courtney, of the ABC’s Landline program, which is also broadcast on Australia Network.

The Pacific media network, Pacific Freedom Forum, paid tribute to John Bean and his colleagues, Paul Lockyer and Gary Ticehurst.

The Pacific Pulse team is privileged to have worked with John.  We have lost a great talent and a good man.  We send our condolences to John’s wife, Pip, and all those whose lives he touched.

Telling stories with pictures is older than two legged humans, and television is the narrative of our age. After more than 20 years behind the camera for the ABC, John ‘JB’ Bean has trained his lens on everything from Prime Ministers pressing the flesh, the settling dust of bomb blasts, to the reality of third world Papua New Guinea.  The job is at times confronting, and others uplifting, but wholly rewarding as he seeks to tell the stories of people who have something positive to say.“I don’t see myself as a war correspondent,” JB says with assuredness. “I don’t see myself going into that traumatic life day after day after day, I’ve got friends that have done it from the journalist side, and from the camera side as well. Some change dramatically – into tough guys with exterior of granite, and they are usually drinking themselves to death somewhere. I’m not tough and unaffected; I don’t want to be like that.”

On a recent trip to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, John filmed a story about children with HIV.  His experience has taught him that it’s a fine balance between being too removed, and conceding to the emotional intensity of the situation. “When you go into a place like that, you have to remember that it’s not your story, there is actually nothing much you can do about these people’s lives except tell their story.”

“I sometimes wonder if I am not affected enough when I go to see, for example, little kids with AIDS. While we were doing an interview, there was a little boy there and I was keeping his attention pulling faces and stuff like that. But at the end of that, I can’t go home and cry about it. There is nothing that I can really do; he is a poor little kid that is a victim of circumstance. All I can do is make him happy while I’m there.”

John has traveled extensively in PNG, a country in which he has learned to move among the people, unlike so many foreign visitors, without running for the nearest razor wire compound.  “When I was last there we were being told that we needed security guards with guns. We had to have the window all wound up and reflective windows so nobody could see in – and we were driving around with our windows down and waving to people and saying hello. And that’s what people want! I’d be incredibly annoyed if someone drove past me here looking like they were fearful of me. I’d be like ‘I’m just cutting my lawn, what are you worried about?’”

It is this approach that has allowed John access to people and places that other cameramen have missed. On his latest trip he visited the infamous Kaugere Settlement, a supposed hot bed of criminal activity that local journalist and police avoid. Kaugere is a muddy hill crowded with shanties. Wires carrying hijacked electricity crisscross the skyline and high-ranking gang members, given away by their attire reminiscent of 90s south central LA, line the road alongside mothers and t children collecting cans for money. John went into Kaugere Settlement with Pacific Pulse producer Tania Nugent for a story on education.  “He has had the privilege of seeing some of the most extraordinary places and meeting extraordinary people,” says Tania of John, ”but he still gets excited by every person and every story.” It is this unwavering commitment to his craft that earned John an MEAA Media Award for cinematography and a spot among the Walkley finalists in 2003

During his time shooting for the ABC, John has gleaned skills that go beyond just technical proficiency. “One of the things you do when you’re in this job is you measure people – you get a vibe for the area, you feel for how people are feeling, you know when a situation doesn’t feel right anymore and it’s time to go. But you can also go ‘these people are happy to see us, it’s alright to be here’. You’ve got to be a bit of a chameleon and switch into their way of thinking.”

One privilege that John counts himself very lucky to have is to work with his wife Pip Courtney on ABC’s Landline. Pip is a producer and presenter, so it’s a marriage of skills as well as love. “To go away together every now and then is fantastic,” says JB with a smile. “The ABC loves it, they only have to pay for one hotel room. And I love it too. I love when she has story go to air and I can say ‘I shot that as well,’ its fantastic.”

Pip and John first met in Canberra in the early 90s. “I actually filmed her first story for Landline, it was her first long form story.”

Pip remembers John as a very forgiving, more experienced operator. “I had no idea what I was doing,” she grimaces. “He was very kindly, he asked more questions than he needed to, to get me to realise I needed to put more prep into what I was doing.  I was quite taken. It was clear to me by the end of my first shift that I was way out of my depth and he could have let me sink.”

“He is just brilliant at what he does,” says Pip. “John is always totally focused on being the best cameraman that he can be, whether it’s for a news journo or the story before sport or the lead story going to air all around the country, he never waivers.”

When asked if he cops any flack because his wife is often the boss at work, he flashes a cheeky grin. “I always say, she makes more money than me, and that’s fine by me. She keeps me in the manner that I am accustomed to being kept, thankyou very much. I don’t have any problems.”

Within two months of arriving, we settled in our beautiful home, my husband found a job and my five children in Kinder, Childcare and Primary school. I had no close relatives nearby, let alone any friends. Luckily, my husband and I have a strong background of sports and culture, so we kept our sanity by organizing mini sporting outings with families. This lead me to an idea. I did some research around my local community and had found that there were many Pacific Islander families, who like myself had migrated from NZ, Samoa, and Tonga. Many of them, only knew each other in passing but not by name. In my research I had found that all shared the common interest in Sport – Rugby, Volleyball, Netball and Touch. This inspired me to venture into incorporating a non-profitable community business called PASIFIKA SPORTS ASSOCIATION INC. Our organization started in March 2010, holding once a month a Sports night event at RMIT Bundoora Sports Centre. It’s purpose was to solely unite all the Pacific Islanders around the community through sports, and because of the huge success, we’ve now had to hold the Pasifika sports nights twice a month. Our board are made up of 11 dedicated and honorable Pacific Islanders from within the local community who purely give up their family time to help me and my husband fulfill and share the same vision.

We will be holding our first big sporting tournament in August 2010 – Social Volleyball Tournament and encourage all Pacific Islanders who enjoy Volleyball to participate in this golden opportunity. Our goal is to rotate around surrounding communities to hold sporting events abroad for Pasifika families who live outside our local area. This way our organization will assist all around Melbourne Areas and will continue to form unity and belonging for all Pacific Islanders through sports and culture.

We settled in an outskirt community behind Honiara where my father had engaged an uncle to build a three bedroom house for us while we were still on Malaita.

My father was a primary school teacher and although I pretty much hate it, he was never stationary and year after year we would be toasted here and there in different villages just to allow him to do his work.

When we came to Honiara in 1997, the trend continued unstoppably. Although that wasn’t new, I had a hard time chewing it because Guadalcanal would never be Malaita and I need a lot of adapting at that time cos even pidgin was still a tongue twister for the country boy who spent all his childhood years grazing with the Kwara’ae language.

My father’s first Guadalcanal post was at Ghaobata Primary School-a 10 minutes drive towards the sea away from the then CDC 1 SIPL substation now called GIPPOL 1.

Isolated and laid back as it was, I came to learn of what to expect from my dad before we moved in for he went there by himself during the first few days to see where we’d be staying.

Getting to bath from the well wasn’t a strange thing at all cos we were forewarned by dad. And it took no time at all for us to be acquainted. We mastered the art of pumping water from the ditch to keep life going for the family in just days-a trade which we all shared enthusiastically as a family.

The school lies beside the flowing Ngalibiu River and is home to students from the surrounding grass covered areas as far as Koli Point.

The Guadalcanal planes gave birth to a wonderful piece of flat landscape for the well arranged Guadalcanal school. As we drove into the school’s green driveway on our first day, the piece of cement housed by a locally thatched roof besides the road snapped my attention.

What possibly that could be was my adventurous thought. It was not long when dad offered us that much needed orientation.

“This school had sprouted from the American’s World War II base,” said dad as we entered a galvanized-covered house, which looks to be tattering in age and looks but which would be ours for the whole of 1998.

I missed my rural Malaitan life already but childhood ego got me into discovering and it was from there that I came to know the story of the big piece of cement that stunned me earlier.

A close gaze saw two openings beneath the platform which then was merely a store of coconut husks and a breeding place for mosquitoes. It wasn’t at all anything of little significant, although my childish mind then wasn’t able to come to that term.

As we piped inside, someone told me that it’s an underground hideout for US soldiers back in the war days when they were in full force securing their airfield known as Koli Field just across the road but which by then was overgrown by grasses already.

As I piped over, a half cylindrical wear out steel depicting something like a house,which seemed to stand all the tests of times, remianed upright among the swaying grasses in the cool welcoming Galekana (pidgin version of Guadalcanal) breeze.

Small strips of butamen marking the Koli field could still be visualized back then and while it stood there aimless and seemingly unworthy to most, its treasure was made known to me one day by an adventurous tourist. He came on a bike to the school and requested my dad if he could take a look at the field which seemed to stress as far as Koli point where the sea was.

We followed him noisily as he enjoyed a ride through the beautiful grassland much to our innocent delight.

According to history the airfield was built for b-24 Liberator heavy boomer operations, primarily by the Thirteen Airforce. The single strip run approximately NE to SW (parallel to Carney Airfield) and had several taxi ways off both sides. Surfaced by butamen with metal, Marsden Matting-like material for heavy aircraft it was completed in the middle of 1943 and was an added aid to America’s campaign against the Japanese on Guadalcanal.

When we left at the end of the year, my childish mind was happy to escape the weird environment where not much was happening around to entertain a growing child. But now when I look back into history, I am more than glad to have a little bit of taste of what WW II remains look like.

I’ve slept on the very concretes laid by the 1940 soldiers (remember the school houses were just built on top of the original WW II concrete slaps. Not much has been done to change their shapes and sizes) and had come to see some of their neglected animations which then were obtainable in the coconut plantations.

Whether Ghaobata has seen some sort of changes lately or not is but a thing which is beyond my reach to confirm now. I however wonder whether the locals in the area have ever taken any steps to preserve the historical sites for the future children to see because that’s history in a making!

Visit my blog to read more of my articles. Here’s the link http://iroasi-maesulia.blogspot.com

She sat inside this house sheltering with her husband Nobel Pakoti while the cyclone hit in the early hours of the morning, tearing her 3 month old roof apart and losing most of her personal belongings.