Former television and radio broadcaster Richard Zachariah has died aged 80.
Zachariah co-hosted The Home Show on the ABC in the 1990s with television personality and fashion icon Maggie Tabberer, who was Zachariah’s former partner.
Zachariah, who was born in Victoria and attended school in Hamilton in Western Victoria, also worked as a journalist and author throughout his career.
His book The Vanished Land: Disappearing Dynasties of Victoria’s Western District, which chronicles the changing character of the area he described as once “the centre of power in this country”, was published in 2017.
Author and journalist Fiona Capp, reviewing the book for the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote “Zachariah’s defiant nostalgia, lyrical prose and Chekhovian melancholy make for a tale of novelistic power”.
Zachariah spoke of his love for the Western District on ABC Radio Melbourne’s The Conversation Hour in 2017.
“I was gone and hooked and I still am,” he said. “I’ve just got goosebumps talking about it.”
According to his publisher Wakefield Press, Zachariah had lived in London, Sydney and Melbourne. More recently he resided in the Adelaide Hills.
A funeral service for Zachariah will be held on April 23 at the Eastern Park Chapel in Warrnambool in Victoria.
