Val Wake started his working life as a copy boy on the Sydney Daily Telegraph. During 40 years as a journalist he was a play reviewer for Plays and Players of London, an editor of Canadian biweekly the Dawson Creek Star, a producer for the nightly newsreel on ABC Television News, Sydney, and the Arctic editor for CBC Northern Service. While working in Arctic Canada Val Wake was closely associated with reporting the development of the native rights movement across the north. He also made a side trip to the North Pole.
For the last 20 years before retiring Val Wake worked for the British Government as an information officer. From 1991 to 1995 he was head of the Central Office of Information Radio Division, working with Foreign Office supplying programme services in support of the British Government's overseas objectives. In this capacity he was involved in the Falklands campaign and the First Gulf War.
Val Wake and his Canadian born wife Lillian retired to Port Macquarie on the New South Wales mid north coast in 1996 where he has done freelance work, writing yachting stories as well as sending the occasional more serious piece to AQ the journal of the Australian Institute of Political Science. One of these articles titled 'Who Killed Captain Cook?' suggested that it was a politically ambitious Hawaiian courtier who was finally responsible for the death of the great 18th English navigator. Val Wake has made a life time study of Cook's discovery voyages. Son of Robert (Bob) Wake q.v.
