The family of Richard Neville, co-founder of the controversial counterculture magazine Oz who has died aged 74, says he “has gone on to his next adventure”.
Neville died on Sunday night, with his wife, Julie Clarke Neville, and daughters Lucy and Angelica by his side, at his home in northern New South Wales.
“Our wonderful Richard has gone on to his next adventure,” Clarke Neville posted on Facebook. “He died tonight in Byron Bay surrounded by all of us –Julie, Lucy, Angelica and Ricardo.”
Neville rose to prominence in the 1960s, as one of the leading members of that decade’s counterculture movement.
Neville and fellow university students, artist Martin Sharp and Richard Walsh, co-founded Oz in 1963, using it as a vehicle to counter Australia’s conservatism of the time. Issues covered included abortion, censorship, and homosexuality.
The trio was twice charged with printing an obscene publication. They were tried, convicted and sentenced but, after a public outcry, were acquitted on appeal.
They then headed to London to try their luck, launching the equally controversial London Oz.
In 1971, Neville and two of his co-editors, Felix Denis and James Anderson, were tried in the UK for corrupting the morals of children.
They were jailed, but later won on appeal. The last Oz was published in 1973.
Neville turned his experiences into a well-received memoir Hippie Hippie Shake. A film based on the book was held up in production and never released.
Prominent Australian barrister Geoffrey Robertson, who helped defend him in the UK Oz trial, paid tribute to his friend in the Guardian.
“Those of us privileged to have played against power alongside him will remember the warmest and most generous of friends, a man with a deep moral vision and, when it came to the crunch, the courage of his convictions,” Robertson wrote.
Peter Kingston, a cartoonist on Oz, told the ABC he was an “absolutely adorable person, adorable human being, and very concerned about the world and the environment, all the good things”.
Neville was born in Sydney in 1941, the youngest of three children and attended the University of New South Wales.
He later wrote a 1979 biography on Charles Sobhraj, the infamous serial killer of Western backpackers in Asia in the 1970s.
With Australian Associated Press
