IN THE mid 1950s Warwick local radio had a star called Aunty Judy, much loved by the region's children but Judith Cutmore has a little secret about that.

"I was 15, had just finished school and got a job at 4WK radio,” she said.

"I worked in the office but also did some announcing.

"I started a show called Kiddy Sessions that ran weeknights from 5.30pm to 6pm.”

The star of that show was Aunty Judy.

"I made up the character and Aunty Judy would run competitions for the kids,” Mrs Cutmore said.

"They'd have to do a drawing or write a little story.

"The winners would have to come to the studio to pick up their prizes and they'd all want to meet Aunty Judy, but I couldn't tell them it was me, only a teenager myself, so I'd say she was out.”

In 1959, at just 21 Mrs Cutmore did something that not many people even thought of doing at the time.

"I wanted to go to New Zealand for a fortnight,” she said.

"But my friend Marian said no, she said we should go to England for a working holiday.

"We decided to go for two years, back then you could just go for as long as you wanted.

"My mother said I wouldn't be game enough, but I said, 'I'll show you' - I'd never dreamed of doing anything like that, but it was the best, the experience of a lifetime.”

With best friend Marian White (nee Dunstan), the two paid just 330 pounds for a return trip to the UK.

They spent two years working and exploring, buying a tandem bicycle to tour the countryside in the summer or hopping across to Europe in their holidays.

Returning to Warwick in 1961, Judith met Percy Cutmore who she married in 1963. The pair still live happily together in Locke St.