For three decades, Glenn A. Baker and I shared a private joke

You always knew when Glenn A. Baker was in the room. In the early days it was because a fez appeared above the crowd like a periscope scanning for mischief. Over the years, the fezzes became more ornate but progressively shorter, yet Glenn’s presence never did.

I first met Glenn – who died this week, aged 74 – in 1994 just after I’d become PR manager at CountryLink. He was standing drinking Coke at a travel writers’ lunch in Newtown. After having worked with many celebrities under Max Markson, I expected someone with Glenn’s reputation to have a rather large ego. Instead, he was incredibly approachable. We hit it off and later he wrote a piece for me on the Tin Trail to Condobolin for Off the Rails, an anthology of train travel.

I then moved to head up PR at Malaysia Airlines and we travelled far and wide – sometimes I was on the trips, sometimes I just organised them. Back then, Glenn, along with his great friend John Borthwick, had decided to transform travel into what appeared to be an alphabet challenge. Between them, they seemed to have visited every place on Earth alphabetically, with only Z proving elusive. I was delighted to help remedy that by sending Glenn to Zanzibar (well almost) – South Africa was close enough for him to finally get to the Spice Island.

One of my favourite memories of Glenn comes from an Australian Society of Travel Writers’ committee meeting in Kakadu. I was the token vegetarian in an era when the vegetarian option usually meant someone removed the ham from a sandwich. The person organising lunch reassured me there would be a magnificent green salad with plenty of avocado for me. There was. For about seven seconds. Glenn had already arrived.

I sat down to see him tucking into a pile of avocado – no lettuce, however. Yet Glenn had a way with words and apologised innocently while ensuring the last piece of avocado reached his lips. I laughed and accepted that my lunch would consist of a dry bread roll and left-behind lettuce. And from that day on it became our running joke. Every travel writers’ lunch, Glenn would make a beeline for the avocado while I contemplated chlorophyll in its purest form.

While he was known as the doyen of Australia’s music writers, he wanted to lose that tag and become known as a travel writer. And Glenn was one of the finest in the business. But there was much more to him than passports and frequent-flyer points.

I remember Christmases at his rambling Kenthurst home. There was a vast barn overflowing with music. There were donkeys wandering about and children everywhere. Laughter echoed around the lounge room with Glenn happily guzzling Coke. His annual Christmas cards became collector’s items. Each year I’d receive one in the mail featuring Glenn and his then wife and their six children arranged in ever more inventive tableaux. Receiving one meant you’d made the cut, and everyone knew it.

The last time I saw him he told me that he’d sold his extraordinary music collection. His only real concern wasn’t the money. He simply hoped whoever bought it wouldn’t split it up. That seemed such a perfectly Glenn thing to worry about. Collections, like friendships, deserved to stay together.

Glenn was a walking encyclopaedia. Winning the BBC’s Rock Brain of the Universe three times suggested that he had a skill none of us could compete with. He brought that encyclopaedic enthusiasm to everything, including the very competitive ASTW travel trivia nights.

But for me, if I could just use one word to describe Glenn it would be “kind”. He always had my back and would go to lengths to help me. Once, when he knew I was about to interview my hero Douglas Adams, Glenn went to considerable trouble to track down a recording of the After Dark program featuring Adams so I could prepare. He didn’t have to. He simply did. That was Glenn.

Australia has lost one of its great characters. Those of us lucky enough to have travelled beside him have lost something even rarer: a loyal friend whose curiosity never dimmed.

I hope heaven has an endless buffet. And that none of the angels are vegetarian.

Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan is a Sydney writer.