Bert Newton and Dame Edna Everage present the award for Best Children's Television Program at the 1984 TV Week Logie Awards to Simon Townsend's Wonder World! with hilarious resul

Before he created and hosted Wonder World!, Simon Townsend had already forged a successful career in TV, print and radio journalism.

In 1979, Simon Townsend wrote an 'oddities' article for the publication People.

Pages from The National Times newspaper on 7 December 1984. The article highlighted is about Simon Townsend and his stance against conscription during the Vietnam War.

Front page of The National Times newspaper from 7 December 1984, featuring a headline for a story about 'the activist leaders of the 60s'.

An article from TV Radio Extra about Simon Townsend sneaking into Buckingham Palace in 1977 during celebrations for The Queen's Silver Jubilee.

Forty years after Simon Townsend's Wonder World! first went to air on 3 September 1979, we celebrate this landmark children's TV program.

Simon Townsend's first foray into children's television was a pilot episode for a current affairs-style program for kids called The Ripper Report in 1974.

Publicity still of television host Simon Townsend, with his dog Woodrow, circa 1982.

Wonder World! reporter Jonathan Coleman and Simon Townsend pictured on one of the rides at Luna Park in Sydney, circa 1981.