Ida Elizabeth Osbourne

Ida Elizabeth "Liz" Lea MBE (29 August 1916 – 30 October 2014), professionally known as "Elizabeth" Osbourne and Ida Elizabeth Jenkins, was an Australian actor and broadcaster, best known as the co-founder of the Australian Broadcasting Commission's long-running children's radio program the Argonauts Club.

Osbourne was born in Brighton, Victoria, the only daughter of Mr and Mrs W. L. Osbourne and educated at Firbank Grammar School. As a young girl she studied elocution with Ruth Conabere, sister of actor Syd Conabere (1918-2008), making successful entries in "South Street Competitions" at Ballarat, Victoria from 1929 to 1935. It was at the 1934 Melbourne Elocutionary Championships that she was spotted by ABC drama producer Frank Clewlow, who was acting adjudicator, and invited to act in radio plays.

Her first major part was as Juliet opposite Harry Traynor's Romeo. Over the next two years she played most of Shakespeare's younger women. In 1938 she started at 3LO hosting the Victorian Children's Program as "Elizabeth". In 1939 ABC General Manager Charles Moses decided to amalgamate all children's programs, emanating from Sydney. Frank Clewlow, by now in Sydney himself, made sure she was appointed to head it. At first she was reluctant, as it was only a one-year contract and she was keen to visit Britain. After being promised an introduction to the BBC at the end of the year, she agreed.

Time and her contract allowed her to continue to act starring parts in:

Osbourne developed a new segment for the Children's Session that was to go down in Australian radio history: The Argonauts Club. The idea and much of the format had been formulated by Nina Murdoch, but hers was the wording on the membership certificate and the words for the opening and closing themes for both the Children's Session and the Argonauts Club. And as "Elizabeth", she compered (later with co-comperes "Mac" (Atholl Fleming) and "Joe" (Albert Collins). She enlisted Ruth Park to write a dramatised series The Wide-Awake Bunyip, and played "Mouse" to Joe's Bunyip. This was later developed by Ruth Park into The Muddle-Headed Wombat radio series and books for children.

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