Feature Profiles
15 January, 2026
SUMMER READING - NOEL’S INK AND WIT ARE BACK!
‘Killer’ cartoonist tells Chris Earl how his passion’s been re-ignited
DO YOU know Noel Kilner, asked a bloke on the phone to Inglewood IGA.
Sure do, he comes in every day was the answer that reconnected golfing pro Henry Cussell with the one-time cartoonist for some of Australia’s most popular and highest-selling newspapers and magazines.
Next thing Noel knows is that Henry in on the phone pitching a project.
The local cartoonist’s mojo was being re-ignited after a couple of pretty much dormant decades, punctuated with cameo offerings of wit and humour.
Henry and Noel had worked together in the late 1980s. The newspaper artist known as Killer doing the cartoons for Henry’s books Golfers Lift Your Game and Tee Off Celebrities.
It was time for an update, Henry told Noel. Those classic cartoons to be given a refresh.
“I hadn’t worked professionally in this field for many years,” Noel said. “Henry’s book has reignited my love of drawing and cartooning again – I’ve got my mojo back.
“I was unsure whether I could even do it again, and was a bit rusty at first. An older hand is not as steady as it used to be.”
With the passion firing, Noel said he jumped at the chance to work with Henry again.
“My only request this time would be that the original cartoons were to be done in full colour, and Henry happily agreed,” Noel said.
And so, the collaborators began rewriting and illustrating their project 38 years from its’ successful first iteration.
In 1987 golf pro Henry wrote a free booklet on golf etiquette and rules for the National Golf Club at Cape Schanck titled Golfers! Lift Your Game.
Noel says the booklet was a huge success, being distributed to more than 120,00 golfers who were as captivated by Henry’s words as Noel’s black and white cartoons, which were spot coloured at the printers.
“The little project led to me getting paid commissions at Golf Australia,” he remembers.
The project was also a spring boarded for Noel into newspapers. He was already making occasional contributions to Melbourne suburban newspapers and then came work for the Truth, the racy Melbourne weekly.
Truth thrived for 90 or so years and gained a reputation as “a sensational weekly paper with a large circulation, delighting while shocking its readers with its frequent exposure of personal scandal and social injustice. Detailed police and court reports, illustrated by drawings and photographs of prosecutors and defendants”.
Noel says walking into the Truth office for the first time reminded him of accompanying his mother as a young child when she worked in the office of a suburban newspaper.
Soon the Killer cartoons were destined for a bigger audience. He was poached by Australasian Post and that meant drawing in full colour. His cartoons graced the same editions as the Ettamogah Pub series by cartoonist Ken Maynard.
Australasian Post was on the news stands from 1946 to 2002, the post-war incarnation of a publication that started as Bell’s Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle in 1857 on its way to becoming Australia’s longest-running weekly magazine. Noel also picked up commissions for food and fishing publications, a motoring magazine put out by socialite and former race driver Peter Jansen.
Life brought Noel to Bendigo and then Inglewood and the Killer cartoons became fewer.
He made a cameo return when Inglewood motel and caravan park owners Jerry and Pauline Wellman commissioned Killer to create a mural on the facade of the former Brooke Street butcher’s shop while restoration began inside. There’s also the gold leaf named on honour boards adorning halls and clubrooms across the re region - they are often done by the steady hand of Noel.
The dormant decades for the cartoon side of Noel’s life had the beginning of its end when n early 2025 when Henry, the PGA golf professional of the year 1999 who now owns and operates ATT Golf, a retail golf equipment outlet complete with golfing memorabilia museum in Ormond, decided to rewrite and update that little book to bring it into the 21st century.
The new version, now titled Golf Is Great (GIG), will be published in both hard copy and online. Henry hopes to have it released later this year.
“I was so glad when I found Noel again, Henry said.
Said Noel: “Henry has re-ignited me. I love working n colour.”
Noel “Killer” Kilner says there has to be a sense of humour in is cartoons “to help have a good laugh.”
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