F&B Editor Peter Webster is recognized as one of Australia's most experienced photo journalists, having specialised in marine journalism and publishing for 35 years. During that period he's tested well over 1,200 (“I lost count years ago!”) powerboats, yachts and trailer boats. He's personally owned about 50 boats, and especially loved about 10 of them.
A frequent consultant to the industry he's renowned for his support of Australian boat building and his 'telling it like it is' style of journalism.
He became Editor of Australian Boating magazine in 1973, and continued in that position until it closed down in the 1989 recession. In the intervening years, he founded the Australian Boating magazine group and created many well-known marine titles including:

The Cruising Skipper
AB Sailboards
Commercial Fisherman and Boatowner
Trailerboat Fisherman
Tournament Fisherman
Luxury Boats Of Australai
Performance Sailing

When the AB publishing group closed down in 1989, Ruth Cunningham purchased the Trailerboat Fisherman (TBF) masthead. Working with Peter and other members of the Webster family, Ruth re-established TBF, which they ran together until early 1993. During this time, TBF grew to become the biggest selling boating magazine in Australia.

However, a decision to take on another shareholder (to consolidate and grow the TBF business) proved disastrous. In a bitterly disputed takeover in 1993, they lost control of the magazine, and unable to work with its new owner, quit the business. This resulted in Peter (and Ruth Cunningham) being forced to start all over again, with nothing behind them except a very grim determination to get back up again.

Their new business, Sea Media Pty Ltd, began in 1993, at first just publishing marine brochures and catalogues to get some money in the bank and pay the rent. The first issue of their new title, Australian Fisherman & Boatowner ("F&B" as it became known) was published in May 1994.

"It was hard competing against a magazine I'd created and developed over a ten year period." Peter told a trade magazine interviewer during the mid 90's. "On the positive side of things, starting again did give us the opportunity to broaden our target audience to include boats in the 9.0 – 12.0 m range, as there is such an obvious synergy between the larger trailerboats and the smaller cruisers.

"So who knows? Maybe our struggles in the early 90's were for a greater purpose than we could identify at that time," he said.

These days, Peter, a 61 year old father of four children (who are "all off my hands, and doing their own thing") is as passionate about boating and fishing as ever, and enjoying the challenges offered by today’s increasingly mixed multi-media era. Although he’s been channelling more of his energy into internet, television and documentary production, his great passion is still getting out “into the bush, into the remote corners, and sharing the fishing adventures with our readers and viewers.”

"Hardly anybody is doing anything about showing people the extraordinary boating and fishing environment we have in Australia. From the Snowy Mountain Lakes, to the Great Barrier Reef, south to the Tassie wilderness regions or nor'west to the incredible Kimberly Coast . . . Australia is blessed with some of the best boating and fishing waters left in the world – and if anything, there are less people on them today, than ever before.

Ruth Cunningham - Publisher

Ruth Cunningham was born in Sydney in 1959, the daughter of an Indian born, CSIRO scientist and a gentle Yorkshire Englishwomen who moved to Australia and settled in Sydney. But not just anywhere in Sydney – they chose to purchase a home at Lovett Bay, on the western side of Pittwater. From this tiny, virtually deserted weekend settlement, the Cunninghams raised their family. Each day, Ruth commuted by small boat to the shops, schools, jobs (etc) in what was no doubt idyllic for the kids, but must have surely been taxing for the parents – especially after Ruth's father died.

As a youngster, Ruth grew up with boats and people of the waterfront. She learned to be self reliant at a very early age ("You soon learned there was no point balling your eyes out because the outboard wouldn't go. It was far quicker to start rowing!") and was more at home in a boat than a car. Boats were her life, and she was scarcely eight years old before she was skippering her own tinnie, before growing into sailing and yacht racing. For years, she served as the 'deckie' on the milk-run and paper ferries. Servicing the outlying Pittwater communities. She hadn't left school before she'd bought, re-furbished and re-sold so many sailing dinghies she had enough money to buy her own car the day she got her licence. At age eighteen, she built her own 25' fibreglass racing yacht.

After school, her life continued at the same headlong pace. She joined the late Peter Green's Ship Chandlery and did her time counting metal threads and nuts, before being 'elevated' to ropes and swaging. Not content with then being pigeon holed in the clothing department, she quit, moved sideways, and joined Craig Whitworth and the late Ben Lexcen's Whitworth's retail chandlery group. Within a couple of years, she moved through to senior management, before being confirmed as GM of the growing chain of Whitworth stores.

Ten years at Whitworths, followed by 2 years at another big mail order business, BIAS Marine, left Ruth wondering where she would go next. In truth, she had already reached the top of the tree.

"Basically, I either had to go and open my own chandlery, or change directions completely," she said. A chance meeting with Peter Webster at a trade function provided the catalyst for the change she needed – and in 1989, she left chandlery and moved across to marine publishing. Ironically, she'd only been in the publishing business for 3 months or so when the crash of 1989 occurred, and the AB Group collapsed. But by then, she realised that marine publishing was where she wanted to be.
In a move that surprised many in the publishing and marine trade, she stepped forward and actually purchased Trailerboat Fisherman magazine in 1989. However, the decision in 1993 to take-on additional shareholders (to grow the magazine) subsequently proved disastrous – but it did certainly steel her resolve to become a successful publisher in her own right.

Together with Peter Webster's editorial experience, Ruth's many years of financial management training, marketing and general commercial skills in the marine world, has allowed these two people to combine in a multi-million dollar publishing business known as SEA Media Pty Ltd.

Today, SEA Media is one of the best known and most respected marine publishing groups in Australia, with regular titles in both print and more recently, electronic form on the internet. They include such well known titles as Australian Fisherman & Boatowner ("F&B") Plate Alloy Boats of Australia Books 1,2,3 and the Australian Marina Directory.

Not bad for a young woman who started her business career putting stainless steel nuts in plastic packets at a Sydney chandlery !