He was born at Balaklava, South Australia, to bank manager Edward Blore Bednall and Naomi Caroline Gertrude, née Ferry.
[1] From 1938 Bednall worked for Australian Associated Press in London, and from 1942 to 1944 was aviation correspondent for the Daily Mail.
In 1945 he worked briefly as a correspondent for Lord Louis Mountbatten's command in India, and was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services to the war effort.
He was then appointed to UNESCO's space communications committee, and from 1966 to 1969 he managed an English-Chinese television station TVB in Hong Kong.
His time in China saw his previously conservative political views shift to the left, and when he returned to Australia he joined the Labor Party, and ran unsuccessfully for the seat of Flinders in the federal elections of 1972 and 1974.