[citation needed] Educated at Scotch College, Adelaide, he left school at sixteen after earning his Leaving Certificate.
[citation needed] Cockburn began working as a copy boy[2] for The Advertiser in 1938, and started his reporter cadetship late in 1940.
During the war years he was one of the few young men working as a reporter at The Advertiser, as he had been rejected as medically unfit after volunteering for service with the Royal Australian Navy: he had tubercular scars on his lungs, the affliction that had decimated his father's family.
While still a cadet reporter, Cockburn obtained valuable early experience in the Canberra Press Gallery on behalf of the paper.
[citation needed] Cockburn covered the 1959 Royal Commission into the trial of Aboriginal murderer Rupert Maxwell Stuart largely instigated by campaigning journalist Rohan Rivett.
He resigned and returned to Australia and The Advertiser after voicing his doubts about the veracity of a public statement made by the Australian ambassador.
[10] In January 1979 Cockburn received a letter written in jail by inmate Edward Splatt, protesting his innocence of the 1977 murder of 77-year-old Rosa Amelia Simper.
The book sold well and its release was closely followed by the defeat of the state Labor government under Des Corcoran in September 1979, Dunstan having retired in February.
[citation needed] Cockburn published a revised edition of his father's book on South Australian placenames as What's in a name?, criticised by Geoff Manning, author of a similar publication, for its errors and omissions.