Astbury was born in
Avoca, Victoria. Asbury played senior football for the
Avoca Football Club and won the 1971
Lexton FL goalkicking award and played with Avoca in their 1971 and 1972 losing
Lexton FL grand final teams. During a media career spanning 21 years, he won ten
VFL/
AFL awards, two national
Penguin Awards and was twice nominated for the
Logie Awards for the Best News Story of the year. After an early career in
Melbourne radio, Astbury made a successful jump to television—firstly for the
Channel 0/10 network, then for the
Nine Network, after accepting a personal job offer from owner
Kerry Packer. During his television career, Astbury was Australia's highest-paid sports correspondent. In 2005, Astbury revealed he was
HIV positive, although medical tests showed he was a rare
long-term nonprogressor (or "elite controller"), whose body can suppress the virus for a long period without antiretroviral drugs. In 2006, celebrity agent Anthony Zammit published
King and I: My Life With Graham Kennedy, a biography that detailed Astbury's relationship with entertainer
Graham Kennedy. After retiring from television, Astbury worked as a real estate agent at
Broadbeach on the Gold Coast, Queensland, between 1995 and 2000. For the next decade, he ran a property development company in Thailand. During the
2004 Boxing Day tsunami while Astbury was holidaying in Phuket, he reported on the devastation for the political website
Crikey. Returning to the Gold Coast in 2010, Astbury worked with the Ray White Real Estate agency in Broadbeach. On 9 November 2017, a colleague found him dead in his home after he did not turn up to work and could not be contacted. At the time of his death Astbury was making plans with fellow journalist Jon Lindsay to travel back to Pattaya in Thailand to set up a new real estate agency aimed at the ex-pat retirement market. ==References==