One of Double J's founding staff members has passed away.

ABC Journalist and Double Jay foundation staffer Mark Colvin has died at the age of 65, his family confirmed today.

In January 1975, Colvin commenced work at the ABC as a reporter with new youth-oriented station Double Jay, the station that became triple j and that which we are named after. Colvin spent three years working at Double J, helping shape what it was to become for many years to follow.

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He went on to work with Foreign Correspondent, Four Corners and The World Today, as well as filling roles as correspondent for the UK and Europe for many years.

Colvin's time at Double J coincided with the beginning the punk movement, a mammoth social and musical revolution that resonated with both the station's audience and staff.

But Colvin remembered Double J as being a diverse place, not just a

"Radio Birdman comes along and they've got this weird mixture of punk and surf and a whole lot of other weird stuff which is particularly Sydney and particularly Australian," he recalled.

"On Double J what you get is this mix of really weird stuff. Not just the wall smashing punk but also lots of odd stuff. I remember a song called ‘Is God a Man?' by the Snivelling Shits, which has got really interesting lyrics. A whole bunch of out of leftfield stuff was being played.

"The thing you've got to understand about Double J is that you never really knew what you were going to hear on any given shift. The idea of high rotation was just not there. People went on air with what they wanted to play."

For the past 20 years, Colvin has been the host of the ABC's Current Affairs program, PM, where his tenacious interviewing and informative reporting positioned him as one of the leading journalists in the country.

Colvin's health had been unstable for several years after contracting a rare blood disease – Wegeners Granulomatosis – while working on a story in Rwanda and Zaire in the mid-‘90s.

Issues with his kidney meant Colvin was forced to receive dialysis three times per week while he waited for a donation.

In 2012, Colvin received a kidney transplant from a friend he met while investigating the News Of The World phone hacking scandal. He allowed the ABC's Four Corners to film the process and invested considerable time and energy into advocating for organ donation.

A theatre production about the transplant recently played in Melbourne.

Mark Colvin returned to Double J in 2014 to present an episode of The J Files looking at the first decade of triple j.

He narrated Double J/Radio National co-production, A Kangaroo Has Three Ears in 2015.

In 2016, he joined us to remember his friend and colleague Mac Cocker.

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It was through the hard work of people like Mark Colvin that we can exist today. Our thoughts go out to Colvin's family and his huge number of friends and fans across the world.