SYDNEY: Australian counterculture figure Richard Neville, who was at the heart of Britain’s ‘Oz’ obscenity trial, has died aged 74, reports said Monday.

Neville co-founded the satirical Oz magazine in Sydney in 1963, a publication which shook up the conservative establishment with articles on abortion, homosexuality and censorship.

Despite Neville being charged with bringing out an indecent and obscene publication, the magazine was a success and in 1966 he moved to London where he went on to start a British version.

Richard Walsh, who co-founded Oz in Sydney with Neville and artist Martin Sharp, said he had known for some time that his friend had suffered from Alzheimer’s and his death was not a shock.

“Those of us who knew him well understood the path that his life was taking. I am, in a sense beyond sadness, because that’s been a very sad route that he has taken,” Walsh told ABC radio.

“And this morning I’m glad that he has finally come to the end of the yellow brick road.”

Walsh said the Oz had come along at a time when religion and the monarchy were key institutions in Australian life and the magazine had “found a hole in the fence”.

In Britain, the counterculture magazine sparked an obscenity trial over an issue edited by high-school students which included a cartoon of children’s comic strip character Rupert Bear with an erection.

Neville, who attracted the support of the likes of John Lennon and Yoko Ono during the trial, was found guilty on an obscenity charge but this was ultimately overturned on appeal.

Speaking to the ABC in 2013, Neville said it was the staid conservatism of 1960s Australia which had motivated him.

“There were lots of kind of stuff going on in the ether that was beginning life quite a lot different from the life of our parents, and I guess you could say sex, drive-in movies, rock and roll, the pill, great music all over the world,” he said.