Little Darwin

A  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  SUN –EXCLUSIVE  MEMOIRS   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  REPORTER , # 1

Much   travelled  journalist ,  cameraman  and  author , Ian Mackay,  and  his  wife , Luella ,  now  reside  on  Magnetic Island ,  North  Queensland.   Ian  has  led  an  action- packed life  , covered    many  hotspots  on   assignment ,   and   has   kindly  agreed  to   supply  Little Darwin    with    outstanding  articles ,   photographs ,   books   and   ephemera   from   his  sea  chest, so expect some salty contents .  In   this  extraordinary  opening   piece  he  provides  broad  biographical  details , including  a  revealing  event  involving   meat  and  two  vegies  .

 

Ian  on an airfield  hit by Vietcong  mortar  fire 

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I WAS born in  Adelaide on a dark and stormy night in 1939, so my father joined the Army. I spent the war in my mother’s home-town on the West Coast of SA, and when it was all over we settled back in Adelaide where my father returned to his job of schoolteacher. After high school I joined The Adelaide Advertiser as a copyboy, and during the best year of my life to that time I learned the ins and outs of what was a rather old-fashioned morning daily newspaper. I got a cadetship the following year and began life as a reporter – which – with a lot of twists and turns along  the  way -- I gave  up  only   five years    ago  .                                                                              .                             
TV came to Adelaide in 1960 and I was drafted into the newsroom at Channel 7 which was then owned by The Advertiser. I  became  good at making films – including documentaries in Thailand and Kenya – and in 1965 a cameraman by the name of Brian Taylor and I chanced our arms and went freelancing in SE Asia. We helped set up the Far East bureau of ITN in Singapore and although our beat extended from India to the Philippines we spent most of the time in Vietnam.

COVERING  VIETNAM  WAR 

 

After two years of that I was sick of TV and went back to Adelaide and The Advertiser, and wrote my  first book, Australians in Vietnam. Since then I have written nine more, including the best-selling  The  History of  Farting  and the wine classic, Taking  the  Piss.

In  1970 I became The Advertiser’s Canberra correspondent, and in 1972 I was posted to London as its European correspondent – the best gig I guess a reporter could get.  I worked in the Melbourne Herald Cable Service office in Fleet Street, and covered another war – the Yom Kippur war in 1973, based first  in Beirut, then  Cairo  .                                                   

 

START OF A PLACE IN THE SUN

Three years later I went back to Adelaide but the Herald mob wanted me in Melbourne so I shifted to Victoria in 1977. I worked as a reporter on The Herald – one of my early jobs was to whiz up to Sydney and cover the Granville train disaster. The following year I was shifted over to The Sun to replace Keith Dunstan as Place in the Sun columnist and I kept that up for a few years before freelancing again.

 I made a film in Tibet, wrote a few more books, worked for a year or so in Bob Hawke’s media office in Melbourne and wrote about wine for The Age, Business Review Weekly and the Sydney Morning Herald .   I joined The Age full time as a senior feature writer in 1985, but after four good years I was conned back to The Herald which had been taken over in the meantime by Rupert Murdoch. That turned into a total fiasco which culminated in the merging of  the two famous Flinders Street papers into today’s Herald-Sun. Known in  the  business  as  The Hun.

Luella and  Ian rolling out  Salty Dog  clobber  for  yachties .

I went back to freelancing, and in 1993 I took over Paul Keating’s media office in Melbourne. When Labor lost the 1996 election it was time for a  seachange. My wife and I had bought a block of land up in Airlie Beach in North Queensland on a holiday there several years before so we headed north for what turned out to be more than a decade in the sun. There were no media jobs to speak of so I opened up a little chandlery at Abel Point Marina  which became known as Salty Dog Marine. I sold it  three  years later to a local  sailmaker  who wanted  to  expand.

MOUNT  ISA  OR  THE  BEACH  ULTIMATUM

I twiddled my thumbs for a while before seeing an ad for a reporter on the North-East Star in Mount Isa , Queensland ,and thought – what the heck! I only stayed there for 10 months – my wife finally gave me an ultimatum to get back to Airlie Beach – but it was great fun. I  was by far the oldest person on the staff, but it was a great little paper and I loved every minute of it.

Back in  Airlie , I needed something to keep me off the street so I took up an offer to become editor of the local rag, the Whitsunday Times, a weekly  giveaway. That got me through to retirement, and after a couple of years in the little town of Bowen, we were thinking of  buying a boat up in Cairns.  But then my darling daughter Emma, who lived in Melbourne, announced she was pregnant with twins. My dear wife Luella decided she needed to be closer to the action, so instead of Cairns we settled in Nungurner – which is about as close to Melbourne as I need to be. My son Lachlan, incidentally, lives in London, where he runs the  famous  Comedy Store in Piccadilly.

SIGHTS  OF  SINGAPORE

 

So – 50 years a journo!!  And as they say, you get to meet some interesting people. Here’s a little list: The Queen of Australia – twice ; the King and  Queen of Thailand – twice ; three presidents, two Popes – a small van-load of  Prime Ministers and  a truck-load of pollies. In London I had lunch one day with Joanna Lumley from Absolutely Fabulous. Mind you, she was at the next table, but she spoke rather loudly so it was like I was there.  And at Wimbledon I was covering a match on No 2 court between Jimmy Connors and the  young Indian VJ Amritrarj and sitting right behind me – really right behind me in the very steep seats of the press box -- was Ava Gardner. She was barracking for  Jimbo and every time he won a shot she jumped up and kicked me in the back!  And each time she bent down and patted me on the shoulder and said: “Sorry, honey!” Wow. Unfortunately, Connors won in straight sets.                 .

One day in Singapore , I  went to Tanglin Barracks, headquarters of  FARELF – Britain’s Far Eastern Land Forces. There in the visitors’ book was the  bold signature – Jack Profumo, Minister for War. Jack  is  better remembered  these days for his dalliance with a call-girl by the name of Christine Keeler – whose other best friend happened to be a top Russian spy. But it  was the title that impressed me – Jack wasn’t Minister for Defence but Minister for  War. Very British! Minister for Whores, as  it  turned  out.                            

The UK was at war at the time – the so-called Confrontation with Indonesia. The Scots Guards and the Ghurkas were in Borneo and the Guards were about to be replaced by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, then staging through Singapore. I went out to Changi Barracks to see them go, and arranged a TV interview with their CO. He was sitting down facing the camera and I looked around to see if we were ready to roll and the cameraman and the CO’s ADC, Captain Andrew Dewar-Duries, from the famous whisky family, were rolling around with laughter. “Meat and two veg, Sir,” called out  Andrew, and  the Colonel demurely re-arranged himself. Meat and two veg!!!  At least we  knew the Argylls wore nothing  under  their kilts.