Feeling honoured, excited (and more than a bit freaked out) at being awarded a public interest journalism grant through the Walkley Foundation and its donors today. Not least because the grant is named for one of my reporting heroes and mentors, the ABC’s legendary Pacific correspondent Sean Dorney. My ambition with this project is to … Continue reading
Several years ago, researching a story on land grabbing (tree stealing) near Kiunga on the PNG border, I ran into a PNG nurse and nun who was climbing into a dinghy to take a trip down the Fly River. She told me she was taking vaccines to children in the refugee camps. “What refugee camps?” … Continue reading
During a brief but busy trip to PNG in October, I had the privilege to spend a little time with Behrouz Boochani, the Iranian-Kurdish journalist and refugee whose powerful advocacy has earned him international recognition. (This was shortly before he finally left PNG and flew to New Zealand, and his next chapter.) Behrouz acted as … Continue reading
Passing through Port Moresby en route to my story on the West Papua border, The Guardian asked whether I might be able to get a one-on-one with the former PM, at that stage battling corruption allegations (again). Rather to my surprise, we met for breakfast. Rather to his surprise, I suspect, it got a bit … Continue reading
Revisiting Tari, albeit long distance, for The Guardian. Recent killings of women and children in a village outside Tari deserve to be seen in the context of the spiralling social emergency playing out there. This plugs into the same issues wrote about in my long feature on PNG’s Resource Curse for The Monthly last year. … Continue reading
I’ve hooked up with Dr David Paton’s annual summer surveys of the sublime Coorong area of South Australia several times over the years, most memorably taking my kids along as volunteers when they were small. They plucked tiny birds out of mist nets and weighed them, sifted the water for tiny larvae, released pygmy possums … Continue reading
This latest edition of Griffith Review is dedicated to nature writing, exploring a range of environments, investigating “how these places are changing and what they might become; what is flourishing and what is at risk”. It was a chance for me to reflect on the critical but complex business of conservation in PNG, visiting landscape, … Continue reading
My trip to PNG’s Managalas Plateau conservation area also yielded this radio documentary, produced in collaboration with ABC RN broadcaster extraordinaire Natasha Mitchell. While chasing the elusive and endangered Queen Alexandra Birdwing Butterfly, we explore the hardships facing so many forest-dwelling communities in PNG. Link here. (Image: (COPYRIGHT MUSEUMS VICTORIA; PHOTOGRAPHER BEN HEALLEY) Continue reading
When I went to Nigeria in April 2017 to research a story on the efforts there to stamp out polio, I couldn’t help but be grateful – and a bit mystified – that the disease had been absent so long from Papua New Guinea. With only a small proportion of the country having access to … Continue reading
As a serial visitor and close observer of PNG, I’ve been tuned in to the growing distress and anger of health workers at the collapse of supply lines of basic medicines and equipment to hospitals and clinics right across the country. Social media has been churning with reports of desperate and often grieving families. All … Continue reading
