Tribute from Eric Ellis - 55 G'Days in Peking

By Eric Ellis - November 30, 2004

Col loomed large in my life and for the last 11 years - at the AFR and The Bulletin - was one of a precious few in Oz media with whom I shared a close professional and personal interest in Asia. He was one of the rare, eclectically-read journalists - and point-of-contact in the newsroom - to whom one did not need to explain context and nuance about yarns that may have seemed complex or impenetrable to others. Last year, I told him I was heading to Nepal and he mailed back to tell me what to keep an eye out for. I had never been there but after a week's interviews, I realised that he had known exactly what the dynamic was there. He then confessed the Kathmandu Post was part of his reading list as, no doubt, was just about every Asian paper. It was Col, with aplomb and diplomacy, who explained and contextually shepherded material, sometimes from farflung places, through to editors who as they sorted through the blizzard of wider copy knew something was significant largely because Col told them it was - and they infinitely trusted his word, understanding and judgement. That is an extraordinarily valuable asset for the correspondent to wield, and one could likewise trust him to fight a corner once he had (enthusiastically) embraced the idea/story. Of course, he could apply that same frank judgement back to the writer, often with a penetrating observation, to advise how something should spin, or why it wouldn't fly. You didn't always want to hear that but Col was very rarely wrong in exercising that judgement, and thus his take was accepted and trusted as sound. And it was all executed with great efficiency.

And intelligent humour. Col was responsible for one of the great heads on a P1 funny I filed back then for the AFR from Beijing about a group of Oz squillionaire yobs hunting down China deals and making embarrassments of themselves and their passport. The headline was 'The Asian Investment Trail: 55 G'Days in Peking' - which just summed it up perfectly, was quite brilliant and I think deservedly won him an award that year. It was also a case of the headline getting the yarn onto P1 more than the story itself. I met him for the first time in Singapore (at the atrium cafe at the Shangri-La Hotel, about 200m from where I now live and every time I go in there, probably once a week when I'm in Singapore, I instinctively think of him - and from now will more than ever.) He was filing to the AFR then from Singapore/Malaysia, and despite my interloping from HK/China he was very open, warm and welcoming with a sharp, well-sourced take even though, then, I was technically intruding on his turf.

I had enormous time and respect for him; he was funny, very knowledgable about a great many things and extremely professional. The meticulous care in which he handled and edited the succession of Bali bombing features, particularly the main on-the-terror-trail story, was outstanding. I'm so glad I got the chance to speak to him a day or so before he went into hospital to wish him well and also to tell him I'd pinned down an interview with the new Indonesian president that he had wanted. He had virtually challenged me some weeks earlier that this was the story, over some windy 'Wither Indonesia' suggestion I had made. My first reaction was 'yeah right' at a time when such access to Merdeka seemed unattainable. But that's the one he wanted to move the story forward, and he sensed better than me in the field that it was gettable - and yet again he was right.

But beyond all that work stuff, which when it all boils down doesn't mean that much in the greater scheme of things, he truly was a gem, and simply a very good man. He's irreplaceable.

Eric Ellis
Correspondent