After a long career in journalism, I’ve amassed more than a few articles. Here are some favorites.
Those With Reasons to Hate Find Place to Toast Death
The Salt Lake Tribune, 1987
Sixty miles away, doctors are preparing to inject lethal chemicals into a human body. Five blocks away, tinted windows darken the empty Ogden Hi-Fi Shop. And on 24th Street in Rowducks Saloon & Grill, the jukebox is blaring and the beer is flowing to celebrate the unstoppable execution of Pierre Dale Selby.
Hope, wing, prayer? Nun of the above
The Sydney Morning Herald, 1992
We had imagined our flight from Bali to Ruteng on the nearby island of Flores would be a short hop, but this was before we encountered the Third World Law of Geometry: the shortest distance between to points in an irrelevancy.
Red flag fades to pink in commercial Vietnam
The Australian, 1994
It may have been an American who first declared “war is hell”, but it the Vietnamese who are writing its corollary: victory is profitable.
Taken for a musical ride
The Sydney Morning Herald, 2005
Five shot glasses are raised in my honour, each filled with a crimson liquid that looks suspiciously like blood. I shift my gaze from the boisterous quintet of gypsy musicians to check my arteries for punctures, but the only thing that has been drained is my wallet.
The pages of puberty
The Sydney Morning Herald, 2008
In the summer of 1973, I read Summer of ’42. At the age of 14, I was supposed to be discovering the opposite sex, which is what the story’s narrator does, but books were proving more dependable and predictable than girls.
The camel whisperer
The Sydney Morning Herald, 2014
John Hare, 78, might seem a tad old as a matchmaker for the younger generation, but his latest success has him positively beaming. Naran, a feisty stud with a mane of fawn locks, has no fewer than four “very attractive females” willingly following him to the most desolate ends of the earth. Naran, it should be noted, is a camel.
It’s Lidari by a decimal point
The Sydney Morning Herald, 2014
Spoiler alert: the winning time in the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday will be three minutes and 20.041513 seconds. Give or take a few hooves.
What’s in a name?
The Sydney Morning Herald, 2016
Each time I visit my 92-year-old mother-in-law, she greets me with a gift. It doesn’t come wrapped in striped paper or topped with ribbons. Her knotted joints have long since lost the dexterity for that. Instead, the gift arrives as two words: “Hello, Conrad.”