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APARTMENT LIVING: Highs and lows
About 15 years ago my partner Sue and I bought a new apartment off the plan and had a truly hellish time with corrupt committee members, self-serving building managers, incompetent strata managers, rapacious developers, mendacious attack-dog lawyers and neighbours who refused to help but then were quick to point the finger when things went wrong. Our saving […]
TV: A drama every day
Nearly 20 years ago, when I was a struggling sitcom writer, someone at Channel 7 told me that a new production company called Screentime was looking for an afternoon teen soap. My then co-writer Steve recalls that by the time I had driven from Epping (Sydney) to the city centre for coffee, I had nutted […]
TRAVEL: Are we there yet?
Considering I hadn’t set foot on an aeroplane before I was 30, it’s remarkable that in the intervening decades I have begun to enjoy travel for its own sake. My partner Sue is even more of a travel addict so we tend to clock up the air miles whenever we can. Our philosophies, however, take […]
BOOKS: A long and winding road
I was 14 years old when I read my first work of grown-up fiction (Leslie Thomas’ The Virgin Soldiers) and decided that was what I wanted to do with my life. It only took 50 years to achieve that ambition of writing (hopefully) entertaining novels, although I’ve written a stack of other books in between. […]
Vietnam Romance and Intrigue
Ever since I led my first tour to Vietnam I have had this sneaking sense of unease. I don’t at all understand why the Australian government so willingly joined America’s war in Vietnam but I do get why Australian troops went there, especially the ‘Nashos” (National Servicemen). Britain decided not to get involved (we had […]
Crash Palace: Bonking, Boozing Backpackers
CRASH PALACE, 65 episodes of sex, drugs and soap, set in a Kings Cross, Sydney, backpackers hostel was – as they say – seen all over the world. But then, any Australian show is going to turn up filling a slot somewhere on the TV schedules of the planet, even if it is at 2am […]
Wendell Sailor: Crossing The Line
Late last year (2012) I was just getting to grips with my latest project, a first person biography of sports star Wendell Sailor. I was chatting about our work with my partner, Sue Williams. She was working on her biography of father Bob Maguire and we joked about how you haven’t really got through to […]
Tunnel Rats
Allen & Unwin published Tunnel Rats at the beginning of July 2011. It’s a major rewrite of ‘No Need For Heroes’ the first-person memoir I wrote for Sandy MacGregor about 15 years before, but updated and re-tooled as a full-blown military history rather than a personal memoir. It’s a real “Boys’ Own” adventure – only […]
Apartment Living
Apartment Living was written by my partner Sue Williams and me in response to the fairly troubled times we faced when we first moved into a new apartment block in Sydney. We ran the whole gauntlet of issues, from a dodgy Executive Committee the chair of which was a little too autocratic and close to […]