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No Need For Heroes
After the Koala Who Bounced was finished, my agent Selwa Anthony put me with a former Australian army major called Sandy MacGregor who won the Military Cross for his exploits in the Vietnam War. His men in 3 Field Troop were the first to go down the and explore the incredibly complex Viet Cong tunnel […]
The Ultimate Guide …
Our first book about living in apartments , ingeniously called Apartment Living, led to my weekly Flat Chat column in the Sydney Morning Herald. Ironically, based on the column, Fairfax Publications invited me to write The Ultimate Guide to Buying and Renting Houses and Apartments which is a much more practical and down-to-earth “how-to” book about buying, selling and renting – […]
The first Tunnel Rats tour
In February 2012, Sandy MacGregor and I, as co-authors of the best-selling military adventure Tunnel Rats, led a select group of travellers to where Aussie troops were based in Vietnam, working hard, playing harder, and creating the legend of the Tunnel Rats. That tour, which had guests ranging from young blokes in their 20s to one […]
Travel
I’ve done a bit of travel writing in my time and in recent years I have even become a travel guide, taking my own tour to Vietnam (with Sandy MacGregor, to retrace the footsteps of the sappers of 3 Field troop, celebrated in Tunnel Rats and A Sappers War. Here’s the best of what I’ve […]
The Koala Who Bounced … and kept bouncing
Karri the Koala came to life when the artist/cartoonist Eric Lobbecke asked my wife Sue if he she would write a kids book for him to illustrate. For some reason she suggested that he and I collaborate and meantime she introduced us to Selwa Anthony whose writer management agency was just getting going. With Selwa’s […]
Watto
I often joke that the reason I came to live in Australia was so I could support an international Test team that wasn’t England. That’s a bit of an exaggeration but there would be an element of truth in that for any cricket-loving Scot. Now, to be fair, Shane would be the first to admit […]
Pulped Non-Fiction
No longer available for legal reasons (see here), this book began when I got back from the Cannes Film Festival in May/June 2009 (name dropper!) and had two calls on my answering machine. One from the Underbelly tv series Executive Producer Des Monaghan of Screentime and the other from publisher Richard Walsh. Des’s call said […]
Snitch in the media
The very few remaining copies of Snitch were pulped as a consequence of an out-of-court legal settlement with a person named in the book who claimed that they had been defamed. I can’t name the person or comment on the outcome of the case which, contrary to some reports, never actually went to court. All […]
Watto
I often joke that the reason I came to live in Australia was so I could support an international Test team that wasn’t England. That’s a bit of an exaggeration but there would be an element of truth in that for any cricket-loving Scot. Anyway, you can imagine my delight when I was approached by […]
Smartphones … dumb people
There’s a reason we all sit in the dark in a cinema – it’s about being immersed in the movie, seeing the picture at its best and not being distracted while enjoying a uniquely shared experience. So how selfish and stupid do you have to be to not care that the light from your so-called […]