For many Australians, I imagine Shane Warne's death was one of those “I remember where I was when I heard” moments, such was the shock and weight it brought.
This is definitely the case for me. I was working in Thailand at the time, and had just returned to my hotel in Bangkok, where I was staying another night, when a message on my phone alerted me to the news.
Shane Warne was bid farewell with a traditional Buddhist ceremony in Koh Samui.credit: Facebook
It's been a little over a year since I started working as a Southeast Asia correspondent, and after processing what I'd just heard for a moment, I realized this would likely be the biggest story I'd encounter.
My hunch was confirmed after I boarded the first flight the next morning to Koh Samui, where the cricket icon collapsed while on vacation and where only a handful of foreign media were able to reach him due to pandemic restrictions.
The intense days that followed were spent trying to piece together the final hours of Warren's life and chronicling the dramatic twists and bizarre turns of the days that followed, from the police investigation, the intervention of Australian officials to fast-track repatriation, to a woman getting into the back of the ambulance transporting his body.
As someone with a background mostly in sports journalism, I've met Warren, the commentator, in the past, and while I only knew him by way of a 'hello mate' in the corridors and stairwells of stadiums, that was it. A surreal covering of this tragic story.
I'm thinking about that week in Thailand, as I finished my job of three years, which went by way too quickly.
When I started working from our new office in Singapore in early 2021, we were all living in a very different world. At the height of the global health crisis, with international travel virtually halted and airports nearly deserted, my wife and two sons boarded the plane from Sydney almost to ourselves.
Chris Barrett, left, joined Indonesian President Joko Widodo on a tour of Jakarta's Palmyra Market last year before being interviewed at Merdeka Palace.credit: Geoffrey Tarigan
Although this was new, I arrived unsure when I would next be able to fly, the central job of a reporter with a brief to cover a vast and disparate region of the world comprising 11 countries and some 650 million people.
Fortunately, after I was initially stopped, I was able to spend a lot of my time wearing my passport, from northern Laos to the southern coast of East Timor.
When I applied to be a Southeast Asia correspondent, one of the most important things that attracted me was the sheer diversity the job promised. This has certainly become true. One day, you might be in Bali for a summit of world leaders, or in Vietnam for a visit by the Australian Prime Minister; The next day, you might be covering the clash between Islamism and popular culture in Malaysia, knocking on the door of a human smuggler in Sri Lanka, or delving into cannabis liberation in Thailand.
Documenting the adventures of Australians overseas was, of course, a feature of this role, and there have been few classics of the genre, none more notable than the rampage of a young Queenslander in the very conservative Aceh province of Indonesia.
There was also the incredible survival of four Australian tourists who disappeared at sea off Sumatra. This was one of those occasions that initially seemed, to me at least, headed toward a bleak, inevitable outcome. But I was also struck by the confidence of one of their fathers when I called him on the night their boat disappeared, while I was on my way towards the island of Nias, from where they had set out. It turns out he was right. The quartet were discovered floating on surfboards in the ocean 36 hours later, although one of their Indonesian guides was never found.
Fortunately, the region has not received other major press coverage – major natural disasters – for most of my tenure. But unfortunately there was no shortage of human tragedy.
Two young fishermen from Sri Lanka attempted to travel by boat to Australia and were intercepted on the day of the 2022 federal election.credit: Pradeep Dambaraj
The massacre committed by the military in Myanmar after it seized power in 2021 has been a regular topic, but one memory that stands out is a dinner I had with a group of Burmese students near the Thai-Myanmar border, across which they had just fled. They were supposed to be in high school and college, but instead they joined the Generation Z resistance, fighting the army with homemade weapons until the bombing became too intense and they saw many of their friends die.
I was also in Sri Lanka to witness the stunning economic collapse that led to the ouster of its president and prime minister, the Rajapaksa brothers, and led to desperate people resuming boats to Australia. They included 12 young fishermen, whose protests on the day of the 2022 Australian federal election became the subject of controversy when the Morrison government broke protocol and announced it. When we tracked down the men and interviewed them at one of their parents' homes in Negombo, they said they had no idea what a fuss they might cause and were not even aware there was an election. They just wanted a fresh start in life to put food on the table for their family.
Singapore, my base for three years, is seen as a constant outlier in a sometimes chaotic neighborhood, but there was a lot going on there too. First was the harrowing story of Nagaintran Dharmalingam, a mentally ill Malaysian who was sentenced to death for bringing drugs into the city-state, which brought us to international attention. I will not quickly forget sitting in court as his family failed in a final attempt to save his life and he asked to hold his mother's hand one last time. He was hanged at dawn the next day.
Amid this despair and some of the other horrific events I was sent to report on—the attack on a day care center in northeastern Thailand and the assassination of a regional governor in the Philippines, for example—the people most affected were time and time. Once again he wants to hear.
Fortunately, I also found leaders keen to speak to the Australian public, including Indonesian President Joko Widodo, with whom I visited a market in Jakarta, as well as Malaysia's Anwar Ibrahim and Timorese independence hero Xanana Gusmao, with whom I sat down. Shortly before they rose to power.
As I conclude, I must highlight two trends that seem likely to gain speed, and may have broader consequences.
He speaks to independence hero Xanana Gusmão in Suai, East Timor, before the elections that returned him as prime minister.credit: Raimundus OK
One is the continuing rise of family politics, which has added to the consensus that Southeast Asia is suffering from democratic decline. I was in the Philippines in 2022 when the juggernaut Marcos-Duterte won the election, and in Cambodia last year when Hun Sen passed the baton to his son after a fait accompli vote. In Indonesia, the outgoing Widodo has also been accused of creating his own dynasty, with his eldest son seeking the vice presidency in two weeks.
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Another, more serious pattern that deserves to be emphasized is the escalation of tension in the South China Sea. Beijing's bullying of the Philippines and its fishermen has been going on for years, but as a more aggressive Manila approaches the United States, the use of water cannons and relentless obstruction of ships seems closer than ever to spilling over into something incomparably more dangerous. There is also concern, especially in the Philippines, about another potential flashpoint, Taiwan, and none more so than its northernmost flashpoint, the Batanes Islands, where I ventured to write about contingency plans being drawn up in anticipation of a Chinese invasion.
If all this sounds a bit bad, I should point out that there was a lighter side to the party. I've thoroughly enjoyed assignments like exploring the intersection between the supernatural and politics in Indonesia, which I did with our wonderful Jakarta-based correspondent Karuni Rumpis, and mapping the rise of Michelin-starred street food in Singapore. Other favorites included joining Penny Wong as she returned to her hometown of Kota Kinabalu and cruised Good weekend To the Malaysian jungle to learn about the mission to save its endangered national animal, the tiger.
Foreign news can lean toward the United States, Europe and, more recently, China, but when it comes to Southeast Asia, a region whose fortunes and futures are in many ways intertwined with our own, I have always found that there is great engagement with our people. coverage. It was a great honor to bring him to you.
Thanks for reading.
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