Journalism
A matter of dignity
Trade unions get a bad press but at their heart they’re about decent pay and working conditions. When I asked my father Jack Spackman why he started the Hong Kong Journalists Association his answer was […]
Articles by Maria Spackman
Journalism
Correcting the record – remembering Hugh van Es
There’s a moment in an exceptional 1998 documentary on Hugh van Es when he tells photojournalist Kadir van Lohuizen that he never joined a union. It’s a great exchange between two generations of war photographers […]
Adventures of a Girl Reporter
A dance to welcome the merry month of May
It’s Spring in the northern hemisphere and in a little town called Hastings on the south-eastern coast of England they’re about to go a bit mad in one of the biggest and strangest long weekends […]
Adventures of a Girl Reporter
Footloose girl takes the long western road home
Grenfell is a small, nondescript town of about 2,500 souls in the central plains of country New South Wales. It has few claims to fame but among them are two sons – a poet and […]
Adventures of a Girl Reporter
Lessons from an Old School master
I was 17 years old and filling time on my father Jack Spackman’s monthly computer magazine while I decided what to do with my life. I wasn’t expecting it to be hard work. I certainly […]
Journalism
Late for dinner and picking over the carcass
Australia’s March in March attracted plenty of interest on social media and somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 – depending on who you read – people in the streets. Not for the first time our professional […]
Adventures of a Girl Reporter
In 1967 Jack and Margaret Spackman arrived in Hong Kong
The question of why my family left Australia in 1967 has a different answer depending on who you ask. My father, Jack Spackman, would say that he wanted to get closer to Vietnam, to find out […]
Adventures of a Girl Reporter
Nostalgia and its trimmings
I was born, as they say, under a wandering star. And the moving around has made it hard to hold on to any artefacts – my mementos, such as they exist, are small, easily carried […]
Adventures of a Girl Reporter
Compassion in a time of uncertainty
Australia’s ‘asylum seeker issue’ has been pushed off our front pages lately. The Abbott government’s early Christmas presents to school children, car workers, aged care workers, child care workers and low-paid workers of all stripes […]
The Spackman Files
My spies through my little eyes
I spent a good chunk of my childhood reading trashy spy novels in the reading room of Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents Club, oblivious to the real spies who may… or may not… have been drinking […]