On Sunday, 9 January 1972 the Queen Elizabeth, one of the greatest ocean liners of her age, caught fire in Hong Kong harbour and there was only one foreign journalist covering the story – my […]
The Spackman residence in Hong Kong didn’t get hot running water in the kitchen until the late 1970s. From 1967, when we first rented the flat in Macdonnell Road, until 1978, when I was packed off […]
The last time I saw my father Jack Spackman was December 2002 in San Francisco. It was a turbulent time in US history, the country still reeling from the attack on the World Trade Centre […]
Who knows the truth about Francis James, one of Australia’s last great characters? My father Jack Spackman, who knew him better than most, said he never got to the heart of the man, best known […]
Behind every great Chairman there’s a hard-working woman. Sometimes she’s vilified, sometimes she’s ignored. When it came to the foundation of the Hong Kong Journalists Association on 1 April 1968, the driving force was my […]
The kitchen at our flat in Macdonnell Road in Hong Kong backed on to a dank, rat-infested space, a convenient landing spot for rubbish hurled from the windows above. Mr Chan, the building manager, was […]
When the Royal Navy lowered its flag for the last time on Hong Kong island in 1993, commander-in-chief Governor Chris Patten was elsewhere. In a carefully calculated political move, he was dining with the men and […]
My father Jack Spackman said that, when we arrived in Hong Kong in February 1967, his questions about what would happen in 20 years’ time when Britain’s lease on the New Territories expired were routinely […]
When the school year started in September 1967 my honorary aunt Joan ‘The Bone’ Byrne took up her post at Hong Kong’s Wellington College in Caine Road and I began my undistinguished academic career at […]
Those first months in Hong Kong for your Young Girl Reporter are a series of snapshots which must be connected by the memories of others. Hong Kong in 1967 was a very different place to […]
Copyright: Maria Spackman
