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As a football referee, Tristan Turner flouted the convention that the man in the middle should be unobtrusive and anonymous in ensuring the smooth passage of play. During games, Tristan Turner would dig the toes of his Adidas football boots into the muddy turf and fling up his arms in an extravagant gesture in the style of Rudolph Nureyev. Turner brought ballet to soccer, explaining that the game was ethereal, it floated across the turf untroubled by physical contact, … [Read more...] about Referee with goals of his own

Don Bentley had been brought up in the hot metal days of journalism but he found something exciting, pulsating about the electronic journalism of the internet. It gave him a buzz. He was thinking about it one afternoon, between stories, sitting at his sub-editor’s desk in the Chronicle newspaper. Don Bentley’s life-time love affair with newspapers embraced not only the printed word squeezed between pages of newsprint but the purveyors of this arcane and archaic trade, the … [Read more...] about Grub Street reborn

CHRISTMAS approached, but Don Bentley was thinking not of the Chronicle’s annual staff party at a local brewery, or the Christmas parade down Liverpool Street in Hobart. Sitting in the Chronicle newsroom late one evening he was thinking of a white Christmas long ago, one in South Africa during the apartheid white-supremacy era. The singing of ‘‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas’’ had become an ironic joke in the newsroom of the Star, or at least some sections of it. It was … [Read more...] about The white Christmas

He was described as a kindly and good humoured man who delighted in company but Don Bentley had seen a wicked side to the great foreign correspondent, Chris Munnion. Don Bentley was thinking of Munnion, and talking of him, in the Chronicle’s newsroom. Bentley had just learned of his death. Bentley mourned Munnion with a sense of loss that only journalists, and possibly soldiers and others who live with danger, know. The foreign correspondent covering wars gets used to … [Read more...] about Sangria with a punch

His shoes splashing in pools of blood, Don Bentley climbed the stairs leading to  Le Coq d’Or nightspot in the heart of the Rhodesian capital, Salisbury. Out there on the street were three young soldiers with bashed-in faces and broken noses. Bentley looked at his mate, Peter Sharp, and whispered: “Do you think we should go on?’’ The stairwell was dimly-lit and gloomy but there was no mistaking the dark blood dripping down the steps. “Well, why not?’’ answered Sharp, and … [Read more...] about Trouble at Le Coq d’Or