Retno I Palupi

The Mellish Family mourn the terrible loss of Retno Palupi whose battle with cancer ended this morning. Retno was Morgan's wonderful assistant at AFR and a great support to our family after Morgan died. Her loss will be felt gretly by all who knew and loved her. We mourn with her family and friends for another life ended too soon. The funeral will be held tomorrow in Yogya.

*Retno wrote this heartbreaking account of finding Morgan in the morgue.

Mellish legacy lives on in Indonesian media

Stephen Fitzpatrick
Jakarta correspondent
March 30, 2009 The Australian

INDONESIAN business journalism training took a step forward last week with a workshop in the name of Morgan Mellish, The Australian Financial Review reporter who died in the 2007 Garuda air disaster in Yogyakarta.
The four-day program, entitled Financial Literacy for Journalists, was made possible with funds raised at a Jakarta lunch speech given by Kevin Rudd last year.
Jointly run by the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club and the Indonesian Association for Media Development, the program attracted a dozen reporters from the archipelago.
Over the four days they ran through an intensive series of sessions aimed at improving general news reporters' ability to make sense of balance sheets, government and company budgets and annual reports, and to tease out the crucial nexus between politics and business.
Launching the fund last June, the Prime Minister said the program's emphasis on financial analysis was something Mellish "would have liked. (He) represented the finest tradition of Australian journalists and Australian foreign correspondents".
Each participant in the program will now take skills covered in the course and apply them to a particular story, with examiners to assess the results.
One journalist, Bima Marzuki from RCTI television in Jakarta, said he planned to produce a series of reports on gaps in the government budget in Nusa Tenggara Timor province -- Indonesia's vast easternmost administrative district, which includes the islands of Sumba, Flores, Maluku and West Timor.
"What we have found is that the Government there allocates up to 80 per cent of its budgets for administrative costs -- things like public servants' uniforms -- and only 20 per cent to actual projects, education and so on," Marzuki said.
He added that journalistic independence was still difficult in Indonesia, particularly with a high level of editorial intervention by proprietors and an extremely low level of union organisation.
"Even where there is (union membership), a lot of pressure is usually applied by the owners," he said. "For instance, people are told that if they're a member of AJI (the main journalists' union), they won't receive salary bonuses, that kind of thing."
Other projects by participants in the Mellish fund included a story about a district head in Java who was directing his local government's budget towards funding the local professional football team, and regional development funding being spent on a major cigarette company's marketing and research budget.
Coincidentally, the previous week saw the wrapping-up for this year of the Elizabeth O'Neill Journalism Award -- a scholarship jointly run by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australia Indonesia Institute.
O'Neill, who also died in the Garuda crash, worked in the Australian embassy's public affairs section in Jakarta, and was a vital linking point between the two countries' media outlets.
Winners of the 2009 award were The Australian Financial Review's Canberra-based reporter Sophie Morris, who spent a month in Indonesia meeting government, business and other leaders, and Kartika Sari, the foreign news editor of Jakarta newspaper Rakyat Merdeka, who travelled to Australia for a series of interviews.
The newspaper and the embassy had had a prickly relationship for a long time. But a long bout of diplomacy seems to have won Rakyat Merdeka over.

Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club

JFCC launches Morgan Mellish Fund

The JFCC is proud to announce the launching of the Morgan Mellish Fund to train Indonesian journalists in business and economics. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd inaugurated the memorial fund on Friday June 13th.

Morgan Mellish* was the correspondent for the Australian Economic Review who died at age 36 on March 7, 2007 in the Garuda airline crash in Yogyakarta. He was among 21 people to loose their lives that day.

Morgan was awarded Australia''''s most prestigious journalism award, the Walkley, in 2006 for outstanding reporting. His story "The Robert Gerard Tax Scandal" was honored with the best Business Journalism award.

The Morgan Mellish Memorial Fund seeks to enhance Indonesian journalism in ways and encourage the spirit of bold inquisitiveness that made Morgan stand out.

The fund aims to put 20 students a year through courses that will enhance their reporting skills and bolster free and fair media It will be overseen by the JFCC''''s elected committee of eight journalists.

The JFCC has two other scholarships, the Sander Thoenes and Harry Burton funds, also in remembrance of former members who died during the course of their work.

Our work can only happen with the help of donations, so please be generous!

Transfer a donation to the JFCC in the name of the Morgan Mellish Fund

ANZ Panin Bank
Panin Bank Centre
Jl. Jend. Sudirman
Account Nr. 506923-00001

Send inquiries to: director@jfcc.info


*Morgan Mellish
Morgan Mellish was 36 years old when he died in the crash of Garuda Flight GA200 in Yogyakarta on March 7, 2007, one of 21 people to loose their lives that morning.
A talented journalist and lover of life, Morgan had been in Jakarta for just over a year, posted as The Australian Financial Review''s bureau chief.
Becoming a foreign correspondent was one of Morgan''s two professional aims; the other was winning a Walkley, Australia''s most prestigious journalism award. He achieved both in the same year; the latter for his revelations about the appointment of Liberal Party donor Robert Gerard to the Reserve Bank board.
Laid-back and with a cheeky grin, Morgan took his work extremely seriously, but that didnÃÕ hold back his adventurous side. He took full advantage of IndonesiaÃÔ vast outdoors, hiking, mountain biking, and his true passion: surfing.
His networks were broad, ranging from business leaders to politicians to other amateur athletes. It is still impossible to go for a surf at his favourite West Java break, Cimaja, without having other surfers - - both local and foreign - - asking after him. Indeed, some of Morgan''s ashes were scattered in those waters.
Morgan also had in spades the reporter''s knack for posing tough questions.
"Sometimes asking the most obvious and stupid things gets the best and least expected answers," he liked to say. "Don''t be afraid to sound like an idiot."
The Morgan Mellish Memorial Fund is intended to help enhance Indonesian journalism in ways that will encourage precisely that spirit of bold inquisitiveness.

Memorial fund to train reporters

Mark Forbes Herald Correspondent in Jakarta
SMH, June 14, 2008

THE Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said he was proud to launch a fund in the memory of Morgan Mellish during his visit to Jakarta yesterday, stating the former correspondent was committed to great journalism and loved Indonesia.
Mr Mellish, 36, was one of five Australians who died when a Garuda jet crashed in Yogyakarta just over a year ago. A correspondent with The Australian Financial Review, he was covering a visit by the then foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer.
The Morgan Mellish Fund, to be administered by the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club, will fund the training of up to 30 Indonesian journalists in financial reporting each year. "Morgan would have liked that," Mr Rudd said. "Morgan Mellish represented the finest traditions of Australian journalists and Australian foreign correspondents," he said.
Mr Rudd said Mr Mellish, the recipient of a Walkley Award, was on a path to "even greater heights when tragedy struck".
The foundation deserved support as it would strengthen media coverage and "a free press is the life blood of Australian democracy and Indonesian democracy", Mr Rudd said.
Mr Mellish's successor and JFCC spokesman, Angus Grigg, said the fund would seek "to enhance Indonesian journalism … and encourage the spirit of bold inquisitiveness that made Morgan stand out".
He said the fund would be available to all local journalists who wanted to improve their financial literacy.
"We want to use that tragedy and see something positive come out of it," he said.
A total of 21 people died when the Garuda Boeing 737 overshot the Yogyakarta runway on March 7, 2007. The pilot is likely to face criminal negligence charges later this month. He allegedly ignored 15 cockpit alarms warning him to abort the landing as he descended at twice the safe speed.

Defence chief's travel safety concern

Jonathan Pearlman
SMH, June 6, 2008

THE Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Houston, has called on the Government to use bigger jets for VIP travel to ensure that journalists do not have to fly on unsafe airlines in countries with poor aviation safety.
Media organisations have urged the Government to upgrade the Royal Australian Air Force planes since the Garuda crash in Indonesia last year, in which five Australians travelling for an official visit by Alexander Downer were killed.
Air Chief Marshal Houston has told a Senate committee "the 737 aircraft is too small" and the Government should buy or lease bigger VIP aircraft.
"It is imperative we look after our journalists in places where the airline standards are perhaps not as high as they are in our own country," he said. "I think it is fine if you are in Australia, but when you are travelling in many places around the world, there are concerns about certain carriers and their particular airworthiness and flying standards."
A spokesman for the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said a plane had been chartered for journalists covering his upcoming visit to Japan and Indonesia.
"There has been some discussion for some time about the need to update the VIP fleet," Mr Rudd said. "No decision has yet been made."
Air Chief Marshal Houston said the Garuda crash had demonstrated the risks of continuing to use the current fleet.

Rudd marks Garuda crash

SMH, March 8, 2008
THE five Australians killed in last year's plane crash in Indonesia were remembered yesterday by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, as passionate Australians.
Mr Rudd also paid tribute to the Herald journalist Cynthia Banham, who was severely injured in the Garuda crash on March 7 last year that killed 21 people when the Boeing 737 overshot the Yogyakarta airport runway and exploded.
Mr Rudd said his thoughts and prayers were with the families and friends. Five passionate Australians had died "vigorously pursuing their professions, in the prime of their lives", he said.
Private commemorations were held in Canberra and Jakarta for the federal police agents Brice Steele and Mark Scott, AusAID official Allison Sudradjat, Department of Foreign Affairs official Liz O'Neill and Australian Financial Review journalist Morgan Mellish, who died in the crash.
They were among government officials and reporters covering a visit to Indonesia by the then foreign minister, Alexander Downer. He was not on the plane.
Mr Rudd said the federal police would pay tribute to their officers, along with others who had lost their lives in the line of duty, on National Police Remembrance Day on September 29. The Department of Foreign Affairs and AusAID had created scholarships and annual awards. The first six AusAID scholarships will be announced on March 17.
Mr Rudd said the " efforts of Cynthia Banham and her partner, Michael Harvey, to rebuild their lives is a humbling tribute to the power of the human spirit".
Caroline Mellish, the sister of Mr Mellish, said she was disappointed Indonesia had not moved to improve air safety. "The investigation itself, I believe, has been thorough," she told Nine Network.
Phillip Hudson and AAP

Newspapers announce Indonesia scholarships

SMH, March 8, 2008
A Scholarship program to help Indonesian journalists and photographers gain experience in Australia was launched yesterday by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review on the first anniversary of the Yogyakarta plane crash.
Two scholarships of $5000 each will be offered annually to help promising Indonesian journalists or photographers visit Australia, where they will be hosted by the newspapers.
Currently there are very limited opportunities for Indonesian journalists to visit Australia and benefit from the professional and cultural experiences of working here.
The program was launched by the editor of the Herald, Alan Oakley, the editor of the AFR, Glenn Burge, and the chief executive officer of Fairfax Media, David Kirk.
They said the scholarships were an opportunity for the two newspapers, whose staff suffered physical and emotional blows from the plane crash, to build on their ties with Indonesia and to honour their many journalists who have reported with distinction from Indonesia.
"We expect the new scholarships will forge rewarding ties with our counterparts in Indonesia and deliver ongoing benefits to journalists and photographers in both countries," they said in a statement.
Five Australians died in the Yogyakarta tragedy, including the Financial Review journalist Morgan Mellish. The Herald journalist Cynthia Banham was severely injured.
Fairfax Media is funding the scholarships, with full support from the publishers of the Herald and Financial Review.
The Financial Review has also established an annual scholarship to allow one of its reporters to study and travel in Asia, to continue the journalism Mellish was pursuing.

Air crash victims honoured today

Mark Forbes Herald Correspondent in Jakarta
SMH, March 7, 2008
FRIENDS, family and colleagues will place flowers and light candles in Australia and Jakarta this morning in memory of the five Australians who died in the Garuda plane crash a year ago.
Small ceremonies will be held at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra and Australia's Jakarta embassy at 7am Indonesian time, when candles will be lit about the same time the Boeing 737 overshot the Yogyakarta runway.
There will be no speeches, just an opportunity for the close-knit communities of diplomats, police and journalists who were rocked by tragedy to remember the five popular, respected victims. All were on the flight for a visit to Yogyakarta by the then foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer.
At the embassy's entrance, guests will pay their respects before a plaque honouring the five. A similar gathering will be held in the foyer of the department's Canberra headquarters
Jakarta-based international correspondents will also gather this evening to remember Morgan Mellish, a journalist with The Australian Financial Review who perished in the crash. Plans to establish a scholarship for reporters will be announced.
It is just one of several ways in which the memory of their five - and their passion for public service and international work - will continue.
Friends and family have established the Morgan Mellish Foundation in Australia raising funds for international and local charities. The Elizabeth O'Neill Journalism Award has been instituted in the name of the diplomat, allowing young Indonesian and Australian journalists to explore and understand each other's nations.
Leading Indonesian students have also been the recipients of study grants named after AusAid's Indonesia head, Allison Sudradjat.
Twenty-one people died in the crash and the Herald journalist Cynthia Banham was severely injured. The other Australian victims were senior Australian Federal Police agents Brice Steele and Mark Scott.
Indonesian police want the pilot, Martowo Komar, to face criminal negligence charges.

Garuda victims remembered one year on

Garuda victims remembered one year on
A private ceremony will be held in Jakarta today to mark the first anniversary of the Garuda plane crash in Jogjakarta.
Twelve months ago today, Garuda Flight 200 left Jakarta for Jogjakarta, where an attempt to land too fast caused the jet to crash and burst into flames.
Five Australians were among the 21 people killed.
They were two Australian Federal Police officers, Mark Scott and Brice Steele, AusAid's Indonesia head, Alison Sudrajat and the spokeswoman for Australia's Jakarta embassy, Liz O'Neill.
The Australian Financial Review's Jakarta correspondent Morgan Mellish was also killed.
They will be remembered in a private ceremony at the Australian embassy in Jakarta this morning.
ABC News

Life heals at gym like no other

Recovery means hour after aching hour in rehabilitation, a place of despair, generosity and triumph, writes Cynthia Banham.

SMH, 13/12/2007

Honour for journalist hostage

The Elizabeth O'Neill Journalism Award has been given to the Indonesian journalist Meutya Hafid. Hafid is the reporter and anchorwoman for the Jakarta-based Metro TV. The award honours O'Neill's efforts in building links between Australia and the Indonesian media.
Louise Williams
SMH, November 22, 2007

There's no need to stare at my wheelchair

The Herald's foreign affairs reporter, Cynthia Banham, writes the first in a series of articles on her road to recovery.
SMH October 9,2007.

Journalism loses a rising star

Walkley Magazine Issue 44 April/May 2007

Morgan Mellish
1970-2007
A surfer, a sailor and a tenacious journalist, Morgan Mellish was also a good bloke. Sean Aylmer and Andrew Burrell remember a friend.
Beside the bed in Morgan Mellish’s house in Jakarta was a well-thumbed copy of a favourite novel, Christopher Koch’s Highways To A War, about the life of a photojournalist in Indochina, as well as tomes on Islam and philosophy.
He once told a colleague that he decided to become a journalist after reading that novel and Koch’s other compelling account of foreign newsmen, The Year of Living Dangerously.
As a foreign correspondent for The Australian Financial Review in Indonesia, Morgan was fulfilling that dream, as he told a former colleague, fund manager Matthew Kidman, four weeks ago.
Morgan had rung Kidman asking for some investment tips and in the course of a long chat said his Jakarta-based role for the AFR was the perfect job.
“I can do what I want, there’s lots going on over here and I can write what I want, no-one is telling me what to do and I go surfing when I want,” he joked to Kidman, an old mate from when they both worked in the business section of The Sydney Morning Herald in the late 1990s.
Morgan was one of the five Australians and 16 Indonesians who died in the tragic plane crash in Yogyakarta on the morning of March 7. The others were Australian Embassy spokeswoman Liz O’Neill, AusAID officer Allison Sudradjat and federal police officers Mark Scott and Brice Steele. Badly injured in the accident was Sydney Morning Herald journalist Cynthia Banham.
Morgan was among the most liked reporters at Fairfax.
While people remember his laid-back, relaxed attitude to life, he was also a tenacious reporter who refused to be intimidated.
At one lunchtime meeting in 2000 with Ray Williams, the former boss of HIH who eventually went to jail over accounting irregularities, Morgan decided to find out how the insurer’s accounts worked.
“Your treatment of goodwill just seems wrong,” he told Williams, his lunchtime host. “Explain how you can do that.”
Williams, who at the time was king of the insurance industry, said he could do it under current accounting standards. Morgan wasn’t satisfied and badgered Williams for 30 minutes. Eventually the HIH boss fobbed him off by promising to get one of his management team to explain the accounting standards at a later date.
As Morgan walked back to the Fairfax offices in Sussex Street, Sydney, explaining to a colleague why Williams was wrong, he said: “That guy’s a crook.” He was right.
Interviewing Rodney Adler, the former head of FAI Insurances, by phone from the AFR office, Morgan (feet on the table) told Adler he didn’t understand his explanation about buying HIH shares. On and on he probed. Eventually, Morgan’s notes and taped conversations were used as part of the case against Adler that landed the former FAI boss in prison. It is one of the few instances in Australian corporate history in which a journalist’s work has landed a chief executive in jail.
Morgan’s crowning journalistic achievement came in November 2005, when he wrote a series of articles that forced South Australian businessman Robert Gerard off the board of the Reserve Bank. It won him the 2006 Walkley Award for business journalism.
By combing through five court registries in Brisbane and Adelaide, Morgan discovered that Gerard was fighting the Australian Taxation Office over a Caribbean tax haven deal, labelled “tax evasion” by investigators, which led to a $150million settlement.
Gerard’s difficulties with the ATO were known previously, but no-one in the media or government had investigated properly. Morgan nailed the story but needed to speak to Gerard.
Having left a message with Gerard’s wife, Morgan headed to the beach with his surfboard and mobile. Gerard called back just as Morgan was fresh out of the waves. He didn’t have any paper handy, so he scrawled some notes in the margin of his copy of the SMH, including the killer quote from Gerard acknowledging he had told Peter Costello about his dispute with the ATO.
The Walkley Award judging committee called it the first breaking story that “seriously rocked the Howard government”.
“Mellish’s research was exceptional and continued to set the agenda on one of the biggest stories of the year – an outcome that ultimately resulted in Robert Gerard’s resignation.”
The AFR’s chief political correspondent, Laura Tingle, worked with Morgan during the Gerard story.
“I was repeatedly bowled over by the thoroughness of the work he had already done and the confidence that gave him, in his own very cool and detached way, that what we wrote was utterly accurate and beyond political attack,” she says.
Morgan was highly regarded outside the media community.
Treasurer Peter Costello extended his sympathies to the family, friends and colleagues of Morgan: “Morgan was a well-liked and respected journalist and I extend my sympathies to all those who knew and loved him.”
Westpac chief executive David Morgan, who dealt with Morgan over several years, thought he was a “good guy”. “A tenacious journalist is a fair description. If he was on to a story, he was like a dog with a bone. During interviews he was pretty tough-minded and quite probing. He was unfailingly professional,” Morgan said.
And Simon Mordant, joint chief executive of advisory firm Caliburn Partnership, said Morgan was a “star”.
“What he achieved was pretty impressive in any career,” Mordant says of Morgan, whom he met not long after Morgan joined the business section of The Sydney Morning Herald in September 1997.
On his first day at the Herald, Morgan was shown his desk and told to read the papers. After putting a few belongings in drawers, he decided to ring a few friends and provide them with his new phone number. That morphed into long discussions about his recent surfing trip to Indonesia, and by late afternoon on day one he was firmly ensconced, feet on desk, talking to his mates about surfing.
He wasn’t avoiding work – he just hadn’t been given any guidance on what to do. By Morgan’s reckoning, why waste time looking busy on day one when you could use the time better ringing friends.
It demonstrated a self-confidence that Morgan carried throughout his journalistic career. He knew what he was good at, but also his weaknesses. He was never afraid to ask questions, no matter how they sounded, and was happy to take advice.
Regularly he would ask his editors to read his stories in an effort to improve them. He explained once that he loved working with one AFR editor because “she makes me a better writer”.
Such self-assuredness made him a very good journalist. He had no qualms about approaching chief executives, government ministers, investment bankers or anyone who he needed to speak to.
He also had the knack of gaining people’s trust – another essential ingredient in a journalist’s make-up.
“He was someone you instantly trusted and that’s extremely important,” Mordant says. “Sometimes you would talk to him, and you weren’t quite sure whether he got it, but he always did.”
Morgan grew up on Sydney’s North Shore, attending Shore School and surfing the break off the northern beaches. He did an economics degree at the Australian National University in Canberra before becoming a journalist, working for the trade publication Foodweek.
After his stint at the SMH, Morgan shifted to The Australian Financial Review in early 2000, where he worked as financial services editor before becoming chief economics writer based in Canberra.
In 2004 he moved back to Sydney as a senior writer. His goal was always an overseas posting – preferably somewhere with surf. Twelve months ago he became this paper’s Indonesia correspondent and, as he explained to the newspaper’s editor, Glenn Burge, the surf was only “hours away” from Jakarta.
“Morgan was incredibly popular,” Burge says. “He had a dry sense of humour and a laid-back attitude to most things in life. Jakarta was to be the perfect posting for him – a fascinating country to develop his knowledge of Indonesia and, indeed, Asia as a reporter – but also pretty attractive for someone who loved surfing.”
“I always figured Morgan would go a long way in journalism – perhaps one day a senior political writer in Canberra, or serial foreign correspondent.”
Early in 2005, he somehow managed to convince Burge to give him several months of leave without pay to go surfing in Central and South America. Then the Indonesia correspondent’s position was advertised and he applied from somewhere in South America.
If it wasn’t surfing, it was sailing. Morgan sailed with retired insolvency expert Max Prentice and his son Matthew for 15 years.
“Morgs was emotionally capable in the line of fire,” Prentice says.
Morgan was sailing on Prentice’s boat, She’s Apple II, in the treacherous Sydney to Hobart race in 1998. After battling 40 to 50-knot winds for about 24 hours, they dashed for shelter in Eden. From there Morgan filed a first-person account of the storm for the SMH.
“Even at a time of great emotion Morgs could keep a cool head and do things like work,” says Prentice. “It’s a tragic loss of a true friend and a good sailor.”
Morgan died just a week before his 37th birthday.
He was farewelled in Sydney at a memorial service on March 21 at St Andrews Cathedral by hundreds of his colleagues and friends and his family – his mother Dawn, father Peter and sisters Lucy and Caroline. The service was attended by Fairfax Media chairman Ron Walker, News Limited Chief John Hartigan, federal MPs Joe Hockey, Bruce Baird and Julia Gillard as well as Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Kelty.
On Saturday March 24 at 11am a large group of Morgan’s surfing mates and some of his family paddled out on their boards off the south end of Sydney’s Bronte Beach to remember him.

Morgan was a character, a friend and a very good reporter.

He knew what he was good at, but also his weaknesses. He was never afraid to ask questions, no matter how they sounded, and was happy to take advice.

While people remember his laid-back, relaxed attitude to life, he was also a tenacious reporter who refused to be intimidated.

Party pauses to remember accident victims

Cynthia Banham ... recovering.
Photo: Andrew Taylor

THE injured Herald reporter Cynthia Banham was a special absentee guest last night at the annual Press Gallery Ball in Canberra.

Banham, who for three months has been battling serious burns, sent a message to colleagues who gathered at Parliament House with the nation's political and business leaders.

"Greetings from Ward 6 at Royal Perth Rehabilitation Hospital," read the message signed by Banham and her partner, the Herald Sun journalist Michael Harvey.

"We wish so very much that we could be with you tonight. We know the Garuda plane crash of March 7 affected the Parliament House community deeply. This much was evident from the many messages of support that flooded in to us during the days, weeks and months that followed."

Banham wrote with Harvey that it would be "hard for anyone in this room to imagine just how devastating the experience has been".

"Even now, it seems beyond imagining. Not a day passes, however, when we don't think of the colleagues whose lives were lost that awful morning.

"We are fighting to reclaim as much of our old lives as we can. It is going to be a long and difficult road but, together, through love and support for each other, we are working hard and we will be back home one day."

Alan Oakley, the editor of the Herald, said Banham was approaching the rehabilitation process with "her customary energy". "She has a long way to go, but all of us are humbled by the courage she has shown so far, and the progress she has made," he said.

Morgan Mellish, the Australian Financial Review Jakarta correspondent killed in the crash, was also honoured at last night's event. Proceeds from the ball are to be donated to the Burn Foundation and to Surf Aid - in honour of Mellish, who was a committed surfer.

Annabel Crabb
June 21, 2007 SMH

Newseum

Newseum is a non-profit museum of news and journalism that will reopen this year in Washington, DC. They plan to include Morgan in the Journalists Memorial. The memorial honors reporters, editors, broadcasters, and photojournalists who lost their lives reporting the news. The Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial provides a preliminary list of journalists who died in 2007.

Mark Forbes talks with Australian Story

Journalist Mark Forbes talks with Australian Story about the ministerial visit to Indonesia that ended in disaster with Garuda flight 200 crashing in a field and killing 21 people, including five Australians. Mark Forbes is based in Jakarta and works for the Fairfax newspaper group.

PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT

The More Things Change

Australian Story has screened a two-part documentary on Alexander Downer including his time in Indonesia before the Garuda 200 crash.

There are interviews with Morgan, Liz O'Neil and Cynthia Banham as well as Cindy Wockner, one of Morgans friends, and a couple of other journalists.

To prepare the two-part documentary, Australian Story filmed behind the scenes with Mr Downer, his family and his entourage during a tumultuous few weeks that ended in disaster in an Indonesian field when Garuda flight 200 crashed killing 21 people including five Australians. Some of those who died included journalists and officials who had been working closely with Mr Downer and who were well known to him.

You can view Part 2 HERE.

Planet Morgan

Laura Tingle ABC interview

Salutes to journo who thrived on the edge

Fairfax journalist Morgan Mellish was remembered as a "loving son, caring brother, fantastic uncle" by childhood friend Ben Hunter at a memorial service in Sydney today.

"The life of a foreign correspondent was full of excitement and adventure, and it was for Morgan," Mr Hunter said at St Andrew's Anglican Cathedral of the friend he called "Morgs".

"We will miss him as a mate, his smile and his determination to make the most of everything."

Reverend Dominic Steele, from Christians in the Media, spoke of the grief many were suffering when he spoke at the service at St Andrew's Anglican Cathedral in Sydney.

"He died doing what he loved,'' Rev Steele said of the journalist, who was covering an Australian ministerial visit to Indonesia when he was killed.

He recalled a remark Mr Mellish made to his mother when he was growing up.

"He said, `Mum, I want to live as close to the edge as I can without falling off'."

A series of photographs of Mr Mellish with family and friends was displayed on large screens as mourners entered the cathedral.

Mr Mellish's girlfriend, Nila Tanzil, sat with Mr Mellish's parents and sisters throughout the service.

Mourners included Federal Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Joe Hockey and Deputy Opposition Leader Julia Gillard, as well as representatives of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian Federal Police and Fairfax.

Mr Mellish, who was The Australian Financial Review's Jakarta bureau chief, was one of five Australians killed when a Garuda Airlines plane exploded on landing at Yogyakarta airport in Indonesia on March 7.

He was cremated in a private funeral yesterday.

AAP

Wave of sadness for reporter who lived the dream

Caroline Overington
March 22, 2007

A LITTLE over a year ago, the journalist and pleasure-seeker Morgan Mellish was living in a Bronte apartment overlooking one of Sydney's most tempting surf beaches.

He liked to tell friends: "I wake up, lift myself up on one elbow and look out the window. If the surf's up, I get straight out of bed. If not, I go back to sleep."

Yesterday, in Bronte, the surf was up.

By rights, Mellish should have been chest to the board, paddling out towards shafts of pink sunlight that broke through heavy cloud.

But Mellish - the Jakarta correspondent for Fairfax's The Australian Financial Review newspaper - was killed along with 20 others in the crash of Garuda flight 200 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, on March 7.

He was cremated at a private ceremony on Tuesday. Yesterday, there was a memorial service at St Andrew's Cathedral in central Sydney, attended by his family, surfer friends, colleagues, members of the Fairfax board, including chairman Ron Walker, and News Limited chief executive John Hartigan. It was a fortnight, almost to the minute, since Mellish - full name, Henry Morgan Saxon, or HMS Mellish - died. His funeral was the last for the five Australians who were killed in the crash, following services in the past week for federal police officers Mark Scott and Brice Steele, AusAID Indonesia chief Allison Sudradjat and foreign affairs official Liz O'Neill.

Mellish's family had hoped to bring some levity to the occasion, inviting mourners to wear Havaianas (a brand of colourful rubber thongs) with their suits. But only a few managed it; the mood was as gloomy as the sky overhead; the church was filled to overflowing; the white fans were mostly useless in the muggy heat.

Friends tried to put the emphasis on all Mellish had achieved: he was living his dream, working as a foreign correspondent in Jakarta; insisting that his glorious Indonesian girlfriend, Nila Tanzil, speak to him only in Bahasa Indonesian; surfing the globe; mountain climbing; cycling; last year winning a Walkley Award for excellence in journalism.

But how to escape the fact that he was also only 36, a sandy-haired, handsome man in extraordinary physical health, cut down in the prime of his life.

As Dominic Steele, of Christians in the Media (yes, even they joke that it's a small organisation) said: "There will be no children, no grandchildren."

An old friend, Ben Hunter, said Mellish had the "work-life balance" almost perfect.

AFR editor Glenn Burge said Mellish was hired as a cub reporter even though colleagues could tell, just from looking at all six laconic feet of him, they would have to "put a rocket up him occasionally".

Burge recalled the time Mellish took a long period of unpaid leave to surf South America. He carried with him five surfboards, all of which got lost. Exasperated, friends asked him why he needed five. He explained that different boards for different beaches were, to him, as necessary as different shoes for different terrain.

After the service yesterday, two of Mellish's surfboards were offered up to mourners to sign. Friends intend to paddle out with those boards this weekend.

The Australian