Australian Rules

News of the Digger’s going has just reached Bath. As I am a “little brother from across the Tasman”, I suppose it is fitting that as a New Zealander I missed the boat. He was a loyal and outrageous friend and colleague to me and my wife Della from our first meeting in Saigon in 1972. There is so much to say about him. He was, after all, a 20th century equivalent of the Wild Colonial Boy.

Perhaps his best advice is the bushman’s law he set in Phnom Penh in the early ‘70s for a young American photographer who wanted to migrate to Australia. The youngster watched the Digger’s every move. After a night of cards around the swimming pool the Digger was drunk and losing. He borrowed 50 bucks off the boy who was also at the table. The next morning he asked Brian for his money back. “The first thing you must learn if you want to be an Australian,” says the Digger, “is that all bets are off when you’re drunk.”

Move on a year and the Digger’s reputation jumped a few more notches when he was found naked in a laundry basket in a Saigon hotel after a night “dancing”.

By the late 70s, back in London when Jack Henry was carrying out a ridiculous investigation into the so-called career path of the fourth floor journalists in London, he asked me what languages I had. I said I could read Italian.

“We can all read Italian, Mr Fathers. What else?”

I suppose you could put down Maori, I added.

“This isn’t a time to be frivolous, you know”.

The Digger told me after that exchange the only way to deal with Reuters managers was to double up everything. This cadet reporter from Queensland who went straight from secondary school into a newspaper office was asked in the same survey if he had a university degree. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I have two degrees.”

His career path took off. He was posted back to Australia. I was sent to Pakistan. ■