Your Girl Reporter

27/02/2022

I was astonished to learn these pix of Mum and Grandma in 1967 were taken, not in Macau, but China. Read all about it:

While my father Jack Spackman was visiting churches and orphanages for his Catholic Weekly article, his wife Margaret and mother Doris joined a sightseeing tour, which included a visit across the b…

26/02/2022

In which Your Girl Reporter learns that the best story ideas start over breakfast

Almost from the moment we arrived in Hong Kong in 1967 my father Jack Spackman was working as a stringer, most regularly for Australia’s Fairfax newspapers. A stringer is a locally based correspond…

26/02/2022

I’d been a sportswriter, a layout man, a China watcher, a business journalist. Now they told me I was finished - Jack Spackman

After the China Mail closed in August 1974, my father Jack Spackman was persona non grata, thanks to his leading role in the subsequent fight for a fair settlement for the staff. Overnight, he went…

26/02/2022

OTD 4 years ago our visas were issued for and we were in the throes of packing up our dream house. Some things went in the wrong pile, like my natty Panama hat with the croc skin band. I miss that hat

23/01/2022

NEW POST: In 1977, Hong Kong's most popular English-language talkback radio host Jack Spackman dramatically quit on-air. Read all about it:

In 1977 my father’s talkback show on Hong Kong’s Commercial Radio was a standout hit and he had ditched a lot of the public relations work which had kept us afloat since his blacklisting over the C…

21/01/2022

Maria Spackman is a journalist with experience in Hong Kong, Britain, Australia and, in an unexpected twist, Hong Kong again. Read all about it: https://mariaspackman.com/about/

20/01/2022

That time Dad built a darkroom 'Out the Back' of our flat in

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 man…

19/01/2022

A little love note to a pub I used to frequent in the guise of my alter ego Sally Baxter

Your Girl Reporter invites you to a night out in Hastings Old Town. I expect it’s all been ‘improved’ by now but, back when it was an alehouse I used to frequent, the First In, Last Out was everyth…

18/01/2022

I was astonished to learn these pix of my mum and Grandma in 1967 were taken, not in Macau, but China. Read all about it:

While my father Jack Spackman was visiting churches and orphanages for his Catholic Weekly article, his wife Margaret and mother Doris joined a sightseeing tour, which included a visit across the b…

17/01/2022

My mother's first doorknock and other stories from the reporting rounds

A reporter’s rounds are as much about people as they are about the overnight crime stats and the latest council decisions. If you want to know what’s going on you have to be there. You have to be f…

16/01/2022

1973 Australian Francis James was released after three years in captivity in China. His story is full of mystery and intrigue - was he really spying for the Russians? Did he really father a child to a nun in a snowbound hut in Xinjiang? Read on, and see what you think:

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 for …

15/01/2022

After his role in the affair they said Dad was finished and then Commercial Radio gave him a talkback show. Jack was back

After the China Mail closed in August 1974, my father Jack Spackman was persona non grata, thanks to his leading role in the subsequent fight for a fair settlement for the staff. Overnight, he went…