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Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist: The Autobiography of Wilfred Burchett George Burchett and Nick Shimmin (eds) (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005)
Very few correspondents have been accorded the informal title of "the journalist's journalist," an honour given by colleagues to one with mastery of a given subject, or the politics of a country or region, and who is often an important source of information for fellow journalists. Burchett was one such rarity.
His being in the right place at the right time would be the envy of every other journalist. He witnessed the rise of Hitler's Nazi Germany. He reported on the Burma Road. He met revolutionaries like Mao Tse Tung and Chou En-lai in China; Ho Chi Minh, Vo Nguyen Giap in Vietnam; Kim Il Sung in Korea; scores of rightists, such as Douglas MacArthur and Chiang Kai-shek during the Pacific War; John Foster Dulles, Anthony Eden, among them, at the Geneva Conference of 1954 and even had a secret breakfast meeting in the White House with Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War. He also had a private lunch for four hours with Ambassador Averell Harriman, then head of the US negotiating panel at the Paris Conference.
Burchett co-authored a book with Norodom Sihanouk, shook the world press by being the first journalist to visit Hiroshima, after the bomb was dropped and was granted a rare interview with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin days after the latter orbited outer space. Burchett reported from all corners of the world. He was where the action was: in Havana with Fidel Castro, India with Nehru, Greece with Andréas Papandreou, Angola with the MPLA, etc. His one-on-one exclusive interviews with these leaders would be the crowning achievement of any journalist.
Chapters 1 to 5 of the biography trace his family background and life on the farm. A restless young man, he left the family home and "train-jumped" around the New South Wales-Queensland states. Working on farms and sometimes as a carpenter allowed him to survive. In his free time, he taught himself German and French.
Chapter 6 finds Burchett in Sydney. Employment was difficult and he ended up selling vacuum cleaners, pianos and other musical instruments. It was towards the end of 1934 when he strolled into...