Postcard view of very peaceful looking Nakom Phanom,Thailand,above, prompts author Ian Mackay , a Magnetic Island resident, to recall hectic life covering major events .
I first went to Thailand in 1962 when I was working for Channel 7 in Adelaide to make
a film about SEATO,the South East Asia Treaty Organisation ,of which Australia was a member and which had its HQ in
Bangkok. Cameraman Brian Taylor and I travelled a fair bit around the place
including trips to Mukdahan and Nakom Phanom, both on the Mekong, and each with
large air bases.
In 1965 Taylor and I left Channel 7
to become a freelance news crew in SE Asia. We were employed by ITN London to
help set up its new Far East Bureau in Singapore, and to work with its reporter
Gerald Seymour throughout the region, nominally from India to Japan and wherever
else events might take us.
When we were in the Philippines
covering the September 1965 eruption of the Taal volcano we heard of the
military coup in Indonesia in which President Sukarno was overthrown by the generals. It
was pretty big news, but from bitter experience ITN knew Seymour couldn’t get
into Djakarta because of his British passport. Taylor and I, however, were
Aussies, so London told us to get in there, virtually at any
cost.
We went to the Indonesian embassy in
Manila where a bloke told us we could get visas, but it would cost 20,000 quid.
London didn’t blink, and the money turned up next day in the Chartered Bank.
However, I refused to part with the dough until the visa stamps were in our
passports, by which time the Indonesian Ambassador admitted he didn’t have a clue
what was happening in Djakers and that it would be better if we applied to the
Indonesian Embassy in Bangkok.
Taylor and I cooled our heels
(if nothing else) in Bangkers for about a week before we made a few trips around
the place in desperate search of a story which might justify the enormous amount
of expenses we were running through and we found ourselves back in Nakom Phanom. The base we had seen three years before had grown dramatically, and was now the
home of a flight of the giant Sikorsky HH-3E helicopters known as Jolly Green
Giants which were being used to fly across the Laos panhandle to rescue pilots
who had been shot down over North Vietnam.The Thai Government maintained that
there were no US bases on its soil, but our film told a different story of
course.The long and the short of it
was that we never got into Djakarta, but had a good time
trying.
*The postcard was given to Little Darwin along with two naturally dyed , hand woven rugs from Uban Ratchatani, Thailand , birthday presents from two great friends.
