John was a foreign correspondent of great courage, independence and tenacity. His instincts were always for the powerless and the oppressed. His 2002 Quarterly Essay, Paradise Betrayed, involved journeys into West Papua and ground-breaking reporting about the struggle of independence there and its brutal suppression. In his astonishing Travels in American Iraq, he went to places that would soon become impossible for Western journalists to go and offered eyewitness accounts of bombings and the unravelling American occupation. Later in Iraq, he would undergo kidnapping, and struggled with the after-effects of this and the many wars he observed at close hand.

In 2020, Black Inc. published John’s book The Road, in which he revisited the conflict in West Papua, following his important reports in The Saturday Paper. He also wrote a definitive book about East Timor’s bloody path to independence, A Dirty Little War (2001), as well as a notable book about Aceh, Indonesia’s Secret War in Aceh (2004). Lost Copy (2017) reflected on his journalistic career.

John was an inimitable figure, with a wry grin, usually a cigarette, and a mumble with which he would impart vivid anecdotes and findings.

Rest in peace, John.