WHEN it occured.

I knew as a 10-year-old that I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. As a 25-year-old Australian journalist I made it happen. It was 1976. Mobile phones, laptop computers, and the Internet had not been invented. So I packed a portable typewriter into a backpack and for the next two years travelled through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, Borneo, and the Philippines on truck-like buses, cargo ships, dodgy planes, and dilapidated trains. In Brunei, I got malaria. Kidney stones in Indonesia. Dysentery in Burma. Gout in the Philippines. With no Wi-Fi, I listened to shortwave radio. With no email, I wrote letters. And only at city or country post offices could I receive letters, several weeks old.