Colvin leaves parting line
IN DEATH, ABC journalist Mark Colvin gave thanks for his remarkable life.
“It’s all been bloody marvellous,” read the final message on his popular Twitter account hours after the news the veteran reporter and prolific social media user had died of lung cancer aged 65.
Mr Colvin, who suffered a long battle with a rare auto immune illness, leaves behind a legacy of unflinching reportage from some major world events, covering genocide, hostage crises and the end of the Cold War.
“Today we lost our beloved Mark,” his family said in a statement on ABC Television.
They thanked his medical staff at Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital and friends and colleagues who stood by him.
“At this moment of grief, we request the family be left to mourn in private,” they said.
Mr Colvin began his career at the ABC as a cadet in 1974 after graduating from Oxford University. It was a career that took him all over the world, first as London correspondent and then as European correspondent in Brussels in the 1980s.
He covered the American hostage crisis in Tehran and reported on the negotiations between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan that led to the end of the Cold War.
He returned to Australia to work on current affairs show Four Corners, but went back to London in the 1990s reporting for Foreign Correspondent, The 7.30 Report and Lateline.
While covering the Rwandan genocide in 1994 he contracted a rare auto immune illness which led to kidney failure.
He received a kidney transplant in 2012 from Mary- Ellen Field, an Australian business consultant who worked for model Elle Macpherson.
Mr Colvin interviewed Ms Field while investigating the News of the World phonehacking scandal and the pair struck up a friendship.
The transplant story was later made into a stage play written by Tommy Murphy, Mark Colvin’s Kidney, which recently ran at Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre.
Mr Field tweeted “My heart is broken” when news of Mr Colvin’s death broke.
Mr Colvin presented ABC Radio’s flagship program PM for 20 years, interviewing politicians including the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who praised Colvin on news of his death.
“Mark Colvin’s journalism was elegant and erudite. In a world of superficiality, he was always informed and honest. We’ve lost a good man,” Mr Turnbull tweeted.
Mr Colvin leaves behind wife Michele McKenzie and sons Nicolas and William.
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