Part biography and part modern history lesson, Jeff McMullen gives the reader an excellent ride.

Author:	Jeff McMullen
Publisher:	Harper Collins Publishers. First published 2001, reprinted 2002
ISBN:	0732270537 978-0732270537
Characteristics:	384 pages, Paperback; 24 cm. w129, h23, l200.
Source:	Street Library and returned.
Date Read:	28-May-2026

I know Jeff McMullen from his time on 60 Minutes, and I always found his reports well researched and presented. I didn’t know that his career extended well before this time including a stint with ABC’s Four Corners.

What I thought was an autobiography turned out to be more, Jeff’s story plus details of his coverage of humane and important issues. It was a similar format to Ben Gryll’s True Grit, but because the author was there, and is a highly skilled communicator A Life of Extremes was a far better read.

The author is quite the poet with what must be the richest literary wise of journals. One of Jeff’s concerns is the destruction of the South American native tribes’ culture and their lands. He is especially concerned with well-meaning missionaries entering their lives, spreading disease and turning them away from their ancient culture.

On the Equator
in the Amazon rainforest
a jungle cat sleeps
with one eye open
on the brown men
wearing sticks through their lips,
and the other eye
on the white men
with crucifixes round their necks,
‘praising the Lord’ and
falling down in a swoon,
and I wonder, which tribe
is stranger?

Page 44. Journal 1990.

And the loss is real, as Jeff expresses in the next quote.

Every time a tribe like this disappears with their language, their culture, their traditions, a whole universe of knowledge disappears with them. The original custodians of a land have the greatest experience of how we can live in harmony with nature. Without this balance our development will be unfulfilling and possibly short-lived. The importance of Toru’s people cannot be measured only in their numbers. I understand evolution but do not accept that human civilisation should be built any longer on the destruction of entire communities of human beings. Unfortunately, too many Brazilians for too long have been prepared to accept the sacrifice of the Amazon tribes.

Page 50 (Journal 1990)

Jeff speaks to many interesting people, including this man who by finding a tomb marked as belonging to Jesus, opens up Christianity’s greatest claims that Jesus rose to heaven. It’s interesting to see how outsiders perceive the teachings and life of Jesus. But was he real? It turns out there’s no historical proof he lived, which I find hard to believe.

There is another man frozen in time, a man worshipped as God by at least one billion people, a man who has had a greater impact on history than any other individual, and yet the historical Jesus is a mystery. As we sat on the recently excavated ancient stone steps of the Temple of Jerusalem, Romer explained the conundrum with a true story of an archaeologist friend of his, a Christian, who made an intriguing find in a cemetery on the Mount of Olives. He dug up a skeleton of a man who possibly had been crucified. The coffin was inscribed in Aramaic: ‘Jesus, son of Joseph’, but the archaeologist never published the discovery. Romer was amazed and said it could have been the Jesus. The archaeologist said no, the Jesus rose from the dead and went to heaven.

Who was this man Jesus? Son of God, a carpenter’s son from Nazareth, an inspired prophet of love and understanding, or a seer of the Apocalypse? A sage like Gandhi who cared about the downtrodden or a revolutionary who questioned the ruling order and conventional wisdom? A holy man with no plan for a Church or a genius who absorbed the prophecies of the Old Testament and acted them out to become the world’s first great humanist,
promising civilisation a clear moral destiny?

‘If you have to ask you will never know’ is a common response from devout Christians, but such an answer is not good enough. As we work out our relationship to the cosmos, contemplating the very essence of our existence, surely a central question must be where does Jesus stand? Was it chance or divine providence that put this man on earth? Was it the sheer force of his personality or the power of his mind, the spell of ancient prophecy, the events of his day or those that came later that shaped modern civilisation and gave so many some sense of purpose and fulfilment?

‘His name as a man was Jesus,’ said Romer to really begun at the beginning. ‘Jesus Christ is a Christian term for a god. We have no historical proof that the man ever lived. Jesus is a character in a book’.

Page 74.

Jeff spent some time with the Mongolians and the area they live in devasted by nuclear testing. Along with his film crew he goes to some extremely challenging areas in the pursuit of news. And the reader owes him a great debt for bringing these stories to us.

In 1209 Genghis Khan and his men set out on horseback from a valley near Karakorum, the ancient capital of Mongolia. I reached the old city by Russian helicopter, a bulky, trembling beast called a Mi-8. The khan is said to have ordered his men not to piss in the rivers of Karakorum and to keep their stock out of the water too. The traditional explanation is that the khan had decreed the world’s first environmental laws out of respect for the land and understanding of what man and beast needed to survive.

Page 103.

Jeff also covered stories involving high profile politicians like President Richard Nixon with words that came back to haunt him when being impeached.

It was a self-inflicted tragedy and among Richard Nixon’s final words as president were some, he should have heeded: ‘Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.’

Page 149.

Not much of the book covers Jeff’s private life. In the US he meets and marries his wife. After their stressful lifestyle proves too much, they decide to settle in Jeff’s home country Australia. Here they start their family with the birth of their daughter, and you can see Jeff becoming more mellow and in tune with his emotions. And this is reflected in a change in his poems kept in his journal.

Have you ever just watched the rain
and wondered
who gave us this day?
all we really need
falling down our way,
a new flower,
the beauty of the clearing sky
and the sunshine
warming every part of us
with love and words
that last through the coldest days
and see us on our way again
with hope and confidence
and an old familiar smile,
knowing there will always be
sunshine.

Page 210 (Journal 1987).

As their daughter grows Jeff’s poems incorporate some beautiful words about the joy of being a parent and witnessing your children experience the world.

Your footprints wandered the Americas
through forest, prairie, high mountain and plain,
the eagle, deer, brown bear and buffalo
were the animals of your domain.

My tracks crossed the Great South Land
past grass trees, red gum, wattle and palm,
the kookaburra, kangaroo, koala and emu
are the creatures that give us charm.

One day, somehow, our paths crossed,
a glance at a stranger’s face,
heaven’s chance to fall in love,
a journey to the same place.

With a harvest moon, golden and full,
rising slowly from the sea,
and our bed bathed in moonlight,
you made love with me.

I heard the sound of her newborn voice,
so clear, so bright, so pure,
now our whole world belongs to her,
footprints on Eternity’s shore.

Page 223, 224 (Journal 1994).

And a poem about South Africa’s leader who brought liberation and peace, Nelson Mandela. The poems, overall, were a surprise and delightful addition to the journalist’s repertoire of prose, and they added value and joy to the read.

MANDELA’S CHILD

Is it the gleam of diamonds
in her lovely eyes?
I do not think so.
It is freedom
that makes her smile,
her bare feet free
to walk the final mile.

Conclusion

The book won a prize and it’s easy to see why. It is well written and it keeps your interest throughout with each chapter, each on a different issue facing the world. A top read that will no doubt lead to reading some of the books in the author’s bibliography.

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Further Reading

Bibliography

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• Bowden, Tim, One Crowded Hour: Neil Davis Combat Cameraman, William Collins, Sydney, 1987.
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• Bronowski, Jacob, The Ascent of Man, Little, Brown, Boston, 1973.
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