Vale: David Ellis

David Ellis spent 20 years as a journalist with ABC Radio and Television News, including 10 at Rabaul in the New Guinea Islands, brief stints in Jakarta and Singapore, and the remainder in Sydney where he rose to position of Chief of Staff, Radio News before leaving in 1979 to set up his own public relations business and to write Travel and Wine.
Ellis had been writing Travel and Wine for 30 years, venturing as far afield as the Arctic Circle to interview Santa Claus, South America for Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs’ real story, to France to fly aboard the-then experimental Concorde, across Antarctica by air, and with James A. Michener to retrace where the author conceived his immortal Tales of the South Pacific.
Along the way, he sipped the local reds, whites and bubbles… for purely scholarly reasons, of course.

David's wife Gwenda advises:

"For those of you receiving this column and who knew David personally, I am writing to let you know that David passed away suddenly and peacefully, in his sleep during an afternoon nap on Friday afternoon, 1st March. He had just been diagnosed on Tuesday with severe sleep apnoea and fitted with a CPAP mask for sleeping at night. His doctor thinks that he suffered a seizure due to obstructed sleep apnoea but we are comforted to know he had lived an amazingly full and adventurous life and enjoyed his writing with a passion."