Willey was a prolific author who wrote widely in the travel genre, captured a passing era in Australia's northern regions and commented perceptively on Australia's history and culture. Later in life he gained a degree in history from the Australian National University. He was editor of The Centralian Advocate (1956-1957) and The Northern Territory News (1958-1964?). Willey spent eight years in the Northern Territory and Kimberley region of Western Australia from 1956 part of the time as a professional crocodile hunter. He also filed stories from the South Pacific, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and Malaysia. A dramatised documentary about Ryan, The Last Man Hanged (1993) telling the story from the point of view of Willey was written and directed by Willey's nephew Lewis Fitzgerald.Īs a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Sun, Willey reported on the wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. Willey attended and covered the historic hanging of convicted murderer Ronald Ryan, the last person to hang in Australia, and the disappearance of Prime Minister Harold Holt. He worked as a journalist on daily newspapers from Cairns to Launceston and from Sydney to Darwin and Adelaide and in Papua New Guinea. dventure was the Torres Strait, the wide, slow rivers of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the mountains and grass plains of Kimberley' (xi). Keith Willey grew up in Queensland and 'must have read every book Ion Idriess ever wrote.
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