A Life Lived Large

NZ-born war correspondent Kate Webb has died of cancer aged 64. Described as a “modern day Annie Oakley, packing pens instead of pistols”, Webb bore witness to some of the most important events in recent Asian history, including the fall of President Sukarno in Indonesia, the Vietnam War, the assassination of Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, the Cambodian “Killing Fields”, East Timor’s civil war and the Hong Kong handover. Webb’s journalist colleagues remember her as a hard-drinking, man-eating chain smoker; a fiercely dedicated professional with a nose for trouble who never lost her remarkable sense of compassion. “People always think I must be so tough to survive all this,” she said at her retirement in 2001. “But I’m a real softie. But maybe that’s what it takes – you have to be soft to survive. Hard people shatter.”

Kate Webb: 24 March 1943 – 13 May 2007