It begins with his near-fatal car crash in 1999 on a fishing trip in the outback of Australia, an event that crippled hiswalking for the rest of hislife, and then flashes back to his upbringing in a prominent Sydney family, which educated him at Jesuit schools and sharpened his antiauthoritarian edge.
The walks prompted vivid memories which he included in his blog Walking on Planet C which is a frank and often uncomfortable account of life in the shadow of a potentially fatal illness.
Trim, fit, full of life, he was midway through a doubles tennis game, casually walking with his partner from one end of the court to the other, when he dropped dead from a heart attack.