Journey through Southeast Asia and Indo China, (May to July 1987)

Containers:

Box 9 (MS Acc13.104)

Component identifier:

File 5

Content Summary:

56 p.; In 1987, Christopher Koch was commissioned to write a TV mini series by the South Australian Film Corporation. He was to adapt ONE CROWDED HOUR, the biography of Tasmanian war photographer Neil Davis, written by his friend Tim Bowden. Koch was receptive to this, since he had already begun the novel HIGHWAYS TO A WAR, in which the fictitious character Mike Langford is partly based on Davis - with whom Koch was at High School. To research the material for the mini series, a journey was made to most of the places in S.E. Asia and Indochina where Davis had lived and worked, interviewing his colleagues and friends there. Koch was accompanied by Tim Bowden and Jock Blair: the head of the Film Corporation. Interviews are also recorded back in Australia with colleagues of Neil Davis - including Koch's brother Philip Koch. Koch produced a detailed treatment for the series, but he could not agree with the way in which Jock Blair and his colleagues wanted to shape the material, and resigned from the project. As it turned out, it was never made. Subsequently, much of the material gave him useful background for HIGHWAYS TO A WAR (Viking, New York, 1995.) HIGHWAYS is a work of fiction and in no way a biography of Davis, as an examination of the text shows. Mike Langford is a composite, also drawing on elements of cameramen Tim Page and Sean Flynn, and his story is essentially invented

Immediate source of acquisition:

The initial two instalments of papers were acquired from Christopher Koch in 1981 and 2013. The final instalment was acquired from Koch's publisher, Margaret Connolly, in 2014.

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