Obituary: Robert Keith-Reid

Robert Keith-Reid

Journalist. Died aged 64

Robert Keith-Reid reported on three coups in Fiji, where he lived for nearly 50 years.

He had gone to to Fiji as a teenager because his English parents had settled there and had Fijian citizenship.

Keith-Reid was founder and publisher of regional magazine Islands Business but also worked for media organisations including Associated Press and Jane's Information Group.

In the 1987 Fiji coup Keith-Reid, who knew almost everybody of significance in the island country, seemed to realise in advance that he was likely to be arrested.

He thumped on the door of James Shrimpton, former South Pacific correspondent for Australian Associated Press, early one morning and asked him to let AP know.

In the event, the most oft-told story is that Keith-Reid was able to tell the agency himself. As armed soldiers burst into his publishing office he managed to sign off a telex he was transmitting: "I've been arrested now. Cheers."

He spent three days in a cell at the Royal Fiji Military Forces, before being released and taken to the coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka., who called out, "Look who we've got here" as Keith-Reid entered.

"I see you haven't shaved for three days."

The colonel told him he had been imprisoned because "I didn't like your lean and hungry look."

Robert Keith-Reid covered three coups for AP - two in 1987 and one in 2000.

His first job in journalism was radio with the then Fiji Broadcasting Commission, then at the Fiji Times where he began writing the Sidetracks weekly column.

He wound up with the news magazine Islands Business which he and New Zealand accountant (and Fiji citizen) Godfrey Scoullar took over when it was at the point of collapse. It became a regional publishing company.

Today the Islands Business, now edited by Laisa Taga, has influence over a wide area of the Pacific.

Since Keith-Reid's death last Saturday (after complications from heart bypass surgery at Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane) tributes have flowed into the Islands Business website.

Friends and journalism colleagues mention his knowledge - and both his sarcasm on occasion and his sense of fun.

It may be that the tribute as close to the mark as any is from Godfrey Scoullar who called him "an insightful journalist" covering the islands of the South Pacific since the early 1960s.

"Robert was not afraid to write what he saw," he said. "But the South Pacific was also his home and he had a tremendous sympathy for the difficulties faced in leading and developing the countries of the region."

Keith-Reid suffered a heart attack earlier this year when working in the Solomon Islands capital, Honiara. He was flown to Brisbane for treatment. but died last Saturday.

He is survived by his wife, Lilliana, and daughter, Kialiki.

- Staff reporter, agencies