A Short Ride in the Jungle

Exactly on time, Digby’s motorbike pulled up outside my hotel. In the intensity of television shoots you get to know people pretty well, and it was good to see him again. Small and dark, his mischievous face was creased from two decades of Asian sun, tens of thousands of miles on motorbikes and a surfeit of booze and laughter.

Brought up in Canberra – much to his dismay – and trained as a lawyer, he had fled the constraints of Australian society aged twenty six and never gone home. Rebellious by nature, Digby never seemed to care what other people thought of him and had the sort of uproarious laugh which could infect a roomful of curmudgeons. Occasionally, his garrulousness was replaced by unpredictable silences, the source of his supposedly aloof reputation. But his generosity, humour, razor-sharp intellect and passion for bikes and the Trail far outweighed the occasionally taciturn aspects of his personality.