Gary Tippet

2004

Gary Tippet is a freelance journalist and former senior writer for The Age in Melbourne, Australia. In 2004, he became the first Australian to be awarded an Ochberg Fellowship.

Tippet began in journalism in 1972, at the Sun News-Pictorial and joined The Sunday Age in 1993, moving to The Age when the two papers merged in 1998. In the time since, he has have covered some of Australia's biggest stories including the East Timor crisis of late 1999-2000, the Thredbo ski resort landslide, the Moura coalmine collapse in Queensland, and a number of major crime stories including the disappearance and murder of Jaidyn Leskie, the Port Arthur massacre and the Bega schoolgirls murder trial. In 2000 he covered the military coup in Fiji.

Much of Gary’s writing has focused on trauma and its victims.

In 1997 he won a Walkley, for Slaying The Monster, an account of an abused child who, 30 years later, returned to kill his molester with an axe, and has won two Quill's and three Legal Reporting Awards.

In recent years, Gary has written a number of articles on motor vehicle trauma, includinh Fatalities #74 and #75; April's Story and Sudden Impact, in which he spent three months following the victim of a serious injury road accident, from crash to recovery. The result was a 10,000 word, four broadsheet page special report, which won the 2002 Transport Quill Award.

Recent Posts by Gary Tippet