Our paths have crossed from time to time and our friendship has endured.

In Papua New Guinea, Martin managed radio stations in Bougainville, Kerema and Morobe and, in Australia, managed community radio stations in Armidale and Newcastle.

Through the 1980s he helped develop the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation before moving on to direct an Australian aid project in South-East Asia followed doing something similar in Laos, Vietnam and the Pacific islands.

Come the 1990s and he is directing projects in Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Jordan and Iraq and then ascends to represent and direct all Unesco’s interests in Kazakhstan and Afghanistan in 2001.

In there somewhere was a stint as the director of Unesco’s Division of Freedom of Expression, Democracy and Peace in Paris.

Martin was never much the type for head offices, bureaucracies or officialdom.

And in mentioning this, I know that many of you will understand ‘the field’.

Martin's snap of the wartorn Kabul Cinema in 2011

The field is that admirable place where the action is.

The field is the place where, when you do something, no matter what it is, you can always see what you’ve done.

And the field is where the vast bulk of Martin’s 12 years with Unesco, and indeed his career, was spent – building the mass media and extolling press freedom in Asia, the Pacific, the Arab States and Africa.

That’s quite a career.

Martin’s was an international broadcasting management career of great substance and merit and, I would speculate, probably unmatched by very few, if any, Australians.

When Martin eventually returned to Australia about a decade ago, it was to a professorship at the University of Queensland where he was foundation director of the Centre for Communication and Social Change. He also knocked off a doctorate.

By then, to become deputy chair of the Australian National Commission for Unesco was pretty much a gimme.

It would be a fair call to say that Martin’s long career in broadcasting brought considerable credit to Australia.

That he volunteered for the tough gigs often in harsh conditions, often for long stretches away from family, would have been recognised and admired by those he served.

And his career certainly brought great prestige upon him as a person of courage and character.

As I mentioned, Martin never shirked the difficult assignments.

Martin and an ageing transceiver - radio guys love posing with equipment, talking about it too

He wrote to me from Kabul soon after he arrived there in 2001: “Security is such a problem and this further saps one's energy. Rocket attacks, car bombs, shootings and so on.... We have to watch our security every minute of the day.”

A Londoner by birth, Martin is now kicking back in Queensland – a land, as you would appreciate, that heroes know is a place fit for them.

I wrote to him recently, “I remain full of admiration for what you did in deciding to leave Paris to work in Kabul 20 years ago.

“If that was all you had ever done to earn your place in the pantheon of broadcasting heroes, it would be more than sufficient.”

I’m glad I mentioned that, and introduced him to you, even if it embarrasses him.