Sheridan - When we were young & foolish : a memoir of my misguided youth with Tony Abbott, Bob Carr, Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd & other reprobates

Although Asia had fully entered my bloodstream and the rest of my career would be intimately involved with Asia, I was happy enough to leave China. I found I didnt enjoy living under communism. The best stories I came across I couldnt write because of the danger of exposing innocent Chinese people to trouble.

My next overseas posting, the following year, to Washington, was more straightforward, less fascinating. It was Southeast Asia that was to be the heart of my professional life over the next thirty years. And the adventures and friendships of Southeast Asia were as radical and challenging and rewarding as anything in my life had ever been.

I can see that this account I have given of when I was young and foolish has focused on friendships. Friendships indeed were the centre of my life. These friendships and others have played as recurring motifs throughout my life, one getting stronger as another fades, only to re-emerge unexpectedly a little later in the symphony.

In 2007 my father died after a few months in hospital. He was eighty-six, and calm and equable about whatever was coming. He was neither scared nor panicky nor in denial about his situation. He just accepted it as the next thing to be done. For some time we didnt know what the outlook was and expected him to come home from hospital and get better. When I saw him in hospital his priority seemed to be what it always was, to draw some humour out of his situation and to use that humour not only to entertain and divert, but to communicate his affection.

Many things he left unsaid, because he said them indirectly and he knew we understood. I left things unsaid as well. Too many things. And now I regret them, though I know he understood everything. On the last occasion I had a conversation with him he began by welcoming me into his hospital room, and said: Im glad youve come because I wanted to tell you that I disagreed with that last column you wrote about Iraq.

My magnificent father!

During Dads last illness, Tony Abbott went occasionally to see him in hospital, an act of remarkable devotion for a busy cabinet minister, as Tony then was. Partly this may have been because Dad was a constituent of Tonys, but mainly I think it was because Dad was an old friend of Tonys.

As it happened, Tony was there in the hospital the moment that my father died, there to weep with my mother, and to offer her his strong arm of support.

Whatever Tonys achievements or failings in political life, he has never failed in friendship.

It can be a tricky business having friends in politics, when you are a journalist.

We journalists are always passing judgements on people. Its one of many things that can corrupt our souls. But its also in the nature of our jobs, unavoidable. The judgements dont always have to be right, especially because you often have to make them so quickly, but they do always have to be honest, in accordance with the facts as far as you can make them out, and true to the values that you espouse in your life.

When you have a close friend in politics, they just have to understand that if you think they have done the wrong thing, you will criticise them, friend or not.

Some politicians accept this better than others.

I thought Bob Carr was an effective foreign minister, a rare bright spot in a dismal government. But I came to disagree with him profoundly about the Middle East, especially with what I saw as his excessive hostility to Israel. We had some robust conversations about it. And I wrote columns laying out our disagreement. But it didnt affect our friendship.

Seldom in my life have I been disappointed in friendships.

When we were young, we had a licence to be foolish. Up to a point. I dont mean to imply that the other people in this account were as foolish as me, or at least not foolish in precisely the same way as me. When you are young you also have a licence to make many new friends. And thats precious. But its also when you are young, and again when you are old, that you have a chance to think about the deepest things: what is life for, how can I make a difference? Will God forgive me for my wrongs? Will my friends think they chose wisely in friendship?

You have to be faithful to your own nightmare, Norman Mailer once said.

When I was young, my dream was journalism and I worked through its heyday of expansion and influence. It gave me endless good things. It gives me them still. And I am grateful.

We always thought pictures of Dad as a young man showed a remarkable resemblance to the British film star Alec Guinness.

Joe and dad and me on a tiny yellow couch that served as a makeshift bed for countless visiting relatives and friends.

A traditional Christmas outing for Sydney families. I never felt comfortable sitting on Santas lapdoes any kid?

First communion was a very happy occasion in my childhood for which I got the most lavish praise for no particular effort on my part.

At my parents Catholic wedding reception (there was also a Protestant one) there were priests in abundance and my redoubtable Aunty Poppy hovered like a friendly angel (in the top right).

I look so stern I must have just got out of bed, or perhaps I am contemplating how many hours I will spend practising the piano.

Because our flat was so small Mum and Dad made an effort to take Joe, Bernie and me to parks at weekends, but really I was just as happy to be at home with my books.

Pictured here at school prize-giving, second from left, Im wearing my first ever pair of specs (the debaters always seemed to wear glasses). I grew increasingly blind without them.

My year group at the Redemptorist seminary (I am pictured bottom row, far left). I aspired to the priests black robes and Roman collar, but it was not to be.

The life of the Redemptorist order of Catholic priests seemed to me powerful, consequential, romantic and more than a little glamorous when first I read this recruitment pamphlet.