Be Brave The Life of a Pacific Correspondent

Some things I’ ve seen I can never share.’ From a TV journalist on the Pacific frontline comes this candid, intensely engaging memoir. Barbara Dreaver has covered the Pacific for 30 years. During this time the ocean’ s many island nations and territories have gone from being largely ignored by world leaders to the focus of big-power rivalry. And Dreaver has become one of the world’ s leading Pacific correspondents. She takes you inside her gruelling, often crazy life as she and her TV team attempt to stay ahead of power plays, coups, resource grabs, criminal activity and natural disasters across the world’ s largest ocean. Fearless and determined, Dreaver has been locked up in Fiji, threatened in Papua New Guinea, detained in Nauru, endangered in the Solomons. At great personal risk she has exposed the Pacific’ s methamphetamine trade and its shadowy figures. She has uncovered Robert F. Kennedy Jr’ s role in a deadly Samoan measles outbreak, and borne witness to the machinations of China and the United States as they vie for dominance in the region. Above all, Dreaver reveals what goes on behind the scenes as she faces her biggest challenges, both personal and political.

Barbara Dreaver was born in Kiribati, moving to Aotearoa New Zealand at the age of ten. After gaining a Bachelor of Arts and Diploma in Pacific Journalism, she worked in Rarotonga for Cook Islands News and Cook Islands Press. In 1998 she returned to New Zealand, reporting for NZ Listener, National Business Review and Radio NZ. In 2002, she joined Television New Zealand’ s 1News and in 2003 became its Pacific Correspondent. In 2019, she won multiple awards at the Voyager Media Awards for her coverage of the deadly Samoa measles outbreak. In 2022 she was named Reporter of the Year.