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Malcolm Knox, The Monthly, "Cruising"

With "Cruising", Malcolm Knox sought to bring readers a vivid re-creation of life onboard a P&O pleasure cruise. As the inquest into Dianne Brimble’s 2002 death on a similar cruise grabbed headlines in 2006, Knox felt that Australians viewed her plight across a gulf of misunderstanding.

He aimed to explore the culture and undermine the blithe assumption that people attend cruises to act like "savages"; for despite the hammering of P&O’s reputation since 2002, the company’s annual passenger numbers have doubled in that period.

Knox’s September 2006 essay combined observational reporting and personal memoir with Brimble’s story, and the piece proved more poignant when a man died onboard the Pacific Sun in July this year.

Knox has worked for The Sydney Morning Herald since 1994 and his journalism has been published in Australia, Britain, India and the West Indies.

His first novel Summerland (Vintage Australia) was published in 2000, and in 2001 Knox was named one of The Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian novelists.

In 2004, Knox shared a Walkley for investigative journalism with Caroline Overington, for their exposé of hoax author Norma Khouri.

Judges’ comments

Beautifully crafted and provocative, Malcolm Knox’s account of Dianne Brimble’s death and the culture of cruise ships is a compelling example of first-rate reportage combined with new insights into a crime that received massive exposure.