While covering riots in China’s Xinjiang province, John Garnaut discovered an even bigger story. Stern Hu, Rio Tinto’s Australian iron ore sales chief in China, had “disappeared” from work along with three Chinese employees. Garnaut was able to reveal Hu’s identity and that he and his colleagues had been the subject of a sustained investigation.

At the same time, about 9.45pm, Mathew Murphy independently heard of the story and was able to obtain the first official confirmation that an Australian had been detained. The joint story, on the front pages of the late editions of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, broke the saga wide open and heralded the ensuing diplomatic spat that would consume Australia and China and also inflame China’s relations with the outside world more broadly.

Not just a good get, the story was broken through excellent contacts and despite challenging conditions. Garnaut filed the scoop from Xinjiang, where Chinese authorities had cut all international phone lines and opened only one hotel room for internet access. There were four or five times as many journalists as internet cables.

John Garnaut is The Age and Sydney Morning Herald’s China correspondent. He worked as a commercial lawyer before joining the Herald as a cadet in 2002. The same year he was appointed economics correspondent in the Canberra press gallery. In 2007 he was posted to Beijing as the Asia economics correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

Mathew Murphy reports on resources for The Age, and first worked for The Age as a researcher in its Canberra bureau in 2002. In 2003 he was awarded a scholarship by the Myer Fellowship to travel to the Philippines and work for the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Back in Melbourne in 2004, he had stints in sport, online and the state political bureau for The Age before moving to the business section in March 2007.

Read "Rio Tinto Executives Detained in China", The Age, July 2009