Over his 50-year career, journalist Derek Maitland survived conflict zones, witnessed the aftermath of bombings and negotiated with armed militants.

Now he is in the toughest battle of his life fighting cancer.

In the midst of writing his memoirs, he spared a moment to share some of his adventurous experiences from the comparative tranquillity of his home in Canowindra, NSW.

"It's been a very enjoyable time, both good and bad," Mr Maitland said.

Derek Maitland was 24 when he began reporting from the frontlines of the Vietnam War. ( Supplied: Derek Maitland )

His career-defining moment was during the 1960s while reporting on the Vietnam War for an American news service.

Working alongside other young, brash journalists, he placed himself in an environment where danger could arise at any moment.

"The view going into the war was that it was the wrong conflict and it was wrong to do that to the Vietnamese people," Mr Maitland said.

"But then of course was the excitement of actually being in a place of war where it was going on all around you.

"There wasn't a front somewhere. It could happen in the shop right next to you.

"Our life became go out on operation, stay alive, get the best pictures you possibly can."

An early passion for reporting

Mr Maitland's interest in global affairs began as a young boy selling newspapers on a street corner in Perth in the mid-1950s.

Mr Maitland at his Saigon apartment in 1967, where he based himself while reporting on the Vietnam War. ( Supplied: Derek Maitland )

"As I learnt more about what journalists do, I always wanted to be a journalist around the world covering major events," he said.

A decade earlier his parents had survived the war in Europe and decided to emigrate from the UK to Australia.

During his youth, he did stints of unpaid newspaper work and a television news cadetship, but by his early twenties he was eager to see the world.

So he boarded a ship to Hong Kong with just 25 pounds in his pocket.

"My life really began the day I saw Kowloon docks in 1966," Mr Maitland said.

The dramatic scene from a bombing campaign by American planes outside of Da Nang during the Tet Offensive in 1968. ( Supplied: Derek Maitland )

He found work with a local newspaper and soon saved enough money for a ticket to Vietnam.

In doing so, he broke a promise to his mother, who had begged him not to go near the conflict zone.

"It was hard on her because she told me years later that she said 'My hair started going white when I knew you were there and going out with the troops'," he said.

An injured North Vietnamese soldier captured near Da Nang in 1968 after the Tet Offensive. ( Supplied: Derek Maitland )

Battle of Dak To

During his two years covering the war in Vietnam, one of the most harrowing scenes he witnessed was after an American combat brigade suffered heavy casualties in the country's central highland region.

"It was just a big pile of bodies, in all incredible states and profiles, states and distortions," Mr Maitland said.

"Many of them on top of others where obviously the men right at the bottom of the heap had died last using the already dead bodies as cover.

"It was just a mass of green, bodies, blood and total annihilation."

Helicopters arrive to pick up Australian soldiers from an operation near Nui Dat, 1967. ( Supplied: Derek Maitland )

When US helicopters arrived to retrieve the dead and wounded, Mr Maitland was caught in the thick of a battle when North Vietnamese forces ambushed from the hills.

A friendly soldier with an unfriendly guard dog at a US Marine base near Da Nang, 1967. ( Supplied: Derek Maitland )

"I suddenly went into this thing where I lost my mind, it was all too much. All I could say was 'God get me out of this'."

His experiences in Vietnam traumatised him for years to come, but he persisted in reporting on conflicts around the globe, and wrote several books in between.

As a television news producer for the BBC during the 1970s, Mr Maitland reported on the sectarian troubles brewing in Northern Ireland.

Through the contacts of his cameraman, who was a Catholic, he arranged a secret interview with an Irish Republican Army (IRA) Belfast Brigade battalion leader.

Unfortunately, the report he brought back never made it to air.

Mr Maitland attributed its censorship to the political pressures on the broadcaster at the time.



South Vietnamese soldiers resting at a CIA-funded Special Forces camp on the Cambodian border in 1967. "War is a a lot of standing around waiting for orders," Mr Maitland said. ( Supplied: Derek Maitland )

A South Vietnamese Army soldier detaining a woman accused of supporting the opposing Viet Cong at Cam Ranh Bay in 1967. ( Supplied: Derek Maitland )

Breaking big stories

In 1984, Mr Maitland's camera crew was the first on the scene to film the aftermath of an IRA bomb blast at a Brighton hotel, aimed at the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who was attending a Conservative Party conference at the venue.

"We heard that for the first time in history the BBC was opening its morning news an hour early because we knew we were the only people who had the [footage]," he said.

On another assignment in Lebanon, he met with Palestinian Liberation Front militants when he accompanied the daughter of a missing British journalist who was believed to be held hostage by Hezbollah, to search for evidence of his captivity.

On that same trip, Mr Maitland was injured when a young militant inadvertently fired a rocket launcher while posing for the camera crew.

He took the full force of the back-blast.

"It was the biggest boom that you had heard in your life. It ripped my eardrums out," Mr Maitland said.

"I'm lying there thinking 'I'm dead, I've got a hole right through me'

A B-52 bombing aircraft during a stopover in Thailand with its deadly cargo being loaded and destined for Vietnam, in 1966. ( Supplied: Derek Maitland )

Personal battle with cancer

Despite his experience facing stressful and dangerous situations, nothing could prepare Mr Maitland for the mental and physical strains of receiving a cancer diagnosis last year.

"I just broke down and bawled when I first heard it," he said.

A year after an operation to remove his kidney, he was then told another tumour had developed in his liver.

All hope seemed lost until an oncologist from Sydney agreed to perform a surgery that could potentially save Mr Maitland's life.

The circular gravesite mounds of Vietnamese civilians killed west of Da Nang, 1967. ( Supplied: Derek Maitland )

"It's really just incredible. One minute you're looking at death and you've convinced yourself, next minute you're being told you can live."

Mr Maitland feels optimistic that the imminent operation will bring him relief from what he described as one of the toughest battles yet.

"That's going to be so exciting," he said.

"Once I get through this operation my life begins again. The day after that will be the first day of my new life."