Australian Journalist 'among Indonesian Plane Crash Dead'

The body of award-winning Australian journalist Morgan Mellish has been identified by a co-worker after the Indonesian flight he was travelling on crashed and burst into flames on Tuesday, killing 21 people.

Retno Indrijani Palupi, who was Mellish's assistant in Jakarta for the Australian Financial Review, yesterday identified her boss's remains. His body has not been formally identified.

However, the editor of the Australian Financial Review, Glenn Burge, said in a statement that Palupi was told by a doctor that Mellish's identity card had been found on a body.

Mellish won a Walkley award, Australian journalism's highest accolade, after revealing that a board member of the Reserve Bank had been accused of tax evasion.

The journalist's sister, Lucy, who has flown to Indonesia, set up a blog in memory of her brother

Stephen Fitzpatrick, the Jakarta correspondent for the Australian newspaper, wrote how he had booked seats for himself and Mellish on another flight run by Air Adam after learning that the Garuda flight that eventually crashed was full.

But Liz O'Neill, the Australian embassy spokeswoman, offered Mellish a spare ticket on the doomed Garuda flight. She also took the Garuda flight and is feared dead.

Fitzpatrick then had to cover the story for the Australian.

Cynthia Banham, the Sydney Morning Herald journalist on the flight whose clothes were on fire when she jumped from the plane and suffered serious burns, has been flown to Western Australia to the Royal Perth Hospital.

Indonesian authorities said they have identified the bodies of seven of the 21 victims and are close to formally identifying the bodies of three Australians. Two other Australians are missing, feared dead.

The plane was carrying a group of Australian journalists and embassy and security staff who were meeting Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta, where the accident occurred.

There were 111 survivors of the crash.