IAN MANNING left Australia looking for opportunity and adventure in Asia, hoping to further his career as one of his country's top racing writers. Barely three months later, his body was found floating in shallow water near Macau soon after his 31st birthday.

In the early hours of January 22, 1990, he was partying with friends after attending the Sunday races at the Macau Jockey Club. He'd take a fateful car ride at the end of the night that would end with him and another Australian journalist, Chris Collins, thrown off a bridge and killed - and three other people seriously injured.

At the time, there was speculation their investigations into alleged Chinese gang involvement in the local racing scene meant the two reporters had stepped on the wrong kind of toes. Those claims were never proven. But almost two decades later, the exact details of their deaths remain a mystery.

Ian was a friend and colleague at the Sydney Morning Herald : a larger-than-life larrikin who was quick with a smile or friendly remark. A snappy dresser with tight trousers, open neck shirts and shiny medallions, he strutted around the office or racetrack with a dazzling confidence, especially when it came to the ladies.

He grew up in the working-class suburb of Chester Hill and while still a skinny 15-year-old cut his schooling short to land a plum job in the racing department of The Australian newspaper where he was quickly given the nickname of "Kid'. Just over three years later - while still a teenager - he was poached by the Herald to work alongside veteran turf reporters such as Bert Lillye and Bill Whittaker.

The Kid was a Sydney boy through and through but beyond the familiar tracks of Warwick Farm, Randwick and Rosehill - where he'd worked as a part-time stable-hand before journalism - he dreamt of the exciting world of racing outside Australia.

In October 1989, after 11 successful years at the Herald , Kid left for what he considered to be the opportunity of a lifetime: a job based in Macau as a reporter for the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post .

Hong Kong is an exciting frontier in the sport of kings with betting on a scale many times larger than in Australia. As any turf writer will tell you, racing is, and always has been, the No.1 game in the territory. And the chance to cover the sport in an emerging frontier in nearby Macau - Asia's gambling capital - was too good to turn down.

Saturday, January 20, was Kid's birthday. He met his South China Morning Post colleague Jennifer Cooke - an old mate from the Herald - who'd taken the one-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong. They'd spend the afternoon exploring Macau followed by a visit to the Lisboa Casino where Kid wore an eye-catching pink-and-black cardigan which he'd just had tailor-made for $HK900 ($180).

On Sunday, they went to the track where they met Collins, the Post 's chief racing writer who was also up from Hong Kong. Thoroughbred racing was something of a novelty in the then-Portuguese colony with the Macau Jockey Club on Taipa Island formed only the previous year.

Cooke had to catch a 6pm ferry back to Hong Kong for work the next day, but Kid, Collins and a few others headed out for drinks, also on Taipa Island.

A nighttime of revelry stretched into the early hours before Kid, Collins, Kevin Williams, a 41-year-old Australian-born director from the MJC, and MJC secretary Florinda Cardoso, a 22-year-old Portuguese national, left the Green Parrot bar before stepping into a Nissan headed back to the Macau peninsula.

British jockey Lindsay Charnock, 32, who had also been with the group at the Green Parrot, was behind the wheel of the car. Minutes later - at 2.30am - the vehicle was a mangled mess by the side of the road with Charnock - plus Williams and Cardoso - rushed to the Macau Government Hospital by ambulance after being thrown clear. But the two Australian journalists were missing.

The bridge - or ponte - connecting the Macau peninsula and Taipa Island is named after Nobre de Carvalho, a former Macau governor, but is known commonly as the "Old Bridge" because it was the first of three links constructed for the well-trodden 2.5km journey.

Once the world's longest continuous bridges, Ponte Governador Nobre de Carvalho is raised in the middle in the shape of a triangular arc to allow the passage of vessels underneath on the Pearl River. Today, it's open only to buses and taxis, but in 1990, local daredevils were known to drive at great speeds up and over the sharp summit.

Somewhere during the crossing on the narrow, two-lane road, Charnock lost control of the vehicle, crashing into a parapet, skidding and then hitting a guardrail. Eyewitness accounts saw the Nissan airborne as it came down over the crest. Police said the impact of the crash sent Kid and Collins into the water some 25 metres below.

For more than 48 hours, local authorities searched for the two men. Then, on Wednesday at 10am, a local fisherman found Kid's body.

The following day's Macau Journal newspaper reported that an investigation by local authorities had found no suspicious circumstance.

The body of Collins - a 29-year-old from Rockhampton - was never recovered. His father, Frederick, a retired policeman, flew from Queensland to lead a fruitless search despite hiring a helicopter and offering a $US1000 reward.

Among the survivors, Florinda Cardoso, now 41, still lives in Macau where she works as a civil servant.

My first meeting with Ian Manning came in 1980 soon after I'd joined the Herald as a cadet journalist, straight out of high school.

During my first year in the job as part of my training in different departments, I was sent to the sports desk where Ian and I became fast friends, despite my lack of interest in horse racing.

Having started journalism a few years earlier, Kid knew what it was like to be young and bottom of the food chain, ordered around by the senior staff, including our sports editor, Tommy Hammond, a sometimes ferocious and cynical Glaswegian who ate teenage journalists for breakfast.

Among my first assignments was covering suburban hockey. One day a random column about hockey appeared in the newspaper with the byline of "Sticks". Kid assumed that I had written it (I told him I hadn't) but from that day on, he dubbed me "Sticks", a nickname that some former Herald colleagues still use, almost 30 years later.

He also came up with the popular nickname of "The Doyen" for the late Bert Lillye, the former Herald turf editor, who would describe his young colleague as "a lovable scallywag who always did the job and did it well" in a tribute column. Legendary trainer TJ Smith and champion jockey Malcolm Johnston were among Kid's closest contacts in racing.

He had a wicked sense of humour. In the early 1980s, the Herald was one of the hundreds of global newspapers that ran an illustrated column each week with tennis tips from five-time Wimbledon champion Bjorn Borg. When a member of the public called up asking to speak to the Swede, Kid deadpanned: "I'm sorry, you've only just missed him. He's just left for the White City tennis courts."

Years later, Kid invited staff members to his house-warming party in South Strathfield, which gave him a chance to get to know the Herald 's next sports editor. When his new boss - a slightly self-conscious Englishman - arrived later than expected, accompanied by his wife, they found the host, dancing nude in the lounge room.

But Kid seemed comfortable in any setting. In the early days when he noticed me - a rather naive teenager - looking longingly at some of the pretty older female members of staff, he would nudge me: "Go on, Sticks. Why don't you pitch up to her?"

And he was a man of action as well as words. Kid "pitched up" to and eventually married Tiffany, a Sun-Herald copygirl who was arguably the prettiest woman in a large office at Broadway that spanned five major newspapers.

In 1982, the Mannings held their wedding reception at the Auburn Travelodge on a September day easily remembered because of Rare Form's victory at the Chelmsford Stakes at Randwick - a race that Kid and best man, Greg Prichard, had earlier listened to on the radio.

Sadly, when Kid left for Asia seven years later his marriage was in difficulty and the couple had separated. But less than a month before his death, Kid and Tiffany spent Christmas together in Hong Kong and were trying to work out their problems.

IDENTIFYING the body of Ian "Kid" Manning was Paul Tait, another former Herald sports journalist, who was working in Hong Kong for The Standard newspaper.

Tait, liaising with the Manning family in Australia, made sure that the body was dressed up in Kid's finest Armani suit for the Qantas flight to Sydney because that's what his ex-colleague would have wanted.

Back home, the conspiracy theories were rampant: Collins's previous articles exposing corruption in Hong Kong racing had earned him death threats: was he or Kid working on a big "scoop" that got them into trouble? National radio host Alan Jones was among those in the Australian media who speculated that they were.

But Kid's friend Jennifer Cooke - plus his parents Merv and Pam and his best mate Greg Prichard - agreed with authorities that a motoring mishap and not foul play had taken the reporters' lives.

Cooke, who today works as a Herald journalist, said: "That weekend we talked for hours, partly about a big legal story I had broken just before he arrived in Hong Kong. He wasn't working on anything special other than getting to know the fledgling racing industry in Macau. But his main topic was Tiffany, how much he loved her and wanted to get back together."

His father Merv added: "There was never any evidence that it was anything more than a tragic accident. My biggest disappointment was that my upbringing of Ian taught him to always put on your seatbelt but because of too much drink for his birthday he didn't do it."

The funeral in Sydney was packed with big names from the racing world including top jockeys Peter Cook, Ken Russell and Shane Treweek. Beyond his gregarious nature, Kid was a popular reporter for a straightforward, ethical style in an industry often suspicious of journalists.

At his wake at the Carnarvon Golf Club in Lidcombe, stories flowed about Kid's colourful life including how he got his big break in journalism while a lowly copyboy at News Limited soon after his 16th birthday.

With his bosses fearing that the rival Sydney Sun had a scoop relating to the extra-marital affair of deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns with secretary Junie Morosi, Kid was dispatched to the Fairfax building - where he'd one day work - to sneak back a copy of the first edition as it rolled off the presses. Because he looked so young, no one suspected the baby-faced spy and he came back within minutes with the paper and News Limited's Daily Mirror was able to match its rival.

Back in 1975, News Limited's boss at its Holt Street office was none other than Rupert Murdoch. He was so impressed that he personally congratulated Kid, gave him a $20 bonus and promoted him to cadet journalist. Kid's writing career was up and running.

"Kid always seemed to be the lucky guy and the person that only good things happened to," Greg Prichard said. "That's why it was such a big shock to lose him like we did."

The life of Ian "Kid" Manning ended just five days before the Chinese Year of the Horse 19 years ago. He would have turned 50 on January 20.

Jason Dasey (www.jasondasey.com) is a former Herald reporter now working as an international broadcaster, corporate host and media trainer, based in Hong Kong.