da Scriffles

Today I packed up my things at the Courier-Mail, Queensland's major metropolitan newspaper.

I remember the job interviews: two. I didn't get it the first time.
I almost cried today when I said good-bye to a few people - particularly one feisty sub-editor who used to play cricket at night in the corridor and used to tease me when I first started.

But he teases everyone. ;)
And another cheery soul - who's a gardener too.  
I walked out with an armful of personal belongings and a lifetime of memories and experiences which created the person I am.
I started out with the motto: no one owes you a living; keep smiling; and NEVER GIVE UP.

I still believe this - though I've grown a little tired of working to pay taxes that the government gives to those who think that the world owes them!
I never gave up. I know this could make me a little infuriating at times. But I'm so proud of myself.

I didn't win awards - got a few honorable mentions.
I didn't set the world on fire - but I managed to change a few lives for the better and help a few people in times when circumstances had conspired against them horribly.

On the huge 50th anniversary celebrations of the end of WWII (pretty sure it was that), I talked to a meek Aboriginal woman, one of the official invited guests because she was the widow of Australia's only Aboriginal pilot.
As we stood in a gallery of memorabillia, after the grand speeches by all the ministers and such, she told me that she was sleeping in her daughter's garage on an old mattress.
She had health problems (had half a lung out). Her husband, who never smoked before the war, came home smoking like a chimney and died years later of related health problems but the Federal Government refused to give her the full war widow's pension because they didn't think his health problems had anything to do with the war. The next day, after I wrote the story, I get a phone call from her.  They finally gave her the full pension.

 
I've covered almost every round from police and courts to education and local councils.
One chief of staff once told me: "Sometimes we don't know how you find theses stories".
I replied: "Cold calling".
That was about the time I'd dug up a story about an Aboriginal principal at Cherbourg State School called Chris Sarra. He'd reduced the truancy rate at the school by some 80 or 90 percent or something (it's a while back now).
The photographer beamed the photo back and I rang the story in - it was on the front page.
That was new technology then. Chris Sarra went on to become Queenslander of the Year or something - and the then Education Minister Anna Bligh (now our Premier) congratulated me the day of the front-page story. We were at the turning of the sod for the Catholic University at Banyo.

One editor once told me that he thought I was shy.
I thought that was interesting theory I didn't think that this editor was particularly observant.

 

I'm sure a shy person could never do this job.
I remember standing with another woman, a photographer, on the doorstep of a family home on dusk out a few hours west of Brisbane. It was the day of a terrible tragedy.
We walked into a darkened home, on the eve of Good Friday, to talk to the grieving parents of a teenager golfer who'd been killed by a falling branch on the course.
I remember there was a rifle hanging on the wall in the lounge room.
I remember writing the story on the drive back to Toowoomba and phoning it in while we got takeaway - I think that was about the second time I'd eaten McDonalds in my life.
I remember a tiny, tiny story appearing in the paper the next day. I remember the disappointment.

If there's such a thing as shy and determined then I'm it - I think a job changes you if you do it long enough.
This job takes a high personal toll - you work nights, you work weekends, you work public holidays, you work Christmas and you work Easter.

A guy who wanted to make me his bride when I was 21 - I didn't want to be HIS bride at any time - was sat beside me at a wedding years later.

He told me: "So what's it like sleeping with a different man every night?" I simply ignored him and turned to talk to someone else.

Man! Maybe now that I've divorced this job I'll have time for something like marriage.

I never thought I could do both well.

Since 2006, I've worked on the website, couriermail.com.au
Been sorting things out, throwing things out, and a funny thing happened.
But also finished a multimedia project that I designed and shot and edited.
My last story for the Courier-Mail was about a poet named Kath Walker.
I think I finally did the story justice.

 

You see when I was at uni I thought, arrogantly, that I'd get her story if I just asked her. I took the ferry to Stradbroke Island and cycled along a long dirt road to interview her at her home - without doing any research.

She didn't give me her story. She gave me quite a tongue-lashing actually. I was angry for some years afterwards.
But now I understand. Here I was, a snotty-nosed, privileged white girl studying journalism at the University of Queensland who'd failed to do any research apart from reading her poem Son of Mine in school. I still love the poem.
The irony is that half my life I had to churn out stories without doing research because news is all spur of the moment - NOW! Right NOW! kind of stuff.
Not for the faint of heart really.

Maintaining heart while developing grit - that's the secret.

So see how far I've come in the past two years in terms of telling a story using multimedia skills: I've learned to video edit, shoot better video with good audio, flash design, photoshop and music composition.

In 2007 I produced an ambitious Australia Day project on Australian Citizenship: http://media01.couriermail.com.au/multimedia/2007/01/070125_citizenship/citizenship.html