“ I moved to Lismore in 2005 because my sister was here and I’d done a Bachelor of Journalism at University. I ended up getting a cadetship at the Northern star which was my first real reporting job. I finished my cadetship and became a health reporter. I did stories on how poor the conditions were then at Lismore Base Hospital and I did a lot of campaigning the State Government to get more beds. i had secret sources at the hospital feeding me stories of how terrible the conditions were. One of their own doctors had a heart attack and couldn’t get a bed. That’s how bad it was. We ran a program called Beds for the Base and we ended up getting a commitment from Tony Abbott of all people for 8 million dollars. I don’t know whether that money ever eventuated. I’m hoping it wasn’t another empty promise.
I moved on from health and became a Police reporter. I did a lot of articles on Simone Strobel. It was a while after she was murdered. I ended up tracking down her partner Tobias’s Lawyer and found out Tobias had absconded to South Africa and was in hiding there. He became the prime suspect and I don’t think there is any doubt that it was him. I think the Police here made a big mistake when they drove him to the airport. Probably not the wisest thing to do. Covering the floods was something I’ll never forget. Going down Magellan street in an SES boat. We always had extreme weather stories here.
I moved to the Sunshine Coast to start working at the Sunshine Coast Daily as their Police reporter for a couple of years. That was exciting working on things like bank robberies and hostage situations. I burnt out though and I got sick of knocking on peoples doors asking them to talk about loved ones who’d died. The four boys who died in that awful car accident near Broken Head, I became quite close to those families because I was doing all the reporting. It’s just been the 10 year anniversary for that accident. It’s something I will never forget…so sad. There’s only so long before you start thinking …What am I actually contributing to society by doing this? I decided I had to do something more meaningful with my life and applied for a job with Beyond Blue. I got it and they relocated me to Melbourne.
I’m back here in Lismore for the Northern Star reunion of staff, Journalists, Photographers and Sub-Editors who worked there in my era which was early 2000’s to around 2010. That was amazing seeing those people. It was a really special time to be a Journalist. None of the current staff were there. We used to have so much fun going out on adventures and finding stories. It was great little paper with really talented Photographers.
My sister Elly is on the Council here. She’s the Deputy Mayor, She’s lived in Lismore for about 20 years and she’s very involved in community. I’m extremely proud of her and I think she’s a very good person to have on the Council. She has integrity and she works bloody hard for peanuts. She always has time for everyone and I admire that in her. Her heart is definitely in the right place. If there were more Politicians like her the world would be a much happier place.
I always wanted to work for an International Aid agency. I think the work they do is really important and it’s good to care beyond our borders. I did a bit of International Relations at Uni and I liked that. I kept applying for media jobs in the sector, Oxfam, Save the Children and Plan International was one I really admired. I had a sponsor child with them and something about them resonated with me immediately. They had this authenticity in the way they communicated. A few years ago they shifted their focus to gender and addressing the global gender gap so working a lot with girls and as a feminist I really respected that. It turned out that I had actually applied for the job 3 times over the last 8 years so every time the job was vacant I sent in my CV and the last time I got an interview, I got the job. That was 3 years ago and I was over the moon. Everything had been leading up to this. You get to have International travel, go to developing countries and see the work these agencies are doing on the ground. It exceeded my expectations. There’s a lot of cynicism in the community about where the money goes. These are not for profit agencies and they are often frowned upon more than even the banking sector. It’s totally unfair because I’ve been out to these communities and they transform lives.
I went to Sri Lanka and saw an economic woman empowerment program which was schooling for girls from the very poor community and the minority group there. The girls are oppressed. If they are born poor they don’t have any opportunities other than housework and are married off as children. They also face persecution. It’s grim! What Plan International does is fund training for girls such as IT classes to learn computer skills, learning trades. Plan buses them in from their villages. They give them money to pay for their school supplies and at the end they get a qualification and Plan helps find them a job. They teach them to set up their own businesses. I met a girl who had started an Eco broom business who was doing really well. A lot of the women became widows in the war which was in the 90’s so if they don’t work they can’t live. Plan went into this community and sat down with the women to see what skills they had. There were basket makers and weavers making traditional crafts so they put them through training to start their own business using what they know. They gain confidence, make friends and eventually become self sufficient.
I also went to Bangladesh December 2017. I was deployed there for a month from head office in London as a Communication Specialist. We had an office set up down the road from the largest refugee camp in the world which still exists where the Rohingya people are still camping. There was a massive influx of Rohingya over a couple of months. There’s almost a million people living there now. This was not allocated land so traditionally when refugee camps start it is allocated land for example in Africa. It’s built for that purpose. They are set up, they have some structure, a few generations have been living in them now so they have hairdressers, tailors, some even have plumbing but this one was a very different situation.
These people literally had to find the safest place to cross the border because their houses had been burnt down, they lost a lot of people. The Military systematically murdered all of the men and a lot of the children as well. They had seen unspeakable horror and were extremely traumatised. The Rohingya people have always been outcast from Myanmar. Not being recognised as citizens of Myanmar so they had their own settlements. There has always been tension but you could almost call it a genocide. The amount of people that had to make that crossing…coming over the border into nothing. There was nothing there. They set up camp and more people came. The camp was in a dreadful state when I saw it and it was so massive. You could walk for hours and hours in one direction and you wouldn’t even touch the scale of it. Terrible conditions with tarps and trenches dug outside the tarps with human effluent running through it. No toilets, so very hot and dry.”