Life at helm tough but so rewarding
It feels like both an eternity and the blink of an eye since my husband, 15-month-old daughter, our now departed labrador and I packed up the four-wheel drive with trailer in tow and lobbed into town from Mackay.
Time travel aside, much has happened in my seven-and-half years at the helm of the Cairns Post and there has been many incredible stories published and many others that have not – and thankfully so, as a journalist’s sense of humour is probably best kept under wraps.
The Cairns Post job was an incredible opportunity for me to do the kind of journalism that I’m most passionate about – writing extraordinary stories about ordinary Australians – and where better to do it than in the place of my birth.
Who would have thought I would be the first female editor of a newspaper that was once a broadsheet and in the 1970s held in the hands of my father who would voraciously read it every morning in our Bayview Heights home before going to work to teach at Cairns State High School.
Reading and watching the news has always been part of my life but when you’re behind the news, that’s when magic really happens.
Big stories come and go but one of the biggest landed just three months after I arrived – the Ravenshoe gas explosion. It was a tragic and deadly affair which claimed two lives and many more were injured. It literally rocked the country.
I could go on and on about the big stories and the campaigns – the university hospital, Fair Go for the Far North, Kuranda Range Rd, the Future Cairns series, No Body No Parole and of course the more recent crime scourge and residential care system issues.
However it really is about the every day – and it’s actually not that glamorous – but boy can it be fun.
The NQ Cowboys winning their first NRL premiership in 20 years came during the Cairnsboys campaign which aimed to further strengthen the club’s ties with the Far North. When they visited the city to celebrate with their fans they obliged the Cairns Post by wearing our specially made Cowboy hats with our Cairnsboys logo as they rode into Barlow Park – then-captain Johnathan Thurston looked a treat.
Superstar Elton John happened to perform his first and only ever concert in Cairns that weekend and to this day our wrap of the Weekend Post is my all-time favourite front page – El-Town!
Before the concert I arranged for a scarf and Cairnsboys cowboy hat to be sent to Elton and requested he wear them during the concert to celebrate the premiership win.
He agreed returning to the Cazalys stage for his encore wearing the scarf – but not the hat – and shouting out a big congratulations to the team. The crowd erupted.
As I sat among the rapturous crowd cheering its lungs out I’ve never felt such elation knowing that I’d caused such joy.
We’ve reinvented the Cairns Post, refreshed, refurbed, rejuvenated and revved it up many times – it’s now a truly 24-7 machine producing news for both online and in print.
Where once commentators talked circulation decline we now talk growth as our subscription and total audience business goes from strength to strength.
Journalism is important for communities and the more journalists the better, no matter who they’re working for.
I’ve loved driving the news agenda and being a leader in the city’s critical thinking, not just here but on a national stage with the News Corp editorial board, but I’m just a journo at heart and I’ve never lost my love for breaking the stories.
As editor I’ve worked hard for our brand to be recognised for doing quality work consistently, being fair and having the right tone – I think we’ve achieved that.
I’ve been blessed to work with many talented people and interviewed many people great and small and held politicians and those in positions of authority to account, but more importantly given people who need it a voice.
I thank generations of families and businesses who have supported our journalism and those who regularly send letters and texts.
It’s always been humbling to take a call from readers who have bought the paper for decades and just wanted to chinwag about … stuff. I would gladly drop what I was doing for the opportunity to talk to “real” people.
This region has so much to offer and is custodian to the most valuable natural assets in the world and boasts people who are salt of the earth and wrote the definitions on resilience and ingenuity.
I hope that the community continues to pull together to find solutions to the big issues that face us and grab with both hands the fantastic opportunities that present now as we shrug off the pandemic’s grip.
Through it all I know that the Cairns Post will be there to keep probing, prodding and producing great content and outcomes for the Far North.
Being an editor isn’t easy – it’s challenging, busy, demanding, relentless and unforgiving – but it’s also rewarding, fulfilling and a very great privilege.
As I leave my post, I hand the baton to a new guard knowing I’ve left nothing in the tank.