Our commitment. We're for you.
CLINK, clink, clink. clin Each day the sound of rigs driving 30 pylons pylo up to 22 metres deep i nto the ground g rings out across the city. It’s a beautiful noise. It’s a sound that reminds remi Townsville residents what can be achieved when we come together as one. o It’s a sound that reminds remi us that after the darkest of days, we can and will prosper once again. “IT’S OURS” Screamed the headline on the front page of the T Townsville Bulletin on June 11, 2016. Our city would get i ts new $ 250 million stadium. Southerners would scoff. sc A stadium? To save a city? c But i t wasn’t j ust about a the footy. Townsville was going through one of i ts tou toughest downturns i n i ts 150 year y history with soaring soa rates of unemployment, unempl crime and i i ns nsolvencies. The collapse c of Queensland Quee Nickel i n 2015, l eft $ 300 million i n debt deb and 800 Yabulu plant workers w without a j ob, driving d a nail i nto the coffin cof of the l ocal economy. eco We were wer sick to our stomach of o begging for the scraps from the state and federal government tables.
Yes, Townsville needed water security and major i nfrastructure projects but we argued that our city shouldn’t be forced to park all i ts aspirations and to choose between basic services the south east corner doesn’t have to spend a moment thinking about.
As the Townsville Bulletin has done, together with our northern readers, since 1881, we stuck i t to the well- heeled southern city slickers and made them sit up and take notice.
From front pages with national treasures l i ke Johnathan Thurston to posters given out to fans at Cowboys games, we l ed from the front to get the stadium over the l i ne.
We’re for stepping up for North Queensland and demanding the rest of the country gives us a Fair Go.
Because that’s what the Townsville Bulletin i s for. We’ve come a long way since 1881. Our newspaper lands on your lawns every morning – and that’s where it used to end.
Today that’s just the beginning.
Our newsroom has transformed into a 24/ 7 multi- platform operation that breaks news as it happens. More readers turn to us than ever before with 256,000 of you connecting with the Bulletin every month.
Yet it’s not just about bringing you the breaking news.
Townsville is proud of being the unofficial capital of north Queensland, defined in the early years by gold, cattle and sugar, now bolstered by industry, our military hub, James Cook University’s expertise in education and our port.
The Bulletin is for reminding the lattesippers who shuffle down George Street that it’s the fluoro- clad workers who spend long days underground and weeks away from their families or the dusty cattle cockies or the cane farmers cutting out a crust in the tropical heat, who make their world go round.
We expose wrongdoing like when in 2012 Walkley award- winning Bulletin journalist Kathleen Skeene shone a light on the mishandling of sexual assault complaints in the military that was hidden by the top brass in Canberra.
Despite being hung up on, torn down and called “disgraceful”, our journalists, like Bulletin stalwart Tony Raggatt, will still question the rich and powerful Clive Palmer. Not out of arrogance, or sheer pig- headedness, but because we believe that those 800 workers, plus all of those left out of pocket, deserved better.
We’re at the coalface of journalism. We’ll sit in a court house and write about the paedophile or the armed robber or the murderer despite the pleas or threats from family or the risk we might bump into them in the shopping centre next week. We’ll kick and scream about the crime rates in our town until something is done across our city suburbs so every resident from Kelso to Kirwan to Castle Hill can feel safe in their own homes.
We’re for celebrating the sons and daughters who don their military uniform and stare down the greatest sacrifice a person can make for their country. We’re for capturing the moment an old digger salutes a chopper flying overhead.
We pray for rain, we joke about life under the dome and we fight for better water security.
We’ll speculate over a few tinnies about whether it would be better to be attacked by a box jellyfish, a croc, a taipan or a bull shark.
We dream about North Queensland becoming a separate state and argue over whether Johnathan Thurston, Billy Slater or Matt Scott should be the first Premier of the new NQ state.
We’re for celebrating JT’s last year with the Cowboys, seeing off the old stadium in style then filling that beautiful new city centre stadium and seeing the area around it transformed into a vibrant city centre we can all be proud of.
We’re for celebrating our success stories. Whether it’s being the centre of the universe for marine science or worldfamous for tropical medicine, or the Townsville Fire, our Women’s National Basketball League champions.
Or our winter Olympian luge athlete Alex Ferlazzo who trained on the slopes of Mount Stuart - Townsville’s own Cool Runnings story. We’re for telling the stories of ordinary
people, who turn up with a ute, or a shovel or just a shoulder to lean on; who perform the acts of heroes to rally a community but ask for nothing in return. Like those who banded together after the Night of Noah or after Cyclone Debbie hit the southern end of our region.
We’re for the carers, nurses, doctors, paramedics, police and emergency service workers. Those who save lives every day. We tell their stories with pride.
We fight for the underdog, share the remarkable stories and we’ll strive every day to make our community a better place.
The Townsville Bulletin. We’re for you.
We’re for keeping the bastards honest.
Whether it’s big business, lazy politicians or bullying authorities.
We’re for banding together to help a mate, or a street, or a town, in times when the bad luck seems to repeatedly rain down.