Thoughts turn to comparisons with Australia
CONGRATULATIONS! We’ve got through a week and we’re still talking — that’s if the emails are anything to go by.
It’s hard to believe we’re on to column number five already. I’ve been able to sense the momentum building as the week has progressed and your contributions have, well, maybe not poured in but certainly more than trickled through. But with week two on the horizon, you can’t afford to rest thinking your job is done. Keep them coming.
Wasn’t that a stunning frontpage photo yesterday of the kotuku taking off from the Andersons Bay Inlet? ODT illustrations editor Stephen Jaquiery has shared with us another impressive shot from his visit to the inlet. I particularly like the way the whitefaced heron just does not want to know about the redbilled gull taking it out on the white heron.
I was thinking about Australia this morning and the way longtime Kiwis residents there are treated by the powers that be. My train of thought was sparked by Australia’s appalling treatment of the refugees on Manus Island, which seems utterly hypocritical given Australia and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s excitement about winning a threeyear term on the United Nations Human Rights Council.
It made me feel very proud to live on this side of the Tasman. So I’m interested to hear from you what you like, if anything, about Australia, and what you think it does better than New Zealand.
I’m still enjoying your favourite first line/lines from a book or play. Both Roly Scott, of Caversham, and Campbell Thomas, of Palmerston, have picked Charles Dickens’ A
Tale of Two Cities with its sweeping ‘‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity’’.
Tim Herrick, of Wanaka, suggests ‘‘I waited and I listened’’, the start of M. J. Lee’s Samuel Pepys and the Stolen Diary. And John, of Mosgiel, said, ‘‘How about that bestselling blockbuster the Bible?’’ — ‘‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’’
Remember the news story last week about ODT columnist Jean Balchin being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University? Well, she’s not the first ODT
‘‘student’’ columnist to win prestigious scholarships to that prestigious university.
Melanie Bunce has that honour, starting in 2000 while still at Logan Park High School and carrying on until 2005. She was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship before earning an Oxford PhD in politics, studying international news coverage of Africa, with her research taking her to Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.
Mel is now a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of London and is the director of the Humanitarian News Research Network.
Looking ahead to Monday, I’ll share some great predictive text bloopers and more on how the Yorkshire greeting ‘‘ay up’’ should be spelt.