Ten Years On: Livin' In The Country

SO by late 2003 I was just about to finish university and already had my first, full-time journalist job working at the Cooma-Monaro Express. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started, but what I do know is that I wasn't listening properly and certainly wasn't a newshound on the hunt for stories. It wasn't until the editor sat me down just before she went on leave that if I was sitting around bored that I could always do something wild and crazy and ask her if there was anything that needed covering.

That was something of a turning point for me. I'm not sure why I had to be told to ask for work given I'd been a pretty good self-starter at Triple S in Canberra when I worked there, My work-rate went up pretty much immediately, which was useful given at the time I wasn't that far off getting sacked. I only found that out much later, and whether it would have been deserved is another concept, but the fact is I was letting myself down by waiting for stories to fall into my lap rather than going out and trying to find them (even by asking the editor).

Once things had settled down and I'd passed my three-month probationary period I began to throw myself into small-town life. I began by joining the Dodd's Hotel Cricket Club, where in my debut I didn't bat, didn't bowl and dropped a catch - the only thing that stopped it from being a complete disaster were the three catches I took early in the opposition's innings! After the game I was warned to leave the work car at home and got a lift to the pub for post-game celebrations, where Australia defeated New Zealand in the 2003 Rugby World Cup semi-final. A great night and a great introduction to Cooma life.

Sport in general offered me a great way to meet people around town. In 2004 I joined the Cooma Cats Football Club (Australian rules football), although the season before I'd played at Snowy Oval for Belconnen after I'd made the move south. That game was marred by a busted nose that required a trip to the Cooma Hospital and that still spontaneously bleeds to this day. That aside, you couldn't ask for a better bunch of blokes by your side. I still keep up with the Cats results and fervently hope that next time we win the premiership that I'm able to be there for the grand final.

The Cooma Cats playing at their home ground of Snowy Oval.

It was also through sport I met a bloke by the name of Jason. At the time he ran the Primary After School Sports (PASS) program down in Cooma for a guy called Mal Meninga; I remember interviewing Mal down in Cooma one time and the discussion veering from sport to how our mothers were too squeamish about the cold to come down from Queensland to visit! Jason also ran the indoor sports centre, where I joined his mixed indoor soccer team and discovered a knack for goalkeeping. I was only in goals because Jason and the other bloke were much better than I was, but one semi-final I managed to stop just about everything after we went a goal down. At one point with only a couple of minutes to go the opposition's best player lined up from just outside the keeper's box - had the shot gone in we were done for. Luckily the ball struck my arm, bounced out, went to Jason up front who then scored the equaliser. In three seasons we didn't lose a game, although that didn't extend to the indoor cricket and indoor netball.

In 2004 I began to write longer feature stories for the paper. Again I seemed to have a knack for this, with the editor submitting my story on the one-person town of Jerangle to some awards. It didn't win, but my job now included exploring and writing about the towns of the region to even reviewing some of the pubs for the monthly Snowy Times. Good times indeed for a young journo!