Dubbo Photo News & Dubbo Weekender

Columnists & Opinion

Try old school learning to light up your brain

Remember when you knew phone numbers off by heart? There would be at least 25 of your friends, your parents’ work, probably your school, your grandparents, the cinema along with your uncles and aunties. There would be 50 or 100 sequences of numbers which you could recall in an instant. Did you have a particularly good memory? No. Everybody did it out of necessity. We were born into a world where that’s what was needed…

Do kangaroos hop down streets in Australia?

It’s a question many Aussies who travel get asked and it’s true under certain conditions, drought being one of them. On Monday this week, a lone kangaroo was causing havoc in the streets of Dubbo. It was apparently one of a mob that’s taken up residence inside the old RAAF base, and it kept the mobile phone of WIRES volunteer Donna Burton running hot all morning. “The trouble is people feed them. Weetbix, carrots; these…

It’s our ABC, so the Liberals should not sell it off

“It is tremendously important that we should have those things that we regard as almost the special responsibility of a government station – accurate reporting, objective interpretation and comment, music, drama of the highest quality, a general presentation which, in a broad sense, in a human sense, represents a contribution to the educational standards of the country, and will, I believe, strive more and more, year by year to achieve that ideal. This, after all,…

The price we pay

There’s a saying, “what goes up, must come down”. It’s gravity of course but apparently petrol prices over a long weekend are one of the few things which defy even the laws of physics. $1.56 for a long weekend in a region in drought makes about as much sense to this motorist as walking barefoot to Sydney. We all know there are lots of reasons why fuel prices fluctuate and it’s reassuring to know the…

Is there media protection in Australian politics?

Imagine the media firestorm if it was Julia Gillard having an affair with a staff junior member? Her fitness to lead, her moral character and political judgement would have been raked over in fine detail. It would have been the lead story of every news bulletin and the source of thousands of words in editorials and opinion pieces. Ponder the scenario of Gillard going to an election under that sort of the scrutiny, and the…
A ewe sleeps with her lamb at the Sippels’ property last week. The surrounding saltbush is providing protection from the cold southerly wind as well as providing all the feed they need. Photo: Supplied

Déjà vu as PM visits region

Déjà vu. John Howard. Déjà vu. Kevin Rudd. Déjà vu. Tony Abbott. Now Déjà vu, Malcolm Turnbull. All well-intentioned prime ministers, of that there’s no doubt. The idea is that if the PM arrives to a devastated drought-stricken property, and there’s a photo opportunity with a hard-working farming family and their kids scratching around in the dirt, that it will invoke sympathy and understanding in metropolitan areas. And that’s great. But we also need the…

Conquering fear can be a walk in the park

The air was cool and brisk as I made my usual morning stroll to the radio station where I worked as a 22-year-old. In the park lived a homeless man who I was more than a little bit afraid of. His dishevelled appearance and rugged demeanour ensured for some time I avoided the park and took a longer route to my place of employment. I played it safe. Fear comes to our mind like a…

Sky’s the limit for central NSW camping adventures

Leaving out names to protect the innocent, here’s a ‘great outdoors’ yarn to celebrate Camping Month which has been given a nod on the main cover of Dubbo Photo News this week. Exhibit A is an Australian family of five, camped wild and in the snow at the top of a remote snow-covered American mountain in the heart of mountain lion country (evidenced by the paw prints everywhere in said snow, discovered on a spotlighting…

We need a warning please: ‘The following news program isn’t suitable for human consumption’

The great thing about Dubbo Photo News is you can pick it up knowing your kids or grandma can read it without feeling too racked with survivor guilt, helpless, depressed or lost, just because of a picture they’ve seen or story they’ve read. If we do tackle the harder issues they’ll generally be in our Dubbo Weekender section, and for sensitive issues, we follow the guidelines of Mindframe, a national media initiative used for reporting…
The Sir Donald Bradman statue in Cootamundra, on the Captain’s Walk they have in the park there. Photo: Supplied

Learning from Bradman: Work-life balance

Those who know me well understand my appreciation for Sir Donald Bradman as a cricketer and a human being. My twitter feed is often littered with statistics and facts highlighting my admiration for the great man. A lesser-known story about D.G. Bradman is reflected in a plaque at the Bradman Museum. It conveys the message that Sir Don had lobbied for Australian players to have their wives stay with them at the end of a…
Illust: Paul Dorin.

The Budget Emergency we are meant to forget

The 2018 Federal budget was released on Tuesday night, and our printing deadline means this article was written last weekend, but it is easy to predict what Treasurer Morrison announced in his budget speech. Lower and middle income tax cuts. It is a federal election year, so this needed to be an election budget, and the phrase ‘tax cuts’ is a guaranteed vote winner. Factor in 30-plus losing News Polls, the heat from company tax…

Giving up the ghost online and what it means to you

A GHOST tour in Edinburgh was where I first discovered the morbid truth about why Victorian headstones often had bells attached. Buried by mistake? Ring urgently for service. We’ve come a long way since then, and thanks to modern medicine can be certain when someone’s been ‘called home’ before doing the needful. If you’re squirming a bit in your seat at the thought, it’s natural. The D word is nobody’s favourite and talking about it…