I for one am very glad to see the back end of 2024, a very trying and challenging year with more ups and downs than a rollercoaster.
Obviously getting the Walkley Meta grant and being able to do such great investigations was a very big up. New England Times has been going great and its a wonderful thing to see this tiny idea far exceed any of our original expectations, so thank you for the support.
It’s also been wonderful to see other smaller local publications follow our model and further enhance local news. All news is good news, and we can’t be everywhere.
On the downs side of the equation, from the New England Times perspective, was both our ongoing challenges with attracting good staff – a problem I know many New England businesses share – but then again, finding good, qualified journos who are able to work their patch remotely with little supervision is going to be a perpetual challenge.
Also on the downs, with the broader exposure of our little publication came more demands, expectations, complaints, threats, and outright bullying from people who didn’t like our coverage or choice of story subjects.
And our first complaints to the Australian Press Council – that was a down, especially that they related to stories about a politician – all of which were dismissed *rapidly* – big up!
On a personal front, 2024 sucked. I got reminded just how severe my migraine can be, and wound up stuck in Newcastle tethered to John Hunter. I had to rely more and more on the team to keep the Times operational, and my key people like the amazing Kate Brown were absolutely there for me and stepped up without question to fill the breach.
In truth, aside from the occasional emergency visit, and the endless doctor appointments, I really haven’t needed to be in Newcastle. But I haven’t been stable enough to make the drive back up the hill. At one point a dear friend offered me one of his kids’ bikes and suggested that a bicycle would be a faster and safer way to get me back up the New England Highway.
If only I could be sure that it would not be interpreted as support for a rail trail…
For those not familiar, and haven’t already googled ‘RK Crosby migraine’ to get the sad tale, I live with two unusually complicated atypical forms of migraine called hemiplegic migraine and migraine with brainstem aura. If you read the word ‘migraine’ and thought ‘headache’, do me a favour and try and reprogram that association… hemiplegic migraine causes stroke like symptoms, plus dizziness, chest pain, nausea and laundry list of other issues. Brainstem aura is literally a disruption of brainstem function, and can put me in a coma fairly effectively, or at best I’ll lose balance, will sound and look drunk with my speech slurred and dopey look on my face, and I also get what’s called ‘Alice in Wonderland Syndrome’ – where the world looks like I’ve stepped through the looking glass, the size of everything is out of whack and I have no perception of distance.
So yeah, no driving cars. No long trips. No much of anything really. I can ride a bicycle, because if I need to stop I can just stop, no fear of hitting a tree or worse at 100km/hr if I suddenly lose consciousness.
I know it has been frustrating for many that I wasn’t there in the New England, not able to pop by for that media event or have a chat about the marketing or communications issue that you’re not sure how to handle. And it is infuriating for me that living where I want to live comes with a constant threat to my life – literally – because of the abject failure of state and federal governments to provide adequate health care in the New England.
Aside from most of my migraine attacks *looking* like a stroke, my risk of stroke is about… 30 times higher than average, so each severe attack needs to be treated like a stroke until proven otherwise. In the New England, where there are no neurologists and no MRI machines in hospitals (other than Tamworth) that’s a little challenging. Even more challenging is that most New England hospitals can’t deal with the kind of strain someone who is coming in and out of consciousness, desatting with high chest pain, puts on an emergency department. Unless I am conscious enough to tell them not to, they call for the plane (or chopper, usually the plane).
A bonus of being stuck in Newcastle though is I got to keep playing on the radio. Radio is one of the deepest loves of my life, and going back on air at NEWFM, originally as a bit of a laugh, has been so amazingly good for my soul. So, as much as I wanted to get home to my first love of the New England, that doing so would mean giving up radio was simply heartbreaking.
But I’m coming home. In 2025, I have every intention of never leaving the New England if I can manage it. My migraine has restabilised enough to make the drive, so I’m going.
And a quirk of good timing, I don’t have to make any hard choices. I’m keeping both my loves and combining them. From January 13 I’ll be on air at GEM FM out of Inverell, covering most of the central New England. Talking New England in the morning then writing New England in the afternoon!
Plus the rebuild of the website is almost done, just in time for my favourite form of entertainment – a federal election.
2025 is going to be great. I might even get myself a bicycle, just for fun.
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