Day 11 – Wednesday 14/1

Today is an exciting day for us because the Northwest Telegraph was released. James, Nadia and I eagerly flipped through its pages and found that we each had an article published. The story written about us was also in there and it was strange to be in the paper rather than behind it (if that makes sense). My business story was on page four, and very little of it was changed so I was pretty happy about that. James’ turtle story was on page three and Nadia’a story about population increase in Hedland was on page eight. We were all pretty happy seeing our bylines in the paper.

This morning I followed up on some information Joan told me about the Port Authority planning to build a new safe harbor and out some new tug pens near the yacht club. The Port Authority told me some information about the proposals that had been put forward so far, but advised me that it would be better to write a story about in a couple of weeks time, as they were planning to discuss a further proposal with local authorities.

Nadia and I drove to the rubbish tip again this morning and on the way we caught a bit of Joan being interviewed on ABC radio about the dust issue in Port Hedland. It was great to hear a local speak out about this, as it is an issue which has strong impact on the town. At the tip Nadia and I spoke to another person who had been affected by crime in South Hedland, gathering more material for our article. This time the person we spoke to said we could use his first name –John- if we chose to publish what he had said. John had been living in South Hedland for around 30 years and had been the victim of several home invasions over the past few years. He thinks the situation has worsened in his area in recent years, but was happy with the work of the police in cracking down on crime. We felt sorry for John because he no longer feels safe in his home and is planning to leave the area and move closer to Perth.

Nadia and I then headed to the police station to gather some hard evidence about the crime levels in South Hedland. We spoke to an officer who said he would check the archives and get back to us when he could.

In the afternoon we went back to CUCRH where Trudy taught us some more about Aboriginal culture, particularly about how to act when visiting an Indigenous community. We received some rough guidelines about how to address the locals in preparation for our visit to Yandeyarra next week. The main thing I feel that I will find difficult is not being able to look the community members in the eye. Trudy says the best way to overcome this is by standing next to the people when you talk to them.

Towards the end of the day Nadia rang Rosi’s mother to talk about her daughter’s netball scholarship. Nadia recorded the phone conversation and managed to get some pretty vital quotes for the article. We then left CUCRH and on our way home we stopped into the shops where we ran into Liam from the telegraph. It was lucky we did because he told us that if we wanted to have any articles in the Pilbara Extra (Telegraph lift-out) that we had to have them written by noon tomorrow. So we set off home and worked on some articles.