West Coast Sentinel

My first appointment as editor was at the West Coast Sentinel in March 1992. The Sentinel is based at Ceduna and circulates across the Eyre Peninsula and the Nullarbor.

I returned home to Maffra from a four-month overseas trip in January 1991 to discover that recession had combined with drought to produce a rural downturn.

My employer, the Victorian rural newspaper “Stock and Land”, made my regional position in Gippsland redundant.

I had some decisions to make. ABC Radio approached me regarding a “rural reporter” position in Sale. The Weekly Times had earlier offered me a job, and Stock and Land offered me a transfer to Melbourne to work as a sub-editor, retaining the perk of my company car.

I took the latter. I didn’t like Melbourne though; it’s my only experience of working in a capital city.

The best things were going to the football and restaurants.

Towards the end of 1991 I returned to South Africa to bring back Juliet. We were married on December 7.

I told Ian Law, then managing editor of Stock and Land, that I wanted to go back to the country. He spoke to Dan Austin, who then headed the small regional division of Rural Press (now Fairfax).

Soon afterwards I was offered the job as managing editor at Ceduna.

Juliet and I flew into the town in March 1992 at the end of a drought. The company car was a small Hyundai and the door didn’t open on the passenger side.

We weren’t able to get a house in the town, and started our life there in a farm house 30km from Ceduna on a wheat farm at Maltee. At that stage Juliet didn’t have a licence and we didn’t have a second car. The rent was only $60 a week.

After about six months we rented a house in Ceduna on the foreshore, close to work, for $130 a week.

I really liked Ceduna. Kathleen was conceived there. We had a scare with Juliet’s pregnancy after about four months, but luckily everything turned out okay.

With hindsight I should have stayed there an extra 6-12 months. In that time a position would have come up at Port Lincoln or Victor Harbour.

Instead, I took the first opportunity of a promotion and went to Port Pirie.

I never liked Port Pirie and we had some bad experiences there: High lead levels for Kathleen after she was born, undiagnosed post-natal depression for Juliet, and a death threat against my family!

But I always think fondly of Ceduna.

The image below is the first ever full-color front page of the West Coast Sentinel. I sent the page to Melbourne for the color separations. The occasion was the newspaper’s 80th anniversary.

Update (December 2011): The Sentinel will celebrate its centenary in 2012.