My morning news routine, strong espresso and friends who make me think

Are you short on time, or feeling a little overwhelmed by the news?

You are not alone. The modern news cycle can feel relentless. The world appears on our screens each morning with fresh evidence that humanity has been busy overnight.

Staying connected still matters.

Understanding the bigger picture helps us make sense of the conversations around us and the decisions that shape our communities and our democracies.

The good news is that it does not require hours of reading or watching the news.

Here are five easy ways to stay across the world in ten minutes a day.

The Daily Aus
Posts that explain Australian news in simple language designed for younger audiences.

Suggest checking out their Good News Newsletter 

ABC News In-depth
Short explainers, interviews and quick context pieces.

The Juice Media
Their “Honest Government Ads” are widely shared and often act as an entry point for younger viewers into policy debates.

The Squiz
A short daily newsletter summarising the biggest stories in a few minutes.

ABC News Daily
A 10–15 minute podcast that explains one major story each day.

The Conversation daily briefing
Articles written by academics that explain the context behind major news issues.

Google News daily summary
A personalised summary of major stories gathered from multiple news outlets.

BTW After a quick tour through these offerings, I can understand why some young people prefer to talk to their friends instead.

Why this post now…….

A few days ago I was talking with a 26 year old friend.

Bright, curious, engaged with people around her. The sort of person who brings energy into a room. She works hard, values her friendships and carries a good sense of humour about life.

During our conversation I mentioned a news story about several Iranian women footballers seeking asylum.

She looked puzzled.

She had not heard the story.
She did not know where Iran was.

I spend a lot of time working with young people through community programs and conversations like this come up more often than many people realise.

The young adults I meet care deeply about the people around them. Many volunteer, support friends through difficult moments and think seriously about the kind of world they want to live in.

They are also part of a generation that has grown up with a relentless news cycle.

Bushfires, floods and droughts, a global pandemic, wars filling social media feeds, constant warnings about climate change and economic instability.

Which is understandable. The modern news cycle sometimes feels less like information and more like standing under a fire hose.

Researchers at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism been tracking this trend in their global Digital News Report. Younger adults are increasingly selective about how much news they consume, often because the constant stream of crisis stories feels overwhelming.

The report was published in 2024. The world has been busy adding updates since then, with wars continuing in Ukraine and Gaza, the United States and Israel bombing Iran and a terrorist attack in Sydney reminding Australians that global tensions do not always stay overseas.

Information also arrives differently now.

I like to think I keep a reasonable eye on the world.

The morning routine helps. First the The Sydney Morning Herald, then The Conversation. Between the two of them you get a fairly solid overview of humanity’s latest achievements and a mindfield of face palm spectacular lapses in judgement.

With Donald Trump and his friend Benjamin Netanyahu dominating the headlines, the news feed does tend to lean heavily toward the latter. On some mornings it feels as if about three quarters of the front page involves Trump in one form or another.

After that I strongly recommend a conversation with a kind, compassionate human being. Preferably over a very good espresso. It helps when the headlines are stronger

My Facebook feed is curated with similar care. Over the years I have gathered a tribe of people who read widely, argue politely and challenge my thinking about something I thought I had already figured out.

They add to my knowledge. They challenge my biases. They point out things I missed while making my morning coffee.

It beats arguing with strangers on the internet.

They are the kind of friends I hope young people find. People who help each other think more clearly about the world rather than simply shouting about it.

Democracy does not arrive on the wings of fighter jets

The phrase “real men solve problems with bombs” is not strength. It is a recruitment slogan for other people’s funerals.

The news from the Gold Coast carried a familiar tone of celebration. Five Iranian women footballers, including captain Zahra Ghanbari, escaping their government minders and being granted humanitarian visas in Australia. There were photos, cheers, and, as the Home Affairs Minister cheerfully reported, a spontaneous chant of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie”.

For many Australians it felt like a simple story. Brave women rescued. Freedom offered. A good ending.

Stories like this have a powerful pull. They tap into an old idea that runs deep through Western political culture. The idea that someone will ride in on a white horse and save the day.

The white knight.

Across history the script has repeated itself. Strong men, often described as decisive or tough, step forward declaring that they will fix another country’s problems. The language shifts between defence, liberation, stability or democracy. The outcome rarely matches the promise.

Think  Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya.

Each began with claims that intervention would deliver freedom. Each left societies fractured, institutions weakened and millions of ordinary people carrying the cost for generations.

What is missing from the white knight story is the people who actually live in those countries.

Iranians are not waiting for outsiders to rescue them. They have been debating the future of their country for decades. Students, women, writers, workers, clerics, reformers and conservatives all argue fiercely about what Iran should become. The struggle inside the country is real, complex and deeply Iranian.

History shows something else as well. Lasting change almost always grows from inside a society, not from outside armies.

South Africa dismantled apartheid through internal resistance and negotiation.
Indonesia moved away from dictatorship after mass civil pressure.
Eastern European countries rebuilt themselves after the collapse of the Soviet bloc through internal political movements and public demand for change.

External pressure can sometimes open space. It can support civil society. It can amplify voices that governments try to silence.

War does the opposite. It crushes the very people who might build a different future.

The phrase “real men solve problems with bombs” is not strength. It is a recruitment slogan for other people’s funerals.

Strength measured in explosions is a very old idea. It has left a trail of ruined cities and broken societies.

The Iranian footballers who escaped in Australia remind us of something far more hopeful. People everywhere want the same thing. The chance to live safely, to speak freely and to shape the future of their own country.

That future will not arrive on a white horse.

It will be built by Iranians themselves.

Don and Ben – the hero, the villain and the rest of us.


Today’s thoughts on the latest mess the bullies have delivered ……

Initial media coverage followed a trope as old as time.

Iran cast as the villain.
The United States and Israel riding in as the heroes.
The rest of us cast as the people who need saving.

Every culture tells this story.

The villain threatens the village.
The villagers wait to be rescued.
The hero arrives on the white horse.

War reporting regularly slips into this pattern. The roles feel familiar. We all recognise them.

Every story like this skips the same question.

What outcome is the operation meant to deliver?

The SMH’s Peter Hartcher has already warned where this road can lead, an early military success drifting into what he called a “politico-military muddle”.

Military strategist Mick Ryan points to Iraq and Afghanistan. The bombing opens the story. The political outcome writes the ending.

Remove a leader and the next questions arrive immediately.

Who governs Iran?
What stabilises the region?
What outcome marks success?

Each time Donald Trump speaks about the objective the explanation shifts. Prevention. Regime change. Deterrence.

Strategy begins with a destination.

Without one, events take control.

History contains plenty of examples.

Most end exactly where Peter Hartcher suggested. A politico-military muddle.

Sue Eggins receives the Kiama Electorate Woman of the Year award

There are awards that recognise a moment. Then there are awards that recognise a lifetime of turning up.

Sue Eggins has been named Kiama Electorate Woman of the Year for 2026, a well deserved recognition for someone whose dedicated persistence to heritage has shaped this community for decades.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of interviewing Sue for my Stories written so they can be found series, the project where I sit down with women across our district to record their life stories so they are not lost to time.

Sue’s story is highly entertaining.

It begins with insistence on hospital facility sterilisation standards in an ambulance heading toward Camperdown in 1948 when her mother refused a roadside delivery. It moves through science teaching, travelling the world in her twenties, a period Sue cheerfully describes as following a musician boyfriend around the country like “a brazen hussy”, and eventually lands in Kiama where her energy has been poured into protecting the history and heritage of this district.

Along the way she trained as a school counsellor, worked for decades supporting young people through some of the most complicated years of their lives, and became one of the driving forces behind the Kiama Historical Society.

Her younger years also included a stint at boarding school under a strict Catholic regime. Sundays involved Mass, Benediction, Rosary and several other services all in one day. Bread for school lunches arrived once a week and by Friday it was often mouldy. The nuns toasted fresh bread for themselves and tipped the leftovers into a bucket for the chooks, a bucket the permanently hungry girls often raided. Dormitories opened onto verandahs where winter wind snapped the canvas blinds and Sue remembers piling eleven army blankets onto her bed to keep warm.

Boarding school also came with a formidable rule book about modesty. Talcum powder was sprinkled across the bath water so the girls could not see their reflection while bathing. Even school dances were tightly managed. Boys were required to place a handkerchief between their hand and a girl’s back so skin never touched skin.  Sue remembers those years as very character forming. A decade travelling overseas and following a boyfriend and his band around the country looked positively wholesome by comparison.

If you have attended a heritage talk, heard the story of Orry-Kelly, visited the museum, or followed one of the long running campaigns to protect historic buildings such as Barroul House or the Pilot’s Cottage, chances are Sue has been somewhere either guiding a tour or behind the scenes reading the documents, asking the questions and turning up to the meetings.

And when Sue turns up, people listen.

They know she has done her homework. She understands the history, the planning rules, the legislation and the process. By the time she walks into a room she is ready to get the best outcomes for the cause.

Her approach to community life is simple. Know your subject. Make your case carefully. And never walk away simply because it looks too difficult.

Great leaders do their homework. They listen carefully. They build a case that stands up to scrutiny. They keep showing up, even when the process is slow or the outcome uncertain. Over time, people learn that when they speak, it is worth paying attention. Sue Eggins has practised that art for decades.

This award recognises exactly that kind of contribution.

And if you want to hear the full story, from ambulance drama to international travel to heritage picket lines, keep an eye out for the full Sue Eggins life story coming soon in the series.

Will Australia show courage or sleepwalk past it

Courage isn’t surviving a paper straw. Courage is leadership that refuses another war.
Canada has stepped up and said what we are all thinking.
There comes a point where caution stops being wisdom and starts looking like fear.
Canada has shown some courage.
Australia now has the same opportunity.
The question is whether our leaders recognise the moment
or sleepwalk past it.
Read this excellent article in The Conversation here

The Epstein Coalition wants to rule the world

Michael West Media has asked the question out loud we have all be thinking. Are we led by fools and sycophants?
MWM coverage is a welcome antidote to the desperate coverage of this epic balls-up, which is not being covered by the corporate media. Read it here. https://michaelwest.com.au/australia-and-the-epstein…/
The pix is a bit of a TL:DR image BUT do read it – its horrifying and to top it all off the Iranians are calling the US and their supporters the “Epstein Coalition”
The Israeli propaganda narrative that Iranians would sprinkle rose petals at the feet of their invaders has not come to pass. It has already been demolished in fact.

Yet here was Australia, Saturday night, first out of the blocks worldwide to throw its support behind Donald Trump and his preposterous “Operation Epic Fury”, a probable pedophile being blackmailed and led around by the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu like a pony at the fairground show.

The cold facts of this debacle are that regime change does not work, that Iran did not want this war, that Iran appears to be exceptionally well prepared – even winning the war – that the Epstein Coalition, which Australia supports, is daily backing war crimes: blowing up hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure.

Like George O, Grahame Parker nailed it with this song

Milk and men (no women) and the archive we inherit

I am writing the history of the Jamberoo dairy factory.

The minutes are thorough. Motions moved. Votes carried. Chairmen thanked. Directors named.

The record is male because in that era authority was male.

That is the structure the archive preserves.

From the 1940s through to the 1970s the dairy industry ran on family labour. Women rose for early milking. They fed calves. They sterilised equipment. They kept the production books and the household accounts. They stretched the milk cheque across machinery payments and grocery bills. They managed rationing in drought years. They hosted meetings. They sustained community networks. They carried the emotional load when prices dipped or disease struck.

None of of that appears in the official file.

Board minutes record motions. Newspapers quote chairmen. Legislation names directors. The kitchens and calf sheds rarely make print. Even our local retrospectives, rich in civic detail, move through institutions and office holders.  In the Kiama Independent Our History Supplement the pattern is consistent. Public life is recorded through public roles.

The tragedy sits elsewhere. The women who carried half the enterprise are now largely gone, and their voices were rarely recorded in their own words.

Oral history could have balanced the record. Time has narrowed that opportunity. It is archival reality.

When I read through factory reports and industry correspondence, I can trace leadership decisions with precision. I can follow drought policy, milk zones, compensation debates. I can name the men who chaired meetings and negotiated with ministers.

I cannot hear the conversation at the kitchen table when the milk price fell.
I cannot see the private calculations made after a vet bill arrived.
I cannot read the words of a woman who rose at 4 am and went to bed after the books were balanced.

Half the enterprise sits between the lines.

Wanting to change that makes sense. It shifts the lens forward rather than back. It asks who is documenting women’s lived experience now, while those voices are still present. It asks whose work is counted as leadership.

If we are serious about industry history, we record the boardroom and the calf shed. We record the motion and the margin. We record the lived experience

Interviews, recorded conversations, written reflections. These are not embellishments. They are structural repair.

An industry history written only through formal office leaves half the story implied.

I am writing “Milk and men (and no women.)”

The next chapter needs different sources. I hope those voices can be found

Australian values belong to the people who live them not to politicians who weaponise them

 

Source https://tinyurl.com/ycxnp6rk

When Pauline Hanson claims “Australian values”, I cringe.

When Angus Taylor mirrors it, I cringe again.

These are leaders who trade in suspicion. Who elevate culture as a test. Who talk about countries that supposedly fail us. Who tighten the definition of belonging and call it strength.

Then they reach for “Australian values”.

The Australia I know runs on a fair go. Equal treatment under the law. Decent schools. Decent healthcare. Work hard and get ahead. Once you are here, you stand in the same queue.

Researchers writing in The Conversation asked Australians what a fair go means. Strong support for equal opportunity. Strong support for access to education and healthcare. More than half gave the highest possible agreement to recent migrants having the same opportunity as everyone else to get ahead.

That feels familiar.

When I shared the article, my Facebook tribe responded in minutes. Fairness. Decency. Treat people properly. Play by the rules. Give newcomers a chance. It read like the country I recognise.

So when “Australian values” is used to narrow the circle, I recoil. The phrase belongs to all of us. It does not belong to the loudest voice in the room.

Read the article in The Conversation here 

Thank you one of my Facebook tribe for this wonderful sentiment image

Ht to Bill Piggott who shared this with me on Facebook

“Australian values are visible when kindness, care, collaboration, compassion and reciprocity are recognised, encouraged, embraced and rewarded.”

A night at the museum when the captain ran a tight ship

 

Dr Tony Gilmour ( Vice President) and Sue Eggins ( President) who led the conversation on the history of the Pilot’s Cottage which houses the Kiama’s Maritime Museum – Composite photo

If you are going to host a Night at the Museum, it helps when your historian arrives dressed to command the harbour.

Dr Tony Gilmour stepped forward in full captain’s cap, gold braid catching the light, shirt crisp, microphone steady in hand. He arrives on time, every time. History may roam across centuries. Tony keeps the schedule.

As Vice President of the Kiama and District Historical Society, he knows his brief. And he knows his audience.

We began outside at the Pilot’s Cottage. Basalt. Blue metal. The same stone that built fortunes and fuelled arguments. The same stone hauled down Terralong Street on a tramway that managed to become famous for all the wrong reasons.

Tony retold the story with relish.

During the 1880s Kiama Council built its own tramway to move blue metal from the quarries to the harbour. A bold civic enterprise. Public ownership. Local pride. A locomotive ordered from England. Vacuum brakes admired. Aldermen impressed.

There was one small problem.

The gauge.

The line proved too narrow for sensible interchange and too awkward for the engine that was meant to run on it. The blue metal still travelled. The logic did not. Within a few years, the rails came up and the engine found another home. It also sent the council into debt.

Ambition in iron and basalt. Standing beside the Pilot’s Cottage, Tony pointed out that this sturdy building rose from that same volcanic rock. Basalt blocks that once left Kiama by ship now hold firm against the sea air.

The local press, in its day, had strong opinions. The Kiama Independent described the cottage as “a building which has otherwise no architectural pretension,” condemning its exposed black rubble as “a flagrant violation of all the principles of good design.” Rendering would have made it respectable. Raw basalt did not meet the aesthetic brief of the 1880s.

Even architectural taste carries a timestamp.

Tony then turned our attention to the Robertson Basin.

Opened in 1876, the Basin changed everything. Before it, vessels moored to a heavy chain stretched across the harbour. After it, proper ships could berth, load blue metal efficiently, and leave with dignity intact. The harbour shifted from hopeful to operational.

From the verandah of the Pilot’s Cottage, the pilot managed that transformation. He recorded arrivals, issued weather reports, raised signals, coordinated rescues and kept order in a working port that was loud, dusty and lucrative. This small basalt building once oversaw a busy stretch of coastline and the industry that shaped Kiama’s identity. It was operational authority, grounded in experience.

The story stretches into living memory. The last pilot lived in the cottage until the early 1980s. This was a functioning government residence on Crown land. When the pilot and his family moved out, the future of the building entered a new chapter.

One proposal from the state government involved demolition, another converting the building into a fast food outlet. Harbour views. Prime land. Commercial logic.

The community formed a different view. Through careful advocacy, persistence and steady engagement with council and government, local voices made their case. The cottage became a museum rather than a takeaway counter.

That history remains important today. The Kiama Historical Society currently operates under a one-year licence. Council has offered no long-term guarantee that the cottage will remain a maritime museum. For a building of state and national significance, that uncertainty is of grave concern.

The Society understands long campaigns. It holds one of the largest membership of any historical society in New South Wales. It has defended heritage before. It knows how to assemble evidence, cultivate allies and return to the table until the outcome reflects community best interest.

Kiama Historical Society President Sue Eggins

From there, we moved inside where Sue Eggins, President of the Historical Society, kept the room thoroughly entertained. Sue draws out character and colour with ease. Where Tony charts the terrain, Sue brings the people into the room.

Between them, the evening flowed. We heard of councils arguing over sewerage with missionary zeal. Of hospital roofs surrendering to coastal storms. Of electricity arriving with ceremony and consequence. Of ratepayers scrutinising every loan and levy with familiar intensity.

And then there were the hosts. The Kiama Historical Society did itself proud. Wine flowed. Nibbles circulated with impressive efficiency. Conversation hummed. This is a society that preserves archives by day and knows how to throw a party by night.

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By the end of the evening, the museum felt less like a building and more like a conversation across time.

History stood before us in a captain’s hat, precisely on schedule, anchored in basalt, overlooking the Robertson Basin, and entirely alive.

And inside, under Sue’s watchful guidance, it continued to sparkle.

Exciting News

Given the popularity of the sold-out ‘night at the museum’ last week the Kiama History Society is rolling it out again on 31 March 2026. This event will be open to everyone. Book your ticket here