This investigative journo, author and broadcaster has brought stories to light from some of the most remote corners of Australia.
From a range of rural towns around Queensland, Amanda Gearing has covered national and international news for The Australian, The Times in London, ABC Radio National and Crikey.
And it all started from a small office in Mt Isa, where her career began.
“I was always a very philosophical, idealistic type of person,” Amanda says.
“I was involved in debating and all that sort of thing, interested in the world.
“I think my model of journalism is probably a little different from others.
“The way I approached it was probably different, probably a bit more intuitive in a lot of ways. I went in very blind dumb and stupid, where angels fear to tread. But I toppled corrupt councils, I had hospitals built, I had roads built, I had public housing upgraded before I turned 22.”
Amanda won a Walkley Award for Best Radio Documentary for her coverage of the 2011 flash flood disaster in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley in “The Day that Changed Grantham”.
“It was sheer human suffering in that case,” she says.
“What happened was a flash flood came down the Lockyer Valley.
“In the final analysis it was 23 people who had died.
“It was a shocking event…absolutely traumatic…My thought as a mother was, ‘when these children get a little bit older, or even get born, in ten years’ time or 15 years’ time they are going to want to know, Why did this happen? Why did my sister die? or Why did my Mum die? Who tried to save them?’
“I decided at that point that someone had to write this all down.”
She’s also unflinchingly covered an international child sexual abuse scandal in institutions such as schools and churches in Australia, and its ongoing ramifications.
“So that story, because it had been the Archbishop by then was the Governor General of Australia, it went big instantly,” she says.
“So from me sitting in a little rural courthouse in Toowoomba, there was nobody else connected to the national media. Because I was writing for News Ltd it just went bang to national. And that started the calls for the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse which happened another ten years later.
“It was obvious from then that we needed a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse, there was a big disaster on our hands. There was political opposition to it at the time and that political opposition ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed and it wasn’t until we had a secular prime minister who was willing to actually open the lid of the can that we finally got that Royal Commission.”
She says there’s a lesson in her experience that you don’t have to necessarily work at big publications such as the Washington Post to make a difference as a journalist.
“It’s people power, it’s a bit of media power, a bit of just doing one foot in front of the other never really knowing if it’s going to work or not,” Amanda says.
“You go into these things not promising. Because you can’t promise that what a particular mob wants will happen. But you can have a jolly good crack.”
Beyond the Pod
I stumbled across this story the other day, pleasantly surprised to find that one of my most popular Streets of Your Town episodes from series 1 has made it to Triple M!
“We aim to get people learning about turtles, about conservation... and hopefully people take that knowledge away and do something in their everyday life to help turtles and other marine animals.”
Mon Repos Turtle Centre Featured On 'Streets Of Your Town' Podcast —Triple M
Woo hoo! Crack the champagne and have a listen to the turtles of Mon Repos, in case you missed it first time around!
What I’m reading
This story certainly comes under the “sobering but really important category” of must-reads. It’s incredible the obstacles that many people still face to get the most perfunctory level of justice in their lives.
“I first met Jody at the Bandyup women's prison in Perth, where she told me her story and showed me the scars on her body left by her ex's violence.”
While this immersive story from the New York Times just makes me want to cobble together all my little bits and bobs of savings and ring my travel agent to say, “get me there ASAP even if its by ten different flights that have to link up along the way!” One day I will get to Cuba—one day!
Discovering Cuba, an Island of Music —New York Times
And this story just makes me laugh, as I remember all the conflicting advice I was given when I was a journo for the ABC about the “correct” way to pronounce this word…
“All English words ending in -meter or -metre derive from the Greek word metron,” [Prime Minister Gough] Whitlam told anyone who would listen during a sitting in parliament in 1975, “in which the penultimate syllable is short, the letter e in English reproducing epsilon”.
Are you pronouncing 'kilometre' correctly? —ABC News
Upcoming
I will be on a Wandering Journo creative hiatus for the next two weeks—precious time to recharge and organise the next chapters of this series of the Journo Project podcast. Thanks to so many of you who have validated my work so much by becoming paid subscribers. This support has paid for me to travel to Perth in a few weeks to interview some bloody great journos from the West who largely go unheralded. Hooray that you my crowdfunders have enabled this little poddie to become such a success, enabling me to travel around Australia to celebrate great journos and great journalism that holds those in power to account. I truly can’t thank you enough.
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Amanda Gearing on following your intuition when reporting