Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from Australian Community Media, which has journalists in every state and territory. Sign up here to get it by email, or here to forward it to a friend. Today's newsletter was written by Macleay/Nambucca/Bellingen editor Christian Knight.
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LIFE on the Mid North Coast of NSW is for the most part cruisey. But just of late it's become testy - and residents could be excused for developing chronic disaster disorder.
There was the drought, of course, though our kindred cuzzins on the other side of the Sandstone Divide would all but sneer at our 'drought' photos of browning pasture.
Then of course came the fires. It's a little known fact - at least to the metropolitan Press - that the property loss on the North Coast - from Taree to almost the Queensland border - was every bit as devastating as it was anywhere else.
North Coasters felt somewhat non-plussed that the media fire coverage in NSW stepped up only when Sydney got smokey, and parts of the South Coast were shredded.
The calamity on the Mid North Coast had barely been a blip on the radar of newsrooms beyond these parts.
But the forgotten communities of the Mid North Coast surely moved on from the slight - as drenching, and welcomed rain, morphed to flooding from Byron Bay to Bellingen.
West of Coffs Harbour was a wet spot hot spot - and local graziers were left to count the cost of lost stock.
The COVID-19 virus was next to the plate, and just what affect it might have on the Mid North Coast which sews its economic buttons to tourism remains to be realised. But, you can bet it won't be roses.
A comedian mused on what might be next? A plague of pantry moths, perhaps.
Stoic, sun-and-sand buffed Mid North Coasters will take all this in their stride of course. And we even had two Elton John concerts at Coffs Harbour to lift the spirits (except for those who chose not to go, and are now beset with Elton Regret).
Such is the price of paradise.
Christian Knight
Editor, Macleay/Nambucca/Bellingen