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 is written by The Islander journalist Stan Gorton.
Welcome to a little slice of Island life - and yes we do capitalise Island when referring to our delightful isle.
Living and working on an island offers its own unique set of challenges. This week we had to deal with internet outages as the NBN conducted maintenance of its fixed wireless towers that feed the Island, without warning I might add. Luckily the library's public internet was functioning, so we were able to get the paper out by sitting in the library for six hours.
Once sent off electronically to the printing press on the mainland, how does the newspaper get to the Island you may ask? Well by airmail, naturally. That "other" paper - the Adelaide metro - used to come by plane but is now confined to the ferry.
Earlier this month we covered the news of Islanders, yes also spelled with capital "I", now getting a discount fare. KI is now one of at least 15 other regional centres getting a "community" discount fare - in our case $99 to get to Adelaide.
Move to Kangaroo Island they said. It will be nice and quiet they said. Well how wrong they could be. The Island seems to be have been bombarded with controversial developments from a golf course on cliff tops to the Australian Walking Company's proposal to build lodges on wild headlands of Flinders Chase National Park.
This week we had an interesting story about a farmer who is bulldozing the blue gum plantation on his farm, just as the Island's main timber company is looking to build a controversial woodchip exporting port at Smith Bay.
Of course there are triumphs, large and small. And it is always nice to get one of your stories picked up by bigger cousin, The Stock Journal, which this week covered our story about Kangaroo Island farmers Steve and Lucy Morgan.
The Morgans have realised their dream of getting an oat crop from their paddocks into a bag labelled "KI Oats".
The oat is a specially variety developed by the State research and development institute to help reduce blood cholesterol re-absorption. Their rolled and instant oat product is now in supermarkets and shops across KI and the mainland.
Another triumph this week was the group of international visitors who conducted a "Ploggathon" on the Island. Plogging is running or walking and picking up rubbish at the same time.
The ploggers, mostly international travellers, covered 760km of the Island in 10 days, picking up 4.6 tonnes of rubbish, of which 1.6 tonnes was recycled.
The event culminated with a mountain of rubbish at the KI Brewery. Amazing job and hopefully we Islanders can learn to keep our Island a little cleaner.
So what does one do for enjoyment on an Island in the winter. Well, one forms a winter swimming club, that's what.
Winter swimming came to KI this month when a group of hardy locals, including this journalist started taking to the waters at Emu Bay of a Sunday morning. They joined regular KI swimmer Michael Amor, who swims Emu Bay year round.
On our latest swim on the winter solstice weekend, the outside temperatures ranges from minus 1.5 to 2 degrees, while the water was a relatively balmy 12 degrees and literally steaming. Eat your heart our Dark Mofo solstice nude swim, you got nothing on the Island Icicles ...
Well as its Friday, we hope you enjoyed a little slice of life from The Islander newspaper. Maybe you will come and visit us one day ...
Stan Gorton
Journalist, The Islander
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Stan Gorton
Walkley-nominated journalist based at The Islander on Kangaroo Island with an interest in the local community and the environment.
Walkley-nominated journalist based at The Islander on Kangaroo Island with an interest in the local community and the environment.
