When the Cheshire emerges...

Having some time on my hands on Saturday and not really in the mood to do my handwashing, I decided to go look at some shops in Dubbo's south I hadn't got to before. And because I was near the highway heading out (one of them, there's three plus other roads...), I just thought I'd drive that way.

I did have a destination in mind. Skipping the first village off the highway, I beelined for a small stop named Geurie. I knew they had a good pub and it was lunchtime so thought I'd make the effort for a decent pub meal. The sun was shining after some rainy days, and driving past the (perhaps not) surprisingly green pastures was simply beautiful. With a blue sky and fluffy clouds, singing to songs like Cee Lo Green's 'Fuck You' was always going to be that much more spirited. I heart Triple J (sidenote: how sad is it that Rosie's stepping down from Super Request... haha I'll always remember her as the cool chick who introduced the eps of Degrassi: TNG on ABC).

28 kilometres later I got to Geurie. There was the pub, a petrol station and a general store open on the main street. Pulled over, realised there wasn't even any historical sights here via mobile internet. Hm. Nice building for the post office though, and a cool train station. Halfway between The Outback and Sydney apparently.

Went to the pub as intended, only to be told by the shady guy behind the bar they weren't serving food. Apparently a group of five travelling through didn't know that either.
So having no choice, I decided to make the drive back and stop in Wongarbon, that village in between. I knew they had a pub. At least they have a gallery there (although arriving at the closing time was bad timing). Walked into their pub a bit more confident - but the man said their meals were only for dinnertime (on Saturday anyway). He did offer that I could eat a pie from the general store in their beer garden, but I passed.

Ten minutes later and I was back in Dubbo. I went to the ultimate fail-safe and ended up buying a massive half-wrap from the Short Street Store and ate it in Victoria Park. Learnt an interesting lesson: the enticing roads can lead you anywhere but not anywhere has food.

Have you travelled a while only to find you couldn't get what you wanted? Food or otherwise?

There have been a few things that have recently inspired me to do what I've always said I'm going to do, and I'm going to do it now in my latest pledge - I will keep this blog REGULAR! One form of inspiration was a Tweet from a follower of mine who tried spruiking me to his followers. It read: "@Katiinkaa has an irregular but interesting blog..." before a link. So that means people DO read what I write sometimes. Which is awesome. And what good samaritanism too, total champ. @Noelinho, if you read this, thanks.

Now that I'm in Dubbo and settled with good Internet, I can finally uphold this idea.

Might as well start this regularity with a general update on my life as it is at this point in time... working as a journalist is a challenge every day. There are some days where everything falls into place and you bang things out and it's easy-peasy. Some where you find yourself starting well with contacts and then hitting a roadblock. Or vice-versa. And then there are days where it's 3pm and you don't have at least one submitted story. Those days are the pits.

Opposing all that, last week was the best yet. Week 10 didn't feel like a stellar week but there were major milestones. My first week of court reporting without assistance. Hitting 2.5 months and no longer being the new(est) kid on the block. And outside of work, finally uploading all my Europe photos onto Facebook. Which was a frickin' long time coming, but I follow through with these things.

But the biggest thing that affected me was realising (yet again) that you can't have it all. In this case I was very proud to discover five out of six of our front pages (Monday-Saturday) featured my stories. At the same time certain things or people in my life were lacking - for example, not being able to go properly with anyone who's followed my journey to celebrate. But you take what good you can get with gusto. And for me, the career is obviously a worthy focus right now.

For those non-writers out there, what do you think makes a good front-page story? If you had a choice what would YOU write about?