Today was day one for my return to the ABC news radio team on the Gold Coast, and the timing was magic.

Looking through the daily papers for stories to follow up, there on page 4 (or it could have been 6, or 8… one of the even pages anyway) of the Gold Coast Bully was a story on a cableway system for Springbrook. Apparently Mayor Tom Tate has been approached by several ‘big players’ of private enterprise, who want to renew proposals for a cableway connecting the world heritage listed national park to the rest of the Gold Coast.

It’s not an old plan – but the last serious proposal was knocked back in 1998 by the state government and faced serious opposition by locals.

Well now I’m a Springbrook local, and the story caused a few palpitations – it was definitely one to follow up and David Lewis agreed. David is one of three journalists  in the GC news radio team (and recently received a Clarion!) and looked after me today while Charmaine Kane (Journalist in Charge) took a well-deserved day off. Russell Varley completes the team and is an award-winning journalist with over twenty years experience. I think I’m in pretty good hands!

So the morning was spent chasing up the mayor’s media team for comment on the cableway and also interviewing the CEO of the Gold Coast Combined Chamber of Commerce. Then it was a matter of editing the audio and writing a couple of versions of the story for the news bulletins.

After lunch I interviewed the CEO of Tourism Gold Coast for his budget wish list, for a quick ‘add on’ to other stories on the state budget. It was a fairly quiet day but no doubt tomorrow will be pretty busy with state budget announcements and also the independent schools teacher’s strike, which I’m attending with David.

There’s something about working in radio which gives me a little rush – when David Anderson told us a couple of weeks ago nothing compares to radio, I knew what he was talking about – not on the same level of course, but the small part I’ve experienced has been fantastic and I know it’s the road I want to go down. And I won’t be taking a cable car to get there!